Google
This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on Hbrary shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we liave taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web
at |http : //books . google . com/|
d by Google
d by Google
d by Google
NEW COSMOPOLIS
A BOOK OF IMAGES
INTIMATE NEW YORK. CERTAIN EUROPEAN CITIES
BEFORE THE WAR : VIENNA, PRAGUE, LITTLE
HOLLAND, BELGIAN ETCHINGS, MADRID, DUBLIN,
MARIENBAD. ATLANTIC CITY AND NEWPORT
JAMES HUNEKER
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
191S
d by Google
/jr..?'
PD£Lisb£ii Mai
d by Google
do
VANCE THOMPSON
En Souvenir — "M'lle New York"
d by Google
d by Google
■ i^4i/.«t^u„
INSTEAD OF A PREFACE
All my life I have longed to write a preface.
Not such t inklin g evasions as forewords or intro-
ductions, but a full-fledged preface which would
render quite superfluous what follows it. Con-
sider the case of Mr. Shaw. His prefaces are
such witty masterpieces that they make neg-
ligible his plays. But I have never cultivated
courage enough to take the first dive into chilly
type. Either I have squarely dodged the sol-
emn undertaking or compromised with a coda;
in one instance I actually fabricated a pref-
ace for Egoists (a book that had been printed
some years) and placed it in a later one. Even
in the present head-Une there lurks a meek qual-
ification. However, as brevity may be a pledge
of sincerity, I may say this book of sky-lines
and perspectives first appeared in the hospi-
table columns of the New York Sun, Herald,
Times, Puck, and Metropolitan Magazine; that
the European notes were written and published
before the beginning of the war (from the sum-
mer of 1909 to the spring of 1914); and that if
silence is preserved as to certain art galleries
of Amsterdam, The Hague, Madrid, and else-
where, it is because these pubhc collections with
dbyGoogle
INSTEAD OF A PREFACE
many others were treated at length in my Prom-
enades of an Impressionist.
That inveterate cosmopolite, Stendhal, wished
to be in a city where the people were most like
him. Now, Max Stirner, implacable philoso-
pher of egoism, would never have acknowledged
there could be a place where his like might be
found. As a cosmopolitan by self-election, I
agree with both these egoists. The world at
large is compounded of rhythmic surprise and
charm, as may well be our intimate life; their
enjoyment depends upon the vision and sym-
pathy we bring to them. If Stendhal were in
New York to-day he could write: Lo, I am at
Cosmopohs! The New Cosmopolis. Let me
conclude this meagre apology for a preface with
the declaration of literary faith made by J.-K.
Huysmans: "I record what I see, what I feel,
what I have experienced, writing it as well as
I can, et voila ioutl"
dbyGoogle
CONTENTS
PART I
Intimate New Yoke
I. The Fabulous East Side 3
n. The Lungs 21
m. The Waterways 38
IV. The Matrix 51
V, The Maw or the Monster 74
VI. The Night Hath a Thousand Eyes ... 91
VII. Brain AND Sour, AND POCEETBOOK .... no
VIII. CoNEV Island 149
I. By Day 149
n. At Night is(t
PART n
Certain Eijkopean Cities Before the War
I. ViENKA l8l
II. PhAG0E 20O
ni. LiiriE Holland at?
I. Rotterdam 217
II. Through the Canals 226
III. Holland en Fete 233
ix
dbyGoogle
CONTENTS
IV. Belgian Etchings 250
I. Bnissels 25°
II. Little Cities and the Beaches ... 25?
V. Madrid 269
VI. Deab Old Dublin 279
VII. Fighting Fat at Maeienbad 295
PART III
Sand and Sentiuent
I. Atlantic City 309
II. Newport 329
dbyGoogle
PART I
INTIMATE NEW YORK
d by Google
d by Google
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
The illusions of the middle-aged die hardest.
At twenty I discovered, with sorrow, that there
was no such enchanted spot as the Latin Quar-
ter. An old Frenchman with whom I dined
daily at that time in a luxurious Batignolles
gargote informed me that Paris had seen the
last of the famous quarter after the Commune,
but a still older person who wrote obituary no-
tices for the parish swore the Latin Quarter
had not been in existence since 1848; the swell-
ing tide of democracy had swept away the
darling superstitions of the students, many of
whom became comfortably rich when Napo-
leon the Little grasped the crown. This I set
down as pure legend. Had I not seen young
painters, poets, and musicians in baggy velvet
trousers walk up and down the Eoui' Mich'
during the exposition of 1878? And they still
pranced about the cafes and brasseries in 1914,
their hair as long as their thirst. There may
be no Latin Quarter, but the Latin Quarter is
ever in a young man's soul who goes to Paris
in pursuit of the golden fleece of art.
I recovered from the disillusionment and no
more bothered my head about this pasteboard
Bohemia than I did at the island of Marken
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
when I was told that its Dutch peasants with
their picturesque costumes and head-dress were
moonshine manufactured by an enterprising
travel bureau to attract tourists. Are there
not more Puritans in the West than in New
England? But the loss of such a treasured il-
lusion as our own East Side smote me severely.
When young and buoyant one illusion crowds
out another. After you have crossed the great
divide of fifty, with the mountains of the moon
behind you, and an increasing waist measure-
ment before you, the annulment of a cherished
image wounds the soul.
The East Side with its Arabian Nights enter-
tainment was such an image. Twenty years
ago you could play the r61e of the disguised
Sultan and with a favourite Vizier sally forth
at eve from Park Row in pursuit of strange ad-
ventures. What thrilling encounters ! What
hairbreadth escapes ! What hand-to-hand strug-
gles with genii, afrits, imps — bottle-imps, very
often — dangerous bandits, perilous policemen
and nymphs or thrice dangerous anarchists !
To slink down an ill-lighted, sinister alley full
of Chinese and American tramps, to hurry by
solitary policemen as if engaged in some criminal
enterprise, to enter the abode of them that never
wash, where bad beer and terrible tobacco filled
the air with discordant perfumes — ah ! what
joys for adventurous souls, what tremendous
dawns over Williamsburg, what glorious head-
aches were ours on awakening the next night!
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
An East Side there was in those hardy times,
and it was still virginal to settlement-workers,
sociological cranks, impertinent reformers, self-
advertising politicians, billionaire socialists, and
the ubiquitous newspaper man. Magazine writ-
ers had not topsyturvied the ideas of the tene-
ment dwellers, nor were the street-cleaner, the
Board of Health, and other destroyers of the
picturesque in evidence. It was the dear old
dirty, often disreputable, though never dull East
Side; while now the sentimentalist feels a heart
pang to see the order, the cleanliness, the wide
streets, the playgrounds, the big boulevards, the
absence of indigence that have spoiled the most
interesting part of New York City.
Well I remember the night, years ago, when
finding ourselves in Tompkins Square we went
across to Justus Schwab's and joined an an-
archist meeting in full swing. There were no
bombs, though there was plenty of beer. A more
amiable and better-informed man than Schwab
never trod carpet slippers. The discussions in
German and English betrayed a culture not
easily duplicated on the West Side — wherever
that mysterious territory really is. Before
Nietzsche's and Stirner's names were pronounced
in our lecture-rooms they were familiarly quoted
at Schwab's. By request I played The Mar-
seillaise and The Intemarional Hymn on an old
piano — smoke-stained, with rattling keys and a
cracked tone — which stood at the rear upon
a platform. All was peace and a flow of soul;
5
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
yet the place was raided before midnight and a
band of indignant, also merry, prisoners marched
to the police-station. Naturally no one was de-
tained but Schwab. The police felt called upon
to arrest somebody around Tompkins Square
about once a month. Anarchist Outrages was
the usual newspaper head-line. Why are the
Mafia performers never called anarchs ? To-day
the Black Hand terrorises a region where the
bombs in the old times were manufactured of
ink for the daily papers. They generally blow
themselves up, these anarchists; but there is
nothing adventurous in having an eye or a leg
blown away by a Sicilian you have never seen.
To be arrested twenty years ago for the ro-
mantic crime of pia3ang The Marseillaise on a
badly tuned piano — is it any wonder I get sen-
timental when I think of an East Side that is
no more ? Perhaps the younger generation,
which Ibsen described as "knocking," may have
its nooks unknown to us, but the old fascina-
tion has flown.
Yet like the war-horse that is put out to grass
and rears when it hears the tin dinner horn, we
pricked ears on learning one summer afternoon
that up on First Avenue there was a wonderful
brew of beer to be had. Pilsner beer served
across genuine Bohemian tables ! How the ru-
mour came to my ears I've forgotten, but I
was not long in sending its glad import over the
telephone. Remember that we now dwell in a
city where never before has so much badly kept
6
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
beer been sold. The show-places are gaudy and
Americanised. Fashionable slummers whose
fathers wore leathern aprons and drank their
beer from tin pails sip champagne at some noisy-
gilded cabarets or summer gardens to the bang-
ing and scraping of fate gipsy orchestras.
Where are the small old-fashioned beer saloons
of yesteryear with the sanded floor, the pinochle
players, and the ripe, pure beverage? Indeed,
the German element on the East Side is in the
minority. At least it seems so, for your ear-
drums are pelted by Bohemian, Yiddish, Hun,
Italian, Russian, and other tongues. Many
speak German, some sort of German, but the
original Germans, the Urdeutsch who came to
America more than half a century ago, are dead
or decaying; their sons and daughters and
grandchildren have moved into more fashion-
able districts and shudder if you mention the
name of Goethe.
At first the Professor demurred. He is not
timid, but a creature of habit. To tell him the
news fraught with significance that you could
imbibe foamy nectar while sitting on a high
stool in front of a bar, a real, pleasant Bohemian
facing you, your elbows occasionally joggled by
visiting "growlers," did not appeal to my book-
ish friend as I had expected. I routed the
Painter den, and by combined assault we carried
the Professor up-town.
"Get off," I said, "at Seventy-second Street
and walk across to First Avenue."
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
We did so. The prosperity of the neighbour-
hood after we crossed Third Avenue was posi-
tively dispiriting. First Avenue we discovered to
be wider than Broadway. Oddly enough, human
beings hke ourselves passed to and fro. It was
the hottest hour of the afternoon. The world
in shirt-sleeves sat perched upon steps or chairs,
lounged in doorways watching the multitudi-
nous babies that rolled over the sidewalk. The
east side of the avenue was deserted, for the
sun beat upon the walls and reverberated bhnd-
ing rays. Of drunkenness we saw none. We
were in the Bohemian quarter. At Sokol Hall
on Seventy-third Street there were a few pool
games in progress; no one stood at the bar, I
was the spokesman:
"Isn't there," I said in my choicest Marien-
bad Bohemian, "isn't there a remarkable Pils-
ner Urquell somewhere in this neighbourhood ? "
"We also sell Pilsner," was the Slavic, eva-
sive answer of a bartender with the mask of a
tragic actor.
"Oh, he means Joe's," interrupted a sym-
pathetic bystander. "Of course, Joe keeps the
dandy beer."
To this there would be but one reply. We
stood treat to the house and went to Kasper's,
followed at a discreet distance by several patriots.
By this time the Professor's collar and tem-
per were running a race for the wilting sweep-
stakes. Joe was pleased to see us. We sat on
the celebrated high stools at the bar, and Gam-
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
brinus would have been satisfied. It was the
essence of Pilsen, Prague, Marienbad, all in a
large glass. Joe discoursed. He was proud that
we liked his interpretation of the wet blond
masterpiece; but not too proud. You can't
spoil Joe. He is a wary and travelled man.
His son, bom here, he tells you with ill-con-
cealed affection, is a violinist, a pupil at Vienna
of Sevic, the great teacher of Kubelik, of Ko-
cian ! Who knows whether another K may not
be added to this group. We drink his health
and venture the hope that the triumph of the
youthful Kasper will not put into the head of
the father any futile notion of retiring. Art is
all very well. Violin virtuosi abound; but few
men there are who know the subtle science of
keeping beer at a proper temperature,
"Look here," cried the Professor, "this is nice,
but how about the East Side that you are going
to show us, the East Side which is not in exis-
tence ? "
I suggested that we were on the East Side,
up-town, to be sure, nevertheless East Side.
"I want to see the East Side of George Luks,
and please spare us your antiquated memories.
George Moore knows how to relate memories
of his dead life, but you don't. Let's be going."
It was the Professor in his most didactic mood.
The Painter who was comfortably anchored,
sighed profoundly. He didn't need to leave a
snug harbour to see the East Side of George
Luks. To my remonstrances and heated asser-
9
dbyGoOgle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
tion that there was no more East Side, that it
was only a fable, the Professor bristled up like
the Celt he is. "What, then, is the use of
writing about a thing that no longer exists?
Or, as Israel Zangwill asks in the form of a
magnificent pun, 'What's the use of being a
countess if you have nothing to count.'" This
was too much, and in less than an hour we were
threading the intricacies of Grand Street, head-
ing for the region of socialistic rainbows.
"They're off!" chuckled the Painter as he
drew forth his sketching pad and pencil.
After a tolerably long tramp we turned south.
The street was narrow and not too odorous.
High buildings on either side were pierced by
numerous windows from which hung frowzy
ladies, usually with babies at their bosoms; the
fire-escapes were crowded with bedclothes, the
middle of the street filled with quarrelling chil-
dren. The national game on a miniature scale
was in progress, and on the sidewalks when the
push-cart men permitted, encouraging voices
called aioud in Yiddish to the baseball heroes.
I don't know what they said, but I caught such
phrases as these: "Yakie ! Schlemi! ! machen Sie
dot first base! Esel! Oh, du!" And the little
Jacob toiled up the street and down again,
sprawling over garbage-cans, upsetting two girls
dressed in resplendent ribbons for Shabbas, fi-
nally touching an old basket and getting full
in his smudged features a soft tomato. "Aus!"
yelled the umpire who was immediately kicked
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
in the stomach. "Aus! Out!" came in deliri-
ous tones from a dancing mass of men — Jewish
men with the traditional whiskers, brown straw
hats, and alpaca coats. It was startling even
to the Professor.
"There is your twentieth-century East Side
for you," I began, but the Painter watched
other things.
"Yet they think Luks is too realistic, don't
they? Just look at those girls." He pointed
out a red-headed Irish girl clutching a blonde
girl, unmistakably a German blonde, who were
both dreamily waltzing to the faded tune of
The Merry Widow.
Music which we hurry from across town is
near the East River music the conqueror. It mel-
lows the long hours of dry, dusty summer days,
and it sets moving in earnest if not graceful
rhythms the legs of the little ones. Suddenly
the organ began a gallop. Off whisked the girls
— Delia and Marike were their names, we were
later informed — off they went hke two aban-
doned spielers disguised as children of poverty.
What movement 1 What fire ! The blonde
with her silvery locks stamped and whirled off
her feet the trim Irish girl with the dark red
curls,
"Are you chaps never coming along?" asked
the Professor. "It will be night soon, and we
haven't seen anything yet."
"He's afraid Mouquin's will close before he
gets back to civilisation," sardonically whis-
dbyGoOgle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
pered the Painter, Luckily the Professor didn't
hear.
The cafe was not well lighted. At the marble
tables stooped the bent backs of old men, men
who wore curls over their ears, whose hats were
only removed at bedtime. They played chess
in the dusk and drank coffee at intervals, re-
garding their neighbours suspiciously. Rem-
brandt would have admired the dim, misty
corners where on musty divans he could have
discerned a head, partly in shadow, a high hght
on the bridge of the nose, or fingers snapping
with exultation in a sudden shaft of sunhght
that came through a window opening on the
west. Groups of two or three hovered about
the players. The stillness was punctuated by
street cries and the occasional rumbling of
that ramshackle horse-car the sight of which
sends your wits wool-gathering back to the
'8o's.
"Wake up," urged the Painter. "I'm going
to sketch that table in the corner; the two old
birds are watching each other as if plunder were
hid somewhere. You know they are afraid to
drink beer because a drop too much might lose
them a move. So they stick to coffee." He
went away, the Professor following.
"Is your friend a painter or only one of those
newspaper artists who worry us so much?"
I turned. Beside me sat a mythical old fel-
low, white-haired, his coat buttoned to his neck,
no shirt, evidently, and the hand which plucked
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
his beard as white as a girl's — a girl who has
white hands, I mean.
"You look like the Ancient Mariner," I said,
"or a Hebraic Walt Whitman."
He smiled. "I may be both for all you
know; but you haven't answered my ques-
tion."
He inclined a benevolent ear. I informed
him of our mission and of my disappointment.
Again the smile, a smile as ancient as the world
and as fresh as to-morrow.
"It is this way," he confided, and his deep-
set eyes sparkled. "You are an idealist. Wait
until you are seasoned by eighty years. I am
eighty, and I've hved on the so-called East
Side for sixty of my years. I speak English
better than I do Yiddish, yet to earn my bread
I write Yiddish plays, stories, love-letters, and
would preach if my voice would hold out. I
am an ex-rabbi. You know what a rabbi is;
you are old enough. An ex-anything is a mis-
take — particularly an ex-dramatic critic or an
ex-president."
"You must have seen many changes in your
life over here," I ventured.
"My friend, I have seen many changes, yet
nothing changes. We are born, live more or
less unhappily, and die. That's all. There are
more of my co-religionists now than there were
when we first went up the Bowery. Then they
pulled my beard and threw stones at us. Now
we live in houses built, perhaps, with those very
13
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
stones; certainly built by our forbearance. We
live "
He prosed on. He bored me, this octogena-
rian who resembled both the Ancient Mariner
and Walt Whitman. I stopped his rambling
by asking: "I suppose the Socialists and settle-
ment-workers have greatly improved the East
Side?"
He sat up and roared like an approaching
earthquake. The chess-players looked at him,
shrugged shoulders, and again tackled thetr
problems. The Professor deserted the Painter
and tiptoed out to us. The Painter never
budged.
" Socialists ! What are they ? They have
stirred up my people with empty words, fine
phrases. Oh, the dreamers of the Ghetto,
This idea of an earthly paradise you may trace
back to the Persians, to the Babylonians, per-
haps to the Sumerians. We are always looking
for the coming of him who will rescue us. We
are the idealistic leaven in whatever national
bakery we find ourselves. You Americans are
smarter. When the dollars arrive you are satis-
fied; it is your heaven on earth; but for the
poor, who know nothing, have nothing, golden
words fill them with hope. Better prisons than
those slimy deceptions of socialism. Yes, our
girls marry rich Goyem, rich gentiles — let a
woman alone for finding a tub of butter — and
then they come down here, some to Eve and
work — their tongue — and teU more lies to
14
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
dreamers. Ach ! it is awful. And your settle-
ment-workers, the white mice, we call them.
They mean well, but they are generally mis-
guided busybodies. They pry, pry, pry, and
ask insulting questions. Even if we are poor
we are humans; we have feelings too. If a
Jew is pious they give him a New Testament,
They bore or frighten oiir wives, though they
do a lot of good, helping the hungry poor. Yet
children go to school hungry. Don't believe al-
together in those sights of big new tenements,
playgrounds, public schools; there is a lot of
misery on your renovated East Side that your
philanthropists never reach, that those funny
sociological students never see."
I rose.
"Break away!" said the Painter. "I caught
the old prophet in my note-book while he was
gassing. Let's get out of here."
I bade farewell to the venerable Jeremiah.
He looked sadly after us. Not a drink, not a
smoke — nothing ! And all that wisdom dissi-
pated into thin air, or into ears that heeded not.
I was glad when we passed through the narrow
doorway obstructed by a wretched rubber plant
— or was it a hat-rack?
Without the sky seemed rolled back from
the roofs and was a deep blue transfused by the
citron-tinted afterglow of a setting sun. On the
street were the fuliginous oil-lamps of peddlers.
The din was terrific; it mingled with the smell of
fish, fruit, and grease. A motley mob jostled
15
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
us from the pavements; the middle was the
safest roadway. An old woman who sat comb-
ing her thin grey hair directed us westward;
we thought we had lost our bearings. Slat-
ternly females chaffered with the Jewish and
Italian push-cart men. Their gestures were not
unlike; southern Europe and remotest Russia
employ the sign language, a voluble digital lan-
guage it is. Shrieks of laughter and dismay at-
tracted us farther up. A dwarf with a big
head and dressed in the uniform of the Salva-
tion Army was hemmed in by half a hundred
teasing children of all nationalities. I assure
you that I saw white girls with Chinese slitted
eyes, little Irish girls with the Hebraic nose
curve, negro boys with straight hair and blue
eyes. A vast cauldron — every race bubbles and
boils and fuses on the East Side. The children
are happy. They are noisy and devilish in their
energy. They howled at the dwarf, "Pee Wee !"
He was impassive and distributed circulars. In
front of a kosher fowl shop another small cy-
clone was in progress. The place was locked,
but in the gaslight we could detect hundreds of
chickens hopping over the counter and shelves,
and the joy their antics gave the little ones
outside was worth a dozen Christmas panto-
mimes.
"To the Hall of Genius, that's where we are
heading, boys !" answered the Painter to a query
from the Professor.
I had now become the crusty member of the
i6
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
crowd. I was tired. The coffee at the chess
cafe had given me a headache; besides, things
were not exactly going my way, I came out
on this expedition prepared to scofF, and while
I had not remained to pray, nevertheless was
I disappointed. So I irritably inquired; "What
Hall of Genius? What new pipe-dream is
this?"
Good-temperedly he returned; "It is a pipe-
dream, and before we go up Second Avenue I
want you to see what you can't see anywhere
outside Paris."
"The Latin Quarter?" I sneered.
"No; Montmartre. Now just hustle along,
please. It is getting late and I'm hungry."
As we entered the hall the buzzing of voices
was almost deafening. At least a hundred
tables were crowded with men and women.
On the balconies were more tables. Every one
was drinking either coffee or beer; the men
smoked pipes, cigarettes, with here and there a
few cigars. The odour was appalling. I never
knew Mother Earth grew such poisonous, weedy
tobaccos. We found seats not far from the
door.
"It's easier to escape," remarked our guide,
philosopher, and friend, "and it's easier to point
out the celebrities."
"What celebrities?" faintly inquired the Pro-
fessor, who was almost a physical wreck.
"Celebriries!" was the response. "Well, I
should say so. There's enough brains and ge-
17
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
nius under this roof at the present moment to
bum up our universities, our musical conserva-
tories, our paint-pot academies " — here the
Painter paused, I fancied maliciously — "our
law courts."
"But why, why haven't we heard of these
transcendent individuals?" I interposed.
"Over there," continued the Painter, not
heeding my question, "over there is a young
fellow who has written the best short story
since Edgar Poe. It's so good no one dreams
of printing it."
"There are a hundred like him who have
written the best story since Poe — only they
hug the Great White Way," hinted the Pro-
fessor cynically.
The Painter gave him a sour look.
"Never mind. I'm telling this story. The
fellow I mean is bald. That's why he keeps
his hat on. But the remnants of his hair are
curly."
"I dare him to remove his hat." The Pro-
fessor it was who spoke. I kicked him under
the table.
"That fat youth yonder," tranquilly resumed
the Painter, "is a second Ernest Lawson. He
never saw a Lawson landscape because he never
got farther than Second Avenue. His clothes,
as you see, are not suitable; but if he ever
starts in painting as he can ["But won't,"
cruelly intercalated the Professor] — then he
may join the Academy."
i8
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
"Fudge," said I.
"Fudge or not, he is a genius. He works,
when he does work, in a carriage factory. His
friend is the grandest dramatist of the age,
without a Broadway production. It's a pity
he can only write in Bulgarian. The woman
sitting near him has Duse, Bernhardt, and Na-
zimova beaten to a pulp as actresses."
The Professor stood up wearily.
"Now I'm going," he said. "I suppose you
will show us next the most extraordinary com-
poser on the planet."
"Precisely," acquiesced the Painter, "To
your left is a Russian pianist who has the charm
of Paderewski, the magic of Joseffy, the tech-
nique of Rosenthal, and the caprice of De Pach-
mann."
We paid the reckoning. Catching our waiter
by his tin badge I asked him as my friends moved
streetward: "Who are those folks at the next
table ? Are they poets or painters or musicians?"
"Nichts! Your friend was having fun with
you," answered the waiter. " They are nearly all
cloakmakers, and work in the neighbourhood."
"Oh.hoHowEastSide ! Oh, humbug Painter !"
I ejaculated when we reached Second Avenue and
its cool, well-lighted perspectives. The Painter
smiled.
"I faked you a bit of the East Side you writ-
ing fellows are always looking for. Now for
dinner."
We ate paprika-seasoned food to the clangour
19
dbyGoogle
THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE
of the usual gipsy band that never saw the
Hungarian Putzta. It was at one of the tinsel
Bohemias so plentifully scattered along the
avenue. I was better satisfied than earlier in
the evening, for I had proved that the old East
Side was fabulous. I said as much, and was
called ungrateful.
"Isn't it interesting, anyhow?" demanded in
unison Professor and Painter.
We were about to part at the corner of the
street. It was midnight. Suddenly a thin,
scared voice asked us to buy flowers. The girl
was small. She wore a huge shawl, and on her
head was a shapeless hat over which lolled queer
plants. But that shawl ! It was fit for her fat
grandmother and must have weighed heavily
upon her frail shoulders. Her features were not
easy to distinguish; her eyes seemed mere empty
sockets.
The Painter looked at her.
" What you got under that shawl?" he sharply
questioned.
The wretched child shifted her feet. "A pussy-
cat I found on Second Street, I'm taking it
home fer me sisters."
We bought her ridiculous flowers and she
disappeared.
"A regular Luks," I observed.
"A Luks all right, all right," cliimed in the
Painter.
We went home.
dbyGoogle
II
THE LUNGS
A BROAD chest usually means healthy lungs.
Now, Manhattan Island is notoriously narrow-
chested. Her scanty space across is not re-
deemed by greater length. Crowded with hu-
mans and their houses, there is consequently
little space for the expansion of her normal
breathing powers. Her lungs, i. e., her parks,
are contracted and not enough of them; there
never will be. But more than some people
think.
New Yorkers, even the most convinced cock-
neys, know little of their city, or of its lungs.
Not only provincial, but parochial, they are
only acquainted with the square or little park
that adorns — it's a poor park that doesn't
bring a sense of adorrunent — their native ward.
Imagine my amazement when I learned after
nearly thirty years' residence here that there
were one hundred and eighty-two parks in the
five boroughs. I read it in a newspaper and
couldn't understand why I hadn't discovered the
fact, for I've always been a rambler and my
happy hunting-ground usually has been the East
Side.
dbyGoOgle
THE LUNGS
However, seeing is believing, and last summer,
with my eyes made innocent by several years'
residence in Germany, Austria, Holland, Bel-
gium, France, and England, I determined to
verify certain vague suspicions that had been
assailing my consciousness: that perhaps New
York was not inferior in attractiveness to Lon-
don, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or Brussels. Per-
haps many who go down to the sea in steamers,
their pockets filled with letters of credit, might be
equally shocked when confronted by the sights
and sounds of Manhattan. Perhaps — ■ but let
us start on a little tour into intimate New York,
without a megaphone or a ready-made enthu-
siasm; above all, let us be meek and avoid
boastful rhetoric; also dodge statistics. Go to
the guide-books, thou sluggard, for the latter!
When a writer tackles such a big theme as
New York he as a rule fetches a deep breath
in the lower bay, steams as far as Staten Island,
and then lets loose the flood-gate of adjecrives.
How the city looks as you enter it is the con-
ventional point of attack. I am sorry to say
that whenever I have returned from Europe,
the first peep of lower Manhattan, with its
craggy battlements, its spires sphntering the
very firmament, and the horrid Statue of Lib-
erty, all these do so work on my spirit that I
feel Kke repining. Not because I am home
again — not, my friend, because the spectacle
is an uplifting one, but, shame that I must con-
fess the truth, because my return means back to
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
toil, back to the newspaper forge, there to re-
sume my old job of wordsmith. Why, the very
symbol of hberty, that stupid giant female, with
her illuminating torch, becomes a monster of
hated mien, her torch a ciub that ominously
threatens us: Get to work! Get to work!
Therefore I'll begin at Battery Park, leaving
the waterways, the arteries and veins of the
city, for a future disquisition.
The image stamped on my memory is the re-
verse of the immobile. A plastic picture. The
elevated roads debouching here are ugly, but
characteristic. I'm afraid I can't see in our
city anything downright ugly — ■ it is never an
absolute for me; as Dostoievsky said, there are
no ugly women. The elevated road structure
is hideous if aesthetically considered, and that is
precisely the way it should not be considered.
It rolls thousands daily to this end of the town;
they usually take the ferries or subways, a few
stroll under the scanty trees, or visit the Aqua-
rium, so we must be critically charitable, too.
Oh, how tired I am of being told that Jenny
Lind made her d^but in this same Castle Gar-
den, "presented" by the late Phineas T. Ear-
num ! Wasn't it a historical fort before it
became a hall of immigrants and the abode of
the fishes? This much may be said for the
latter — it is a real aquarium, and, excepting
the absence of an octopus or two, the collection
rivals those at Brighton, England (where there
are octopi); Naples, Hamburg, and elsewhere.
23
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
More exciting than the fish, the seal, or the por-
poises are the people. Thousands elbow through
the rather narrow aisles and stare as solemnly
at the finny inhabitants as they are stared at
in return. The sightseeing coaches give their
passengers a quarter of an hour's grace to "do"
the show, while ragged boys dance about them,
obsequiously pilot them, jnock them, quite after
the manner of the ra^ed boy on the Marina
at Naples.
A veritable boon is this open Battery Park
when the gang of wage-earners have fled the
lower reaches of the city, when the dishes have
been washed, when the janitors and caretakers
of the tall buildings bring their wives and chil-
dren to catch the breeze from the bay. On
moonlit nights there are few situations more ro-
mantic. Here is freedom for the eye, for the
lungs. There are not enough benches, but the
walking is good, and to stand on the edge of
the "wharf" and watch the bright eyes of fer-
ries, the blazing eyes of the Jersey and Brooklyn
shores, and the eyes of Staten Island as the un-
stable floor of the water mirrors (a cracked
mirror) the moonlight and distorts the tiny
flames about it, is to enjoy a spectacle fit for
men and women who are not afraid to love
their birthplace. I like it better when the
weather has a nipping freshness and the day is
grey-coloured and full of the noises of broken
waters, and the cry of birds.
The seamy side of Battery Park is the poor
24
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
castaway who has sought its coolness after a
hot day of panhandling. But — given a cer-
tain amount of leeway — ■ he is harmless. When
a woman, the case assumes the pathetic. Beg-
ging is semi secretly indulged in. You drop
your nickel and escape. If it be daytime you
make for South Street to pay that long-deferred
visit to Coenties Slip and Jcannctte Park.
Perhaps you have seen C. F. W. Mielatz's
coloured etching of the slip; if you have, the
optical repercussion will be all the stronger when
looking at the place itself. The iine old musty
flavour of the shp, the canal-boats near the little
Jeaimette Park — a backwater with its stranded
humanity stohdly waiting for something to turn
up — ■ and the lofty, lowering warehouses bring
memories of London docks; docks where slunk
Rogue Riderhood in search of rum after he had
landed his dead cargo; docks from which sailed,
still sail, wooden ships with real wooden masts,
canvas sails, and sailors of flesh and blood,
bound on some secret errand to southern seas
where under the large few stars they may mu-
tiny and cut the captain's throat; or else return
to live immortally in fascinating legends of Jo-
seph Conrad. I almost became sentimental over
Coenties Slip, probably because Mielatz had
etch.ed it, and also because I had been reading
Conrad. Art always reacts on nature, and the
reactions may be perfectly sincere.
However, I thought it time to ask a policeman
the direction of Corlears Park. He didn't know.
25
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
No one knew, until an old chap who smelt of
of fish and whisky said: "It's Cor-lears, you
want?" I had misplaced the accent, and the
ear of the average longshoreman in South Street
for quantity would please a college professor of
Greek.
I went my winding way, finally enlightened.
I like the London bobby, for he is obUging and
instructive, but I also like our policeman. He
is gruffer than his English contemporary — a
shy sort of gruffness. I found myseK at Canal
Street and the Bowery — I don't know why —
and_ was told to continue eastward. If I had
taken a Grand Street car to the ferry my journey
would have been simplified, but then I should
have missed East Broadway and a lot of sights,
of which more anon.
I dived into the east. It was a noisy, nar-
row lane rather than a street, and the inhabi-
tants, mostly babies, were sprawhng over the
sidewalks. Often I followed the line of the gut-
ter. Then I reached an open space and was
disappointed. It was Corlears Park, and the
absence of shade was painful. This lack of trees
is a fault to be found in the majority of mu-
nicipal parks and playgrounds. Night, if you
don't feel too scared or lonely, is the proper
time to enjoy the Hook. The view of the East
River is unimpeded. The water is crowded
with craft. A breeze always fans one. Women
and children, principally Italians and Jews, sit
or walk. Cats are friendly. So is the small
26
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
boy who knocks off your straw tile with his
stick. A venerable steamboat, rotting and dis-
mal, the reUc of a once proud excursion career,
is warped to the wharf. It has flowers on its
upper deck, and pale, sick people sit on the
lower. You are informed by the inevitable
busybody who traipses after strangers that the
old boat is now for tuberculosis patients, living
or dying, in the neighbourhood. What an end-
ing for man and machine ! Hecker's huge struc-
ture dominates the upper end of the park, as
does Hoe's building over in Grand Street. The
chief thing is the cleanliness and spaciousness.
The same may be found at Rutgers Park, but
without a water-front, always an added attrac-
tion.
Tompkins Square stirred memories. It lies
between Seventh and Tenth Streets and Ave-
nues A and B. When I first remember it, it was
also called the Weisse-Garten, and no foreign
nationality but German lived on its arid fringes.
The anarchists of those days gathered at Jus-
tus Schwab's, whose saloon was on First Street,
There I first became acquainted with Johann
Most, an intelligent and stubborn man, if ever
there was one, and other "reds," the majority of
them now dead. I remember, in 1887, the fu-
neral parade in commemoration of the anarchists
executed in Chicago because of the Haymarket
affair. A sombre procession of proletarians with
mufiled drums, black flags, and dense masses of
humans. I didn't go home that night. To my
27
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
surprise I found the old-fashioned bird store —
where they once sold folding bird-cages (col-
lapsible) - — in the same place, on Avenue A, near
Seventh Street. The park is mightily improved.
There are more trees, and also playgrounds for
boys and girls, a band-stand, and refreshment
pavihons.
I entered. On the benches I found "lobbies"
of old men, Germans, Israelites for the most
part. They were very old, very active, con-
tented, and loquacious. They settled at a
"sitzung" the affairs of the nation, keeping all
the while a sharp lookout on the antics of their
grandchildren, curly-haired, bright-eyed kiddies
who rolled on the grass. The boys and girls
literally made the welkin ring with their games,
in the enclosures. They seemed healthy and
happy. There are vice and poverty on the East
Side — and the West — but there are also youth
and decency and pride. I should say that
optimism was the rule. Naturally, in summer,
even poverty wears its rue with a difference, I
saw little save cheerfuhiess, and heard much
music-making by talented children. .
The Tenth Street side of Tompkins Square
reminds me of upper Stuyvesant Square. It is
positively well-to-do, many doctors and dentists
hanging out their shingles on the quaint, pleas-
ant-looking brick houses. A very old German
Lutheran meeting-house is at the comer of Ninth
Street and Avenue B, and one block lower is
St. Bridget's Church. Not afar is a synagogue
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
or "Shool," as they call it, and you may catch
a glimpse of the stately Church of the Holy
Redeemer on Third Street near Avenue A, with
its cartridge-shaped spire (easilyseen from Brook-
lyn Bridge), that suggests shooting the soul to
heaven if you are willing.
Time was when the Felsenkeller, at the foot
of Fifty-seventh Street, East River, was an agree-
able spot of summer nights. It was an open-air
cafe, and while sipping your beverage you could
watch the wheels of passing steamboats. It ex-
ists no longer. You must go up to East River
Park, at Eighty-sixth Street and the river, or to
Jefferson Park, opposite Ward's Island, to enjoy
the water. There are little grassy hills, with
rocks, at the former park that give you the illu-
sion of nature.
I can't say much in favor of Union Square
— now hopelessly encumbered with debris — ■
or of Gramercy Park, locked to the public (you
are permitted the barren enjoyment of gazing at
the bleak enclosure), or of Madison Square, with
its wonderful surroundings. These be places
familiar. Nor do I care to drag you over to
Hudson Park, on the West Side, to Abingdon
Square, to Chelsea, De Witt Clinton, Seward,
to other parks of another kind duplicated
everywhere, even to the scarcity of foliage and
benches. Mount Morris Park, at One Hundred
and Twenty-fourth Street and Madison Avenue,
was, a few decades ago, not so crowded as it is
to-day. The hegira up-town has made it as pop-
29
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
ulous as Tompkins Square. And not so pleasant.
A little cafe, with a back garden on the west
side of the square, was once a favourite resort
years ago. Schmierkase and pumpernickel, and
— Tempus fugit !
II
I positively refuse to sing the praises of Cen-
tral Park — which was laid out in 1857 (avaunt,
statistics !) — simply because that once haughty
and always artificial dame is fast becoming an
old lady in plain decadence. Who has not sung
her praises ! Hardly a park, rather a cluster of
graceful arboreal arabesques, which surprise and
charm, Central Park is, nevertheless, moribund,
and all the king's horses and all the king's jnen
can never set her up again in her former estate.
The city itself has assassinated her, not by official
neglect, but by the proximity of stone, steel, and
brick, which is slowly robbing her of her suste-
nance of earth, air, and moisture.
In the first flush of spring or a few early
summer days she wears her old smile of bright-
ness. How welcome the leafy arch of the Mall,
how impressive, how "European" the vista of
the Eethesda fountain, the terrace, and the lake;
how pleasing it is to sit under the arbour of the
Casino piazza and watch the golden girls and
slim gilt lads arrive in motor-cars!
Then the Ramble, or the numerous bypaths
that lead to the reservoir, or that give on the
bridle-paths, wherein joyous youth with grooms
30
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
flit by, or prosperous cits showing lean, crooked
shanks painfully bump on horses too wide for
them. Ah, yes ! Central Park will continue for
years to furnish amusement (if that wretched
Zoo were only banished to the Bronx !) and deep
breathing for the lucky rider who lives on its
borders. Also furnish fun for May parties, June
walks, and July depredations. It is a miracle
of landscape-gardening, notwithstanding its ab-
sence of monotony — it abounds in too many
twists and turns; it is seldom reposeful, because
broad meadows are absent. You can't do much
in decoration without flat surfaces. But what
mortal could accomplish Frederick Law Olmsted
and Calvert Vaux accomplished; the impend-
ing ruin is the result of pitiless natural causes.
I once said that one can't be a flaneur in a
city without trees. New York is almost tree-
less, and Central Park soon will be. When not
so long ago I saluted the Obelisk on the Thames
embankment, that antique and morose stylite
sent its regards to its brother in our Park.
Some day when the last Yankee (the breed is
rapidly running out) will look at the plans of
what was once Central Park, hanging in the
Metropolitan Museum, his eye will caress the
Obelisk across the way. That strange shaft
will endure when New York is become an abom-
ination and a desolation.
Arthur Brisbane's notion that the nasty little
lakes and water pools be drained and refilled
with sait water for bathing purposes is a capi-
31
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
tal one. Gone at a swoop malaria and evil
odours; gone, too, the mosquitoes which make
life miserable for nigh dwellers. But the park
is doomed; let us enjoy its ancient bravery while
we may.
I never skated at Van CorUandt Park, be-
cause I can't skate; but I love the spot, love
the old mansion and its relics, love the open
feeling about it. Atop of the highest part of
the island is Isham Park. To reach it get off
at the Two Hundred and Seventh Street Sub-
way station and walk westwardly up the hill, or
through Isham Street. On the brow is the little
park, looking up and down the Hudson and
across Spuyten Duyvil. A rare spot to watch
aeroplane races. Not far away is the Billings
castle, and across the Fort Washington Road
the studio and Gothic cloisters of the sculptor
George Grey Barnard.
Often have I enjoyed the Zoological Garden
in the Bronx, the Botanical Garden, and the
Bronx Park. Our Zoo is easily the largest and
most complete in the world. I've visited all
the European Zoos, from Amsterdam and Ham-
burg to Vienna and Budapest. As for the Bo-
tanical Garden, I have the famous botanist
Hugo de Vries of Amsterdam as a witness, who
told me he would be happy to live near it al-
ways. The Bronx River is an "intimate" creek
and malodorous, but do you remember what
cunning little French restaurants were in vogue
up there two or three decades ago? F. Hop-
32
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
kinson Smith celebrated one of them in a short
story. To-day they charge you more for wine
and cookery that are inferior to the old-time
estabKshments. Or has Time intervened with
its soft pedal on the gustatory sense? I don't
believe it. The enjoyment of the table is the
longest surviving of the sociable peccadillos, and
nothing can prove to me that either my Bur-
gundy or my Bordeaux palate has deteriorated.
But if I get on the subject of food we shall never
see Pelham Parkway.
I didn't drive the devil wagon, else I should
never have seen what I did — at least not in
such brief time and in such a pleasant way.
For ten hours my friend wheeled me up Tre-
mont Avenue, the Southern Boulevard — and
such boulevards ! — to Pelham Parkway, with
the park of one thousand seven hundred acres
and more (I read this in a guide-book) up from
the Harlem River, through magnificent shore
and country, the Sound in sight, and a general
sense of being in a primeval forest that had been
cultivated by super-apes. On grey days the
mist along the sedge grass of the water evokes
delightful melancholy. We whizzed through
towns I had heard of but never visited. Oh,
shame ! Think of Mount Vernon, Yonkers, Ir-
vington, and Tarrytown ! All new to this des-
perate cockney.
However, it was Pelham Bay that set me
shouting. There's a park for you ! The entire
. cityful could go out there, hold a cyclopean
S5
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
picnic, and have plenty of room to turn around
in. It is not Fatrmount Park, for that is the
largest in the East, but it's the nearest thing
to it. It is the combination of water and woods
that is attractive- The Philadelphia park has
the same, but on a vaster scale. Of European
parks I can recall none that approaches Pelham
— the BoboK Gardens and Cascine at Florence,
Hyde, Regent, St. James's, and other London
Parks, the Bois, Tuileries, and the Jardin d'Ac-
climatation, Paris, the Prater, Vienna (a lovely
spot), Charlottenburg Chaussee, Berlin — none
of these matches Pelham Parkway. The auto-
mobiles seem to eat space on the smooth road-
beds. When the projected Bronx Parkway is
an accomplished fact, the motorists ought to be
forever satisfied.
We crossed from the Sound over to the Hud-
son on excellent roads. I began to wonder why
any one could abide living in Gotham when
such a delectable land of milk and honey is so
near. I have noticed that when I ride in an-
other man's motor-car I feel optimistic and in-
clined to see the "slaves of toil" in a rosy mood.
And this mood was not banished by our arrival
at the Sleepy Hollow Club. From its terraced
lawns the Hudson may be viewed in all its maj-
esty. This former home of Elhott F. Shepard
is a palace, and, forgetting the joys and woes of
Corlears Hook and Tompkins Square, I trained
my eyes on the prospect. There is justice in
the boast that nowhere may be seen such an
34
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
extraordinary collocation of the grandiose and
the familiar in landscape and waterscape. The
Rhine is domestic, colloquial by comparison.
Down the Danube at the Iron Gates there is
some hint of the dazzling perspectives of Pali-
sades and Hudson, but there again the barbaric
note sounds too loud in the symphony of rugged
rocks and vegetation. And great Highland Park,
Bear's Nose, the new State Park, gift of Mrs.
Harriman — what a wealth of natural park
lands ! When the wicked blasters blast no
more, restrained from sinful destruction by the
law courts (when?), and there are better trav-
elling facilities, the Palisades side of the river
■will entertain thousands where to-day it hardly
counts its hundreds.
We flew along the riverside. I had renounced
all hope of seeing Jerome Park, St. Mary's,
Claremont, and Crotona Parks, or even the little
Poe Park at Fordham — we had passed High
Bridge, Fort Washington, and Macomb's Dam
Parks earlier — and farther down I had often
visited Morris Heights and Audubon Park, but
I was consoled by the sharp contrasts of the
shifting landscape. Of course, there was a
"panne" on upper Broadway, a burst tire, and
the ensuing boredom, but nothing lasts, even
impatience, and soon we were through Yonkers,
and then across the city line past Palisades Park,
with its lights, and, finally, on Riverside Drive,
surely vantage-ground from which the ravishing
spectacle of down-river may be enjoyed.
35
dbyGoogle
THE LUNGS
It would be unjust to pass City Hall and its
park, not because it allures — it does not— but
because City Hall is the priceless gem in our
architectural tiara. Buried as it is by the pat-
ronising bulk and height of its neighbours, it
more than holds its own in dignity, simplicity,
Eind pure hnear beauty — qualities conspicuous
by their absence in the adjacent parvenu
structures.
Nor must I miss Prospect Park, Brooklyn,
near enough to reach in a half-hour, and from
the grassy knolls of which the turrets and pin-
nacles of Manhattan may be seen. It is far
more captivating than Central Park, and the
Flatbush Avenue entrance reminds one of some
vast plaza in a European capital, upper Brus-
sels, for example. It is imposing wi^ its Mac-
Monnies monument, its spaciousness, and gen-
eral decorative effect — an effect enhanced by
the Italianate water-tower and the Museum far-
ther down, whose vast galleries house so httle
original art, with the exception of the Sargent
water-colours and former Chapman pictures. It
is only fair to add that Prospect Park began
with natural advantages superior to Central
Park, advantages made the most of. This park
really makes Brooklyn habitable and not merely
an interlude of bricks and mortar before achiev-
ing the seashore.
Well, we are not far from Battery Park,
whence we started. It is only a swallow's flight
this — for I could have dwelt on the special
36
d by Google
THE LUNGS
characteristics of each park, on the elevated
playgrounds at Williamsburg Bridge, on the va-
rious recreation piers — but celerity was my aim,
the impression as we skimmed; all the rest is
guide-book literature — as Paul Verlalne did not
say. I didn't start out to prove anything, yet
I think I have suggested that, despite its con-
tracted chest and waist, the lungs of Manhattan
are both vigorous and varied.
dbyGoOgle
Ill
THE WATERWAYS
Like the prudent elderly person I am, I ar-
rived at the boat only a half-hour ahead of time.
"Better never than early," I remarked — with a
certain waggish air ^ to the ticket-seller, a man
of informal manners, who dispensed with a
booth and disposed of pasteboards in the open.
This lent to the transaction an al fresco char-
acter that also smacked of adventure. What
an adventure !
I never mounted the gang-plank of an ocean-
going steamer with the same trepidation that I
crossed the deck of the little yacht on a sum-
mer afternoon at the Battery. For one thing I
was never, even during a mid-ocean storm, on
such a wabbly boat. Every wash from f
craft made it shake like a bowlful of jelly,
sensitive nautical organism. But I was not
afraid. It was just two o'clock, and two people
were on board. Fifteen minutes later there were
eleven first-class passengers, and at three o'clock
we received our full complement and lifted an-
chor for a long and perilous cruise up the East
River, through the Harlem, down the Hudson,
better known hereabout as the North River, and
then into snug harbour at the Battery.
38
d by Google
THE WATERWAYS
Verily, thrilling prospects and hairbreadth
'scapes were ahead of us, I looked at the
captain and crew; both seemed seaworthy. I
noted the megaphone of the "lecturer," noted
the position of the Ufe-preservers, hghted a
fresh cigar, and settled down in my uncomfor-
table seat to stare and stare and stare.
That fatally fascinating sky-line of lower
Manhattan again set me to wondering whether
it will ever assume the attribute of stability.
The changeless change of New York is dis-
couraging. The eternal characteristics of Lon-
don or Boston, Vienna or Philadelphia find no
counterpart in Gotham. It is but a few years
ago and the Singer Building dominated the view
from the Narrows; on the Jersey shore, with the
City Investing Building it assumed the shape
of some fantastic beast, all neck and head.
Now the denticulated battlements of the city
cower beneath the terrifying height of the Wool-
worth Tower. The Municipal Building bulks
largely, and already the new Equitable Build-
ing threatens to usurp the interest. The eye
is caressed by the graceful lines of the Bankers
Trust and that Titanic hghthouse on the Sea-
mans' Institute at South Street and Coenties
Slip serves as an admirable angle for the gaze
to rest upon before It embraces the wide stretch
of harbour.
For hours I could sit and compose and re-
compose — as the painters say — this extraor-
dinary jumble of architectural styles. In the
39
Hosted byGoOgle
THE WATERWAYS
terrific chorus of steel and stone and glass
every imaginable tune is chanted, from crazy
Renaissance to sombre, savage Gothic, from
perverted campaniles to drunken Baroque. The
architecture of New York ! It is a mad med-
ley of pepper-boxes perched on cigar boxes set
on end and pierced by sinister windows. In
twilit tunnels beautiful churches are lost like
stone needles in metallic haystacks. Consider
Trinity Church!
Vain ornamentation that recalls sugar-coated
cakes made for festive occasions finish off the
spires of bizarre structures which might illus-
trate an Arabian Nights tale. The top of the
Woolworth Tower — is that beautiful or trivial?
The peak of the Metropolitan Tower — is that
dignified or confectionery? And what of the
Municipal Building roof, where curious turrets
rob the tower of its meaning? There are no
gargoyles in our architecture; the entire struc-
ture is usually a gargoyle. But imposing !
Just then the voice through the megaphone
armounced that Governor's Island was near by,
and that the East River passage was about to
be achieved. Every one chewed gum, but lis-
tened respectfully. The Barge Office faded into
the middle distance, and a shght nostalgia over-
took me. Here we call it homesickness. Any-
how, it wasn't seasickness, for, while the boat
did rock in the wake of ferries and colliers, I
experienced httle discomfort. Possibly experi-
ence on the real ocean may have saved me, for,
40
dbyGoogle
THE WATERWAYS
joking aside, our two rivers can kick up a bob-
bery when wind and tide are ill-tempered. Our
mentor, who had the assured bearing of an actor
doubled by a diplomat, was a little given to
harping on the statuary of the Custom House.
We were under the Brooklyn Bridge before he
rather reluctantly let go the subject.
Hurrah ! I recognise my old acquaintance
Corlears Park, and the battered steamboat in
the offing. Around the Hook is Grand Street
Ferry, and its street vista. Under Manhattan
Bridge, under Williamsburg Bridge, we passed,
the navy yard to the right, with several war
vessels to be seen.
In summer-time the city might be described
as an island surrounded by bathing boys. I
never before knew how many contraband plunges
were enjoyed by these young rascals. They
shrieked at the yacht, and all the passengers
immediately became immersed in their maps.
Greenpoint with Newtown Creek did not
arouse enthusiasm. It looks just as it smells
— unpleasant. As we neared Blackwell's Is-
land and the bridge, our lecturer discoursed on
the punishment meted out to wrong-doers, and
did not fail to make facetious remarks. The
Island looks as neat as a new pin, a very agree-
able abode for a summer vacation. As usual,
in America all the good things are gobbled up
for the wicked. There are Ward's, Randall's,
and Blackwell's Islands wasted on the sick and
criminal. Why ?
41
dbyGoogle
THE WATERWAYS
Up the Seine the delightful lie de Puteaux is
given over to excursionists, as is our Glen Is-
land, Why must minor malefactors, insane,
and diseased humans be awarded the very pick
of locations in a fine river so near New York?
Couldn't they be handled just as we!! over in
the wilds of Long Island, where they wouldn't
damage the arid soil or hurt the monotonous
landscape? Some day law-abiding people may
come into their own, may enjoy our river fronts,
{of wretched wharfs) unequalled anjTirhere for
their views and size.
Opposite, on the city shore, we passed the
East River and Jefferson Parks. Both were
thronged, for, no matter how hot the day, some
breeze circulates at the river. Ward's Island re-
minded me of St. Petersburg, in the River Neva,
where is the charming island called Kamenoi
Ostrow, Anton Rubinstein liked it so well that
he composed one of his most popular and melo-
dious pianoforte pieces, giving it the above title.
But there are no champagne and pretty girls
on Ward's; no gipsy orchestras tear passion to
tatters as datk-haired beauties kick over the
windmill on Kamenoi Island. The Russians
know how to enjoy life, and their charity pa-
tients and prisoners are never on view — indeed,
are sometimes ominously absent from the map
of hfe.
Our guide pointed out the Old Ladies' Home
and quoted Meet Me at the Church. No one
smiled, for of all the solemn functions I ever
42
dbyGoogle
THE WATERWAYS
participated in this sightseeing trip was the most
solemn. The people were visitors from all parts
of the State and country. (I overheard invid-
ious criticism made by a man from I-os An-
geles.) The faculty of attention was in evi-
dence. No laughter, no skylarking, among the
young people; all was seriousness that must
have gratified the man with the megaphone.
They bought his book and post-cards, did those
excuraonists, and they bought often, for at
every twist of the river he had a fresh batch
to offer. The resources, oratorical and com-
mercial, of that man were astonishing, I
watched his face more than I did the scenery.
He was a comedian born, and with a less sedate
audience he would have made a hit. Toward
eve a resigned look stole over his expressive
features, but no complaint escaped his lips. He
was one of art's martyrs.
The stunted youth with the flat nose, curly
hair, and flow of humour was more of a favour-
ite. He sold opera-glasses, lemonade, tea, and
information generally. He assured one timid
old lady that with his binoculars she could see
the Vaterland coming up the bay (the big boat
arrived twenty-four hours later). She hired a
pair and looked longingly at the iron steamboats
en route to Coney Island. I admired that boy.
He would have cracked a Joke in the heart
of a whirlwind, such his residency of tempera-
ment.
The yacht no longer rocked. We had reached
43
dbyGoogle
THE WATERWAYS
the Harlem River, and somnolency reigned
aboard. We suffered from a surfeit. This in-
difference was difficult to arouse. The Harlem
water looked crowded after the East River,
The bridges piqued us: Willis Avenue, Second
Avenue, Third Avenue, New York Central,
Lenox Avenue, Central, Putnam, High, Wash-
ington, Kings, and the Spuyten Duyvil Bridges
— an array which excites your interest because
of the diversity. And also that huge railroad
bridge across to Long Island, and of the tubes
anchored in the stream that are to serve for a
subway under the river. Harlem is no longer a
suburb. Harlem is the city. The Speedway is
superb but solitary, A few Italians mending
the road, that's all.
Why does New York empty itself as soon as
the sun rides high in the heavens ? In London the
real season is in progress when the bad weather
begins. New York is seasonally the superior
of the English metropolis, notwithstanding its
occasional torrid heat and humidity. Yet none
but visitors fill our motors, sail our waters, or
walk our pavements. The resident has slipped
away to Newport, or is ambuscaded behind
the bUnds of his house, ashamed to be seen
during the dog-days. Well, he misses a lot.
While I don't altogether subscribe to the as-
sertion that our town is the coolest summer
resort in the land, nevertheless it is preferable
to any other large city that I know of; besides,
and this must not be overlooked, time need
44
dbyGoogle
THE WATERWAYS
never hang heavy on your hands; there is so
much to be seen that dull care is soon driven
away. Think of the dancers !
As we advanced through the canal — we had
duly admired the Jumel mansion, with the ad-
jacent pretty Roger Morris Park — the scenes
on either bank were mildly entertaining and
human — all too human, as Nietzsche puts it —
gangs of labourers, bathing youths, large, ag-
gressive boys, rude boys, and coloured; shanties
wherein candy and tobacco were sold; canal-
boats with the family wash on view, mansions
high in air set amid cool arbours, racing crews
in frail shells, defiant lads hurhng stones ~- and
all the meanness and misery of dirty shore
fronts encumbered with offal, garbage, barges
standing by, and the inevitable baseball game,
with its accompaniment of shouts and swear
words and whirling figures, could be seen.
It was a relief to near the Hudson, to gUde
through its backwaters and finally catch a
glimpse of its capacious bosom. The sensation
was akin to emerging from a long, sultry cor-
ridor into the open sea. Every one awoke — ■
that is, began to take notice. Professor Mega-
phone fairly trilled out his facts. No one cried,
"Thalatta! Thalattal" After all, your New
Yorker is an amphibious human. He is not
afraid of the wet, like the majority of our citi-
zens from across the briny. The salt and the
savour of the sea are for him a prime necessity.
He may not go to the beaches, he may live on
45
dbyGoOgle
THE WATERWAYS
Broadway as far down as Bowling Green, yet
never go across to Battery Park; but set him
in an inland town and he begins to growl.
That saline tang is lacking. He does not miss
the clatter and crash of the city as much as
the salty air, and when you remind him of this
he is quite surprised. He has never analyzed
his sensations.
The stagnant waters and stuffy atmosphere
of the river that makes New Yoric an island are
forgotten when the Hudson is reached, A dif-
ferent humour prevails. We listen to the vener-
able anecdote of Spuyten Duyvil and we crane
our necks to see Island Park, up at the end of
Washington Heights. The guide indicates the
Magdalen Home, and makes a few quips about
the naughty girls therein; this time prunes and
persimmons are writ large on every lip. I was
relieved when a drizzle began, I lent my um-
brella (did you see a large old party who didn't
carry an umbrella on a clear day?) to a lady
sitting next to me, and her husband held it;
thus was a good action rewarded, for I nestled
behind his wife and he kept the rain from her.
Nothing succeeds like selfishness.
However, it was not a landscape-blurring rain.
We easily saw the historic sites and experienced
a slight hunger and thirst when the French
restaurant on the Palisades side hove into view.
The megaphone had reached the premium-with-
every-pack-of-post- cards stage. He actually of-
fered free pictures of the great hners. And the
46
dbyGoogle
THE WATERWAYS
rain swept us fore and aft. The stanch little
craft dipped her short nose in the foaming bil-
lows, the pilot wiped the salt from his eyes, and
one of the crew appeared in "slops" and a sou'-
wester. Then I knew the captain feared the
weather. What he told me later was the truth
^ he hated the white, thick fog which threat-
ened farther down.
But the voice of the megaphone never faltered.
"Ahoy and Avast! This is the last chance to
buy at reduced rates views of the noble ocean
liners — the Lusitanla, Mauretania, Aquitania,
Vaterland." Few bought, for what with the
rough tide and the impending fog and the misty
wind, the passengers were too preoccupied. But
the hawker did not miss his chance: "Now,
then, the finest remedy for seasickness in the
world. A gift in every package." It was chew-
ing-gum.
Claremont was almost passed without com-
ment; luckily, the lecturer caught it with the
tail of his eye and we were told in moving ac-
cents of the tomb of the amiable child. It was
touching, say what you will; this melange of
premature death, chewing-gum, the odour of
wet mantles, the persuasive eloquence of the
speaker, the giggling under my umbrella — ■ my
umbrella, remember ! — of the married couple
(honeymoon ers, I'll wager) who were so incon-
siderate as to withdraw from my side to their
selfish selves and leave me in the zone of wet.
No wonder I felt like crying. I thought I did
47
dbyGoogle
THE WATERWAYS
for a moment, but it was only the rain. No
lighthouse was in sight. The storm howled.
We "peeked" at the cork buoys. The thrill
and thrall of shipwreck on a desert canal-boat
gripped our fancy.
We swept by that most inexpressive of na-
tional monuments, Grant's Tomb, and when we
arrived before the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monu-
ment, our cicerone spoke of the objection raised
by the neighbourhood when the view was ob-
structed. I confess I sympathised with the dis-
sidents. People, unless they are madly patriotic,
don't build mansions to face monuments, and
trippers. Everything in its place. As Ana-
charsis Cloots exclaimed several times during
the French Revolution: "I belong to the party
of indignation!"
When we neared the city we heard about a
famous divorce case that had stirred Riverside
Drive. Really, I never enjoyed such a blend-
ing of the instructive with picturesque contem-
poraneous scandal. The Hghts were showing
from PaUsades Park, and along the Drive innu-
merable windows were starry. The palace of
Charles M. Schwab once attained, we knew the
end approached; with Seventy-second Street
Riverside Drive finishes. The cars and tracks
that are occasionally concealed on the upper part
of the river are here displayed in all their ugli-
ness. Another cause for complaint, and a grave
one. Others have made it. I shan't. Our big
town is eminently commercial; the assthetic
dbyGoogle
THE WATERWAYS
question is an academic one. If ever New York
becomes the City Beautiful, it will be through
the operation of causes as yet in the womb of
time. Utihty first
And is there a more inviting combination of
sea and land anywhere? Not even Rio Janeiro.
The Hudson and the Palisades are as romantic
as the Rhine; romantic, but not as sentimental.
Manhattan Island, thanks to its facility for
egress and ingress, can lodge its millions in New
Jersey, or over on Long Island — not to men-
tion Staten Island, or up the State. Hasn't the
time arrived when the looks of things are as
important as the price of things, or even the
things themselves? (This is not meant to be
metaphysical. I don't mean Kant's Ding an
Sich.) When all the piers are steel or stone,
when, instead of huddled sheds and dirty wooden
docks, the eye will gratefully envisage wide
spaces and warehouses, when the shore railroad
will have been abolished, when cabbages are
kings (they are now; also trumps) and roasted
partridges fall from the firmament, oh ! what
a nice, nice city New York will be ! Spotless
Town and Phoebe Snow will be consumed with
envy, and you and I will be translated to an-
other and, let us hope, a better world. Selah !
The rain had ceased. We were dodging be-
tween hooting tugs and lighters. Ferry-boats
almost rammed our tender sides, a shaft of sun-
shine, hot and cross, pierced the clouds. The
fog vanished. There was the noise of whistles.
49
dbyGoogle
THE WATERWAYS
Then we saw the West Street Building, then the
Whitehall; soon we rounded the point. The
Aquarium was again in the foreground. It was
not yet dusk, but we felt the approach of night.
The boarders — I mean the passengers — no
doubt heard the horns of elfland (or supper)
blowing through their memory. And films for
the gods made by the eternal scene-shifter were
preparing for performance down the harbour.
A rosy light broke over Bayonne, the silhou-
ettes of those twin tall chimneys were like un-
sharpened lead pencils, and a summer sunset,
rich, golden, glowing, bathed "mast-hemmed
Mannahata," (Alas, Walt Whitman! it is now
nearly funnel-encircled.) We had seen the rim
of the island, and, even if superficially, the day
had proved pleasant. I could repeat the experi-
ment to-morrow with the same joy.
dbyGoogle
IV
THE MATRIX
During the cool, rainy streak of weather last
July I was in the mood statistical. I heartily
dislike figures, which are the most elastic and
plastic quantity when manipulated by clever
folk, and the most depressing of all combina-
tions is the dubious "science" of statistics, even
more than that "dismal science," socialism.
Nevertheless, I was "vastly intrigued," by
the statement that the Subway as it now stands
has a total length of twenty-one miles. Fabu-
lous ! And the enterprise is only in its infancy;
the entire island will be honeycombed by swiftly
running trains, and there is hope that the ugly
"L" roads will be removed and certain broad
avenues regain their inalienable but lapsed priv-
ileges of light and air — not to mention the ces-
sation of intolerable noise.
If you hear an "L" train starting or stopping
— especially in Brooklyn, where the flat wheel
is a cult with the E. R. T. —you are reminded
of a busy boiler-shop when a lot of orders have
come in for Dreadnoughts. The "L" roads are
a standing reproach to Greater New York.
SI
dbyGoOgle
THE MATRIX
It may sound childish, but it is the truth, I
confess that I feared to travel in the Subway till
a short time ago. I was in Paris some years
ago when a catastrophe, a fire, occurred, and
the horrors of that accident made me nervous.
The Underground in London is gloomy, the cars
not inviting — rather dirty, I should say — but
the idea of fire never haunts one en route. The
masonry is solid, and the dampness would
smother any conflagration. The Paris Metro-
politan is much more cheerful and better lighted.
The service, too, is excellent.
Berlin has only begun experimenting with
subways. There is virtually but one. It seems
miniature compared to the London or New
York subways. The cars are small and light-
running. The system is adapted to the shape
of the city. You can go from the neighbour-
hood of the Palace — it is only a few blocks
away — to Charlottenburg, with several loops
for other districts. The speed is not breakneck,
there are no expresses, and every car has a com-
partment for smokers — from which an over-
powering odour of bad tobacco is always present.
Our network is colossal in comparison.
The first day X cautiously went down the
steps of the Grand Central Station it would not
have been a difficult task to send me flying up-
stairs again. I wasn't exactly frightened, rather
nervous. The hustling crowd on the platform
didn't give me much chance for reflection, and
I entered the first train that I was shoved into
52
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
— the magnetism of the mob, as Le Bon would
say. I found myself skimming down-town and
on a local. It went fast enough for me then;
now I avoid locals as much as possible. Who
doesn't? Every station stopped at robs us of
our precious minutes, although when we arrive
at our destination we are apt to waste time
staring at a steeplejack, a street altercation, or
the baseball returns.
Many years ago I learned to discount the
hurry and flurry of New York. We are no
busier than Bridgeport or Jersey City, but we
pretend we are. It is necessary for our munic-
ipal vanity to squeeze and jam and rush and
crush. Another vital lie. The conformation
of the island has conditioned the transportation
problem (Ha! I told you I had been reading
the jargon of statistics), hence the "L" roads
and the Subway, The more the merrier, say
I. Anything that will relieve us of the shame-
ful huddling of humanity during the busy hours,
those hours that are a purgatory to decent men
and women. May their necessity vanish with
the passing of the "L" roads.
But I am not sticking to my story. To be
truthful, there isn't much to tell. For a few
minutes I was stunned by the roar, discon-
certed by the gale that blew backward through
the train, and held on to a strap as a sailor
hangs on to the main brace in a storm at sea.
(I hope it's the mam brace.) The roominess of
the car, the brilliancy of the lighting, and the
53
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
absorbed expression of the passengers grew upon
my consciousness. Though, so it seemed to me,
we were radng with death, no one suggested
that such an idea worried his skull. A Subway
crowd is typical of the town. Indifference is
one prime quaUty and chewing gum another.
Nearly every one chews, the men more volubly
— if I may so express myself — than the women.
The lantern-jawed Yankee type is again to
the fore. For a generation he had disappeared
from our streets, from our illustrations. He is
back, shrewd-faced, long upper lip, and sahent
cheek-bones. But he is the surviving remnant of
the once dominant American nation — ■ then a
compound of Irish, English, Scotch, with an
occasional modicum of German; to-day he is
on his last legs, fighting, though he hardly real-
izes it, against the mastery of the Slav and the
Italian. But who cares? We are as yet too
young a nation, still in too inchoate a state, to
worry about the infusion of more foreign blood.
If it is healthy, it is welcome. From the giant
amalgam something powerful must emerge even
if a sense of continuity is still lacking. But in
no American city is the cosmopoUtan orchestra-
tion so rich, so reverberant and complex.
But the national neurosis of gum chewing is
not a promising sign. Are we so nervous, so
lacking in self-control, as this St. Vitus's dance
of the jaws indicates? To watch human beings
feed is never an inspiring spectacle; but this arti-
ficial, self-induced labial pleasure — why should
54
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
it be intruded upon the eye of a neighbour?
Animals chew their cud; mankind should not.
jEsthetically it disfigures the profiles of pretty
girb. If they were only conscious of this ! I
have seen lovers fondly gazing in each other's
eyes, and chewing all the while. Even the police
chew. When the Woman Suffrage Party makes
a crusade against this minor sin of ill taste I'll
have some hope in its utility; this and our
vulgar ways of speech, enunciation, and pro-
nunciation are greater evils in the long run
than tobacco, alcohol, and racing. They debase
the social currency of life, and where there are
bad manners, bad morals are not far away.
The correction of these matters is primarily
the affair of the women. I really believe that
English is spoken nowhere so badly — alwaj^
excepting Cockney London — as in New York
City. Our public schools are the principal poi-
soners. Ride often in the Subway (on the "L"
roads foreigners predominate) and you will hear
our noble tongue abominably abused. It's not
the general slanginess, for slang has its uses,
but the disfiguring twang, the nasal intonation,
and the mispronunciation that offend the ear.
I had always fancied that only in Brooklyn you
heard "Brooklynese," that unpleasant flatten-
ing of the vowels, that depressing drawl. But
I did Brooklyn an injustice; to-day all New
York speaks in the same fashion. Not many
young men and women you meet are bom here,
and their provincial accent has clung to them.
55
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
I know the usual philistine will bob up after
reading this, crying aloud in righteous wrath:
Better our dear old American language with our
pure hearts than all the fancy speech of Eng-
lishmen ! But your hearts are no purer, my
misguided but patriotic person, than any other
nation's, and the most disagreeable English I
ever heard was from the hps of English country
people. Really, you can't understand some of
their dialects. I am complaining that, with
our common-school education, the best in the
world, the chiefest thing, our language, is so
badly spoken, the art of speech, plain and with-
out frills, the speech that differentiates man-
kind from the beast world. Chewing gum is a
vile habit; at least it keeps silent the raucous
New York voice; above all, the voice of the New
York woman. Riding in the noisy Subways
and gabbling doesn't improve the timbre of the
ladies' tone.
However, we are not given to such niceties
in the whirl of our daily life. We lack the
"faculty of attention," and we lack Sitzfieisch;
we can't sit still without twiddling our thumbs,
twitching our limbs, or working our jaws. We
are without repose, and, much as we may dis-
like the idea of military service, it turns out
well-behaved young men, not a mob of jumping-
jacks. Our indifference to the finer shades is
the result of our selfishness. It is not a ques-
tion of men treating women impolitely — though
it is exceptional — -but of man's impoliteness to
56
d by Google
THE MATRIX
man. Perhaps more subways will modify the
evil. By that time we shall have lost all our
manners,
I know it is the stereotyped thing to say that
New York crowds are good-natured. Good-
natured is hardly the word — timid, cringing,
cowardly are better words. An English or a
German or a French crowd wouldn't endure
for a minute the slights put upon our crowds
by impertinent petty officials. In no country
are personal rights less respected. I know the
Subway guards are much-suffering, and that as
a body they are superior to the " L " road guards,
who are duty as to attire and discourteous to a
degree. They tell me that the companies pay
starvation wages, but why should the public
suffer? I'll tell you why- — a whisper, mind
you ! — in Greater New York the public is a
flock of stupid sheep.
II
Pretty girls in our city ! Lots of them. In
the Subway at morn and eve you can count the
plain ones. These girls are of many nation-
alities. They all dress above their station, wear
clothes that are manifestly cheap, in imitation
of prevailing fashionable modes. When they
cease imitating there is no more hope of social
ambition and social ascension. We have no
peasant class in America, No self-respecting
woman will dress according to her "class" —
or her means, either — for she is ever hopeful
57
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
that her "class" will be a better one, or that
her daughters will marry "above" them. This
social hopefulness is nation-wide. It is our
Bovaryism, our vital lie. The ragpicker's grand-
daughter marries a duke; the son of a peddler
becomes a magnate in the financial world. No
other land affords such opportunities in mounting
the ladder of life; otherwise the million that an-
nually invade our shore would not be in evidence.
When immigration ceases it will mean that the
rats are leaving the sinking ship of state. But
I can't help wishing the foreign invasion would
go elsewhere. New York is full to the brim.
A few more plagues of locusts and the entire
land win be as bare as a bone.
Yes, pretty girls, a bit too rouged, too flimsily
attired, but ciean and self-respecting. The old-
time chloroUc American type is vanishing;
thanks to open-air exercise and increased physi-
cal and mental activities, our girls, native or
imported, are very vital. Foreigners, accus-
tomed to a more placid and conventional type
at home, find them irresistible, chewing-gum
and twang included. I find that the brunette,
the brown as well as black, is in the ascendant.
But there are blondes enough, and the blonde
is for the public the high-water mark of beauty.
The stage and the vaudeville prove this. Bigger
frames are to be seen than a decade ago; the
foreign-born women, however, are mostly under-
sized. On the avenues the shopping women are
alike; whether in Brooklyn or the Bronx, the
58
d by Google
THE MATRIX
huntress stalks her bargain game like her sister.
In the theatre or at home she is more human.
They say that only women buy and read
books, fill the opera-house and the theatre — also
the film shows. But does that account for the'
present condition of American culture? Is the
inside of her pretty head not as distinguished
as her gowns? Perish the thought! Let some
man more courageous than I answer that ques-
tion. Max Nordau did, but then the little Doc-
tor never lived in New York.
Emerson says that "steam is almost English."
Then electricity must be American, That po-
tentate who, fearing the thunderbolt, built him-
self a palace underground, and there was slain
by the lightning he had tried to evade, would
be distrusted if to-day he could revisit the
glimpses of the moon. In the bowels of New
York he might find immunity from the light-
ning stroke, but he would find there lightning,
though harnessed. What would the Subway
be without the electric "juice"? It wouldn't
be at all, for we could never have endured so
patiently the choking atmosphere of the Under-
ground before Theodore Dreiser's hero, the
Titan, gave London electricity instead of steam
and smoke.
I am old enough and sentimental enough to
miss the locomotive, which man built as an
image of himself — puffing, hissing, shrill, and
stubborn, and fast-running. A locomotive is
very human, not specifically English, as Emer-
59
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
son said. It breathes, it is alive, whereas the
electric motor, while more subtle, is also more
treacherous. Less noisy, it is less sociable and
never greedily consumes coal lumps as does
the hungry locomotive. Ruskin loathed steam.
Would he have loved electricity? I doubt it.
Overhead the electric motor is as noisy as a
launch without a muffler. Even in the air man
must chatter.
One day I conceived the bold notion of going
under the North River by the tubes. I had
made the trip to Brooklyn via the tunnel and
lived to tell the tale. But New Jersey was a
different matter. It was practically foreign
soil and farther away. I went from Cortlandt
Street, and was disappointed when I got to Jer-
sey City so soon. That spot, like Long Island
City, is not to be tarried in. Oblivious of the
fact that I could have taken the elevator to the
street surface, I toiled up a twisting staircase,
as fine a place for sandbagging, garotting, and
highway robbery as I ever saw outside of an
engraving by the fantastic Piranesi. The day
was a rainy one. The lights were dim, the steps
many. I was both grateful and disheartened
when I reached the open. Why Jersey City?
" Vous I'avez voulu, George Dandin," as the say-
ing is in the old Moliere comedy. I had disem-
barked at Jersey City when I wanted to go to
Hoboken. The matter was soon readjusted.
I asked the advice of the elevator man and he
pointed out a ferry-house. But I didn't care
60
dbyGoOgle
THE MATRIX
to return to my native land. Then he sug-
gested, go down-stairs and take the train to
Hoboken, How simple it all sounded. I got
into the right car — it goes no farther, I was told
— and came up near the Hamburg-American
docks; farther up fluttered the flag of the
North German Lloyd, and the surroundings
looked pleasantly famihar.
By some psychic process of reasoning, which
only Hugo Miinsterberg could explain, the
thought of Hoboken, the sight of "Hapag,"
made me aware of Meyer's and Naegeh's ho-
tels on another street. Auto-suggestion? Tour-
ists who are unhappy enough to stay overnight
in Hoboken during the mosquito season never
miss Meyer's hospitable garden, where the cool
brew flows. Not to stop there, if only for a
drink, is to nuss one of the delights of foreign
travel. I wasn't dreaming of sailing to Europe,
yet did I hurry over to Meyer's later and rested
my fatigued organs. Also moistened them as
I read Jugend and other publications.
I returned by another tube; tfiis time I came
out at Foiurteenth Street. The cars are the most
spacious, clean, and comfortable of all the sub-
ways. I paid five cents from the Terminal Build-
ing to Jersey City, paid five cents to New York.
But why did I have to pay an extra two cents
at Fourteenth or Twenty-third or Thirty-third
Street? Is this one more McAdoo about noth-
ing? What joy to stamp one's native asphalt !
I celebrated by riding down to Herrvater Luchow
6i
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
and bored him with the redtal of my adventure.
I noted, in the Hudson tunnels, that I did not
suffer from the oppression I always experience
crossing under the East River. In the Penn-
sylvania tunnels the pressure at the temples is
also severe. The air is closer than in the Sub-
way tubes.
A mania for movement, a wanderlust seized
mc after the New Jersey trip. I went to the
Bronx via the turmel, I went to Two Hundred
and Forty-second Street and Broadway. It is
a pity that the Subway is not altogether an
elevated road in those remote parts. The views
are wonderful. It was Ernest Lawson who dis-
covered, artistically speaking, the Harlem River
and the unknown reaches of the Bronx. His
gorgeously rich palette comes happily into play,
for there may be seen tender, pigeon-blue skies,
splendid, thoughtful trees, capricious, tumbled
rocks, and gleaming waterways. His best
themes are found near the Harlem River.
For the Bronx X have a weakness, especially
the park and the Zoo. When I had ridden in
every subway — also in the new Chambers
Street to Myrtle Avenue and Ridgewood branch,
which crosses the Williamsburg Bridge — I
hunted up the Belmont tubes and the old Stein-
way turmel. Really, the police of New York
are obliging men. At the Queensboro Bridge,
Fifty-ninth Street, a sandy-haired officer broke
the news to me as gently as if I had been a rela-
tive. No, the Belmont tubes at East Forty-
62
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
second Street were not yet visible, nor the Stein-
way tunnel. I saw that he looked at me
curiously. I must have seemed a greenhorn.
"If you want to go to Long Island City," he
added, "and I don't see why any one should want
to go there" — he paused and I abetted his sly-
dog humour with vacant laughter — "just cross
the ferry." In thanking him I explained that
my mistake had arisen because once in the de-
parted old Grand Union Cafe I had jumped at a
severe blast under the hotel. "Oh, that's noth-
ing," said Simeon Ford to me; "that's the way
they send passengers to Astoria." And I had
believed him, in the innocence of my metro-
politan heart. The sandy-haired one smUed,
He knew Simeon.
Then I took to the bridges and ferries. I
went to Staten Island and wasn't sorry; crossed
to Jersey by several routes and was. The old
ferries at Wall, Grand, and Forty-second Streets
at first proved picturesque, and soon palled.
Brooklyn Bridge, after all, more beautiful than
her three asters (bridge is feminine, isn't it?),
the most graceful suspension bridge in the world,
is become too familiar. We cross it, and seldom
afoot, thus missing that magnificent panorama
of architecture, bay, islands, and distant Jersey
shore. Besides, its Brookljoi side lacks the
dignity and space of the Flatbush Avenue ap-
proach to Manhattan Bridge. That, indeed, is
most impressive. On Sunday mornings the
Jewish market is one of the sights of the town,
6i
d by Google
THE MATRIX
I like the Williamsburg Bridge, with its long
perspective of Delancey Street, now giving us a
European vista, and its big playground atop.
The view is puzzling. You look for the two
adjacent bridges and your glance collides with
the sugar-refinery across the river, which at this
part is all askew. You must twist your head to
see the other bridges. Returning, you note the
Queensboro Bridge, and decide to visit it. It is
a strange structure and a cantaiever; as it is,
I feel safer on BrookljTi Bridge. The best part
of the Queensboro is just over Blackwell's Island.
There is material for observation that takes
days to exhaust. The various bridges spanning
the Harlem become more attractive the farther
one goes westward. Several are excellent for
suicidal purposes. They all look like Ernest
Lawsons, so strangely does nature pattern after
art. As for the possible bridges to cross the
lordly Hudson, I hope never to see them. As
a spectacle those waters need no bridging. Tun-
nels are always more expeditious. Doubtless
some day both rivers will make of Greater New
York greatest New York, for they will be solidly
bridged; anyhow, the East River. So mote it
be!
m
New York, intimately seen in the summer,
its family wash on the line, all its linen not spot-
less^ah, the lure of the hanging gardens ! — ^make
us forget Babylon, and its millions are as ghosts.
64
d by Google
THE MATRIX
I said something of the sort to the man with
the megaphone — the dry-land Don Quixote
who whispers information atop of one of the
sightseeing coaches. His answer was charac-
teristic: "If I never saw Babylon again I
shouldn't be sorry. What with hanging on a
bumping coach, talldng through my hat, and
dodging banana peels and dead cats on Riving-
ton Street, I yearn for the old farm at La Man-
cha." He was playing up to me, for he knew
I had compared him to the Knight of the Rue-
ful Countenance, So the Don let me see that
he was famihar with the topography of a Span-
ish city. He also said Dukinea and Rozinante
with clear, firm articulation. Evidently a man
of superior parts. Needless to add, that Sancho
Panza was the chauffeur.
But unless you only care to scratch the sur-
face, those sightseeing tours are far from satis-
factory, though excellent experience for a bud-
ding novelist. Naturally Chinatown is only a
sham and the much-vaunted Bowery a bore.
On a warm afternoon the up-town ride along
Riverside Drive — barring the ducking of tree
branches — is agreeable; but going southward
you are bumped on the abominable Broadway
with its rude wooden roadway, and to see only
the basements of high buildings is not exactly
seeing them from afar. Besides, you are stared
at, sometimes jeered. The offensive "Hay-
seed!" is flung at you, and you really must be
alert on some of the crowded East Side streets
65
d by Google
THE MATRIX
to avoid rotten fruit meant for your head by
some malicious youngster.
I fancy the idea of the coach doesn't please
many people in that district. It seems an im-
pertinent intrusion, and then there is always
the chance of an accident. The chauffeur is
cautious, Don Quixote diplomatic. Neverthe-
less I held my breath several times near Mul-
berry Bend; children there are as plentiful as
that fruit in season, and they are both careless
and reckless. We were held up by a street-car
(there is still one in operation) on a particularly
narrow street. A well-dressed man, an artisan
or a barber, cursed us: "You rich think you can
come down here and kill our children!" he
cried in excellent English, shaking his fist all
the while. His hands, I noted, were clean,
Don Quixote shook his head mournfully.
"Rich?" he muttered. "Rich?" we echoed.
There wasn't a man in the excursion who didn't
carry a cheap silver watch. We were glad to
start. That accusation was too much for our
bank-accounts. We blushed at the very im-
putation of wealth,
I'm sure I shall be accused of inconsistency
when I say I'm not shamed by the East Side. I
know that the poverty there is appalhng, that
people are packed as in a pickle jar, that crime
and disease stalk in company with hunger and
dirt, yet these horrible conditions are not on view
for the casual spectator. I never had the cour-
age to explore one of the old-fashioned crowded
66
dbyGoOgle
THE MATRIX
tenement-houses. If he has been in London he
knows that the East End is the last word in
revolting conditions. Or Paris, or the Berlin
North Side, or the Ghetto in Vienna. Over
some of these places is written: "AH hope aban-
don ye who enter here!" None of these spots
is as cheerful, as clean, or as prosperous as the
East Side of New York. It is more crowded
than it was ten years ago, and more attractive.
Take Rivington, or Hester, or Essex/or any street
in the network of that congested district, and
while you make slow progress through the mob
of children, women, peddlers' carts, vegetable
and iish shops, men and babies, this crowd
doesn't seem in the last gasp of poverty. It is
noisy, dirty, chattering, chaffering, and good-
tempered. It is the air of New York, that
electric ozone which makes for optimism.
Where there is so much smoke there is sure
to be fire; and the fire is the money spent on
food and fruit and at the "movies." The smell
of fish is never absent. As for the types, they
are marked. The old division of Little Italy,
New Jerusalem, Bohemia, Germany, Servia,
Greece, and other nationalities no longer holds.
The Jews are everywhere; so are the Italians
and Czechs. Some predominate in certain
quarters; for example, you will find many Bo-
hemians along First Avenue, Avenue A, and
Avenue B above Fifty-ninth Street; Italians
still congregate about the Bend, and there are
many Poles hard by Tompkins Square.
67
d by Google
THE MATRIX
If I had a friend who was desirous of seeing
certain parts of southeastern European cities — ■
of Lemberg, where cluster Galician Jews; of
Vienna, Prague, St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Cra-
cow, even of Berlin and Naples — I would invite
him for a week's cruise on our East Side. There
is no necessity of going across the water to hear
foreign tongues, see odd costumes or study
strange physiognomies. They are all on view
day and night in New Yorlc, the only New Cos-
mopolis on the globe. Every nation is repre-
sented; each has its cafe, its newspaper, its
church, its theatre. Optimism rules the roast.
The "unwritten law" over there is: Crescite et
multiplicamini ! Maternity hospitals are every-
where, so are baby carriages. This huge ant-
hill is the matrix of New York, its nursery, its
refutation of race suicide.
If you cross Canal Street eastward from
TMrd Avenue you will emerge in Rutgers Square
and East Broadway. The entire district might
be called a show-place, not as an evil example,
but as a normal East Side neighbourhood. With
a schoolhouse, a pubhc hbraiy, a park, and a
big newspaper oiKce, this square is typically
civihsed. Free from dirt, full of busy, bustling
humanity and contented, romping children, for
me it is representative of present conditions in
the life of the New York poor. Not that these
people consider themselves the poorest — they
do not; but they are not rich, though some are
fairly well to do.
68
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
At Maisel's bookstore on East Grand Street
you will find the best literature of the world;
indeed, more good literature than you can find
at similar establishments farther west. The
East Side is an omnivorous reader. Stupendous
is the amount of books studied and digested;
books of solid worth, not "best sellers" or other
flimflam alleged "literature." As a nation we
are becoming as superficial in our reading as
we are in our taste for the theatre. Our native
theatre has nearly touched low-water mark, and
the film theatre^ that twin brother to dime
novels — is only a degree lower; stupidity and
vulgarity in two instead of three dimensions.
You would smile if I told you that there is not
much drinking in this quarter; they are not
addicted to alcohol and they do love sweetmeats.
I can count the places on the East Side where
good Pilsner is on tap. The Russians, Poles,
Ruthenians, Greeks, and Servians are not beer
drinkers, though the Bohemians are. As a mat-
ter of record there is less drunkenness in New
York than in, say, Glasgow — that is in propor-
tion to their respective populations. London
is infinitely more intemperate.
I went through Broome Street and saw its
solitary tree — it is there yet, near Attorney
Street, or some such street. I thought of the
Ancient Mariner when I saw that tree, lonely
but tough-minded, as William James would have
said.
Two decades ago Mr. Howells wrote that if
69
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
any American novelist struck a note as pro-
foundly tragic as Dostoievsky it would be false
to our social conditions. But since then the
temperament of the country has changed, owing
to immigration. There is tragic chaos and the
hurly-burly of the deracinated about us.
It would demand the resources of a Dos-
toievsky to paint our East Side in all its exotic,
variegated, and bewildering colours. No genius
of less calibre than that of Fyodor Mihailo-
vitch's could essay the giant task. Where is
he? Here is the raw, rich material for the
great American novel. But where is the novel-
ist ? Let roe suggest that only an American of
Celtic brilliancy, Teutonic profundity, English
intellectuahty, French art, and the ideaJism of
the Slavic Hebrew could compass the theme.
In Europe there is room for race prejudice,
but not in America, Here it is self-stultifying,
self-contradicting, and utterly abhorrent to
democratic principles. We freed the black race,
we must free ourselves of all race prejudice.
We need the Jewish blood as spiritual leaven;
the race is art-loving and will prove a barrier
to the rapidly growing wave of fanatical puri-
tanism. Nevertheless, at the expense of seem-
ing inconsistent, let me suggest that one of the
burdens of Ufe would be lightened if our passen-
ger transportation system were otherwise. The
greedy and not too tidy bandits who run the
wretched public automobiles are only the ser-
vants of their employers. But these miserably
70
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
kept machines are too high-priced for the masses.
In Subway and surface, on "L" cars the people
you meet are not always cleant some because
o£ ingrained hatred of bathing; others, decent
working men who can't help themselves, I've
frequently seen them embarrassed when they
crowded against well-dressed ladies. What do
you expect for a nickel? But if they did as
they so sensibly do in Europe — have two or
three classes at a slight increase of fare — we
could snap our fingers at the hired automobile
tyrants.
Theoretically, we all love our fellow man; but
you like him better if he is clean, don't you? I
do. And now, don't imagine this suggestion
is a covert attack on our immortal principle of
equality. It is not. The motor-cars might be
judged from the same standpoint. I can't
afford a motor-car, but I could scrape together
ten cents for a seat in a clean, sweet-smelling car,
where the filthiest sort of humans would not
sprawl over me. One man is as good as an-
other — politically; but if a man won't wash,
that is the objection to his presence. But what
Mayor, what Board of Aldermen wouldn't veto
a bill to have separate cars ! Class against mass
would be the slogan, when the only issue in ques-
tion is soap versus dirt.
I know I'm voicing the opinion of a civilised
minority. But there, again, come into play the
timid tactics of our local sheepfold. At first
jeered, these separate cars would become a
71
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
necessity, like the ten-cent stages on Fifth Ave-
nue, Has anybody denounced as "enemies of
the people" these coaches? No, because the
"people" ride in them and like them. Until
New York follows London, Paris, and Berlin
and maintains an efficient and cheap taxicab
service we must clamour for the next best thing
— ten-cent surface and Subway cars. They
would soon pay. But I suppose the great god
Graft must be appeased by the usual burnt-
offerings and what we demand must be de-
ferred to the Greek Kalends. AvosI
New York has been called a calamity, a
freight yard, a boiler-shop, an open trench, a
mining gulch — with its manners and tastes;
in reality it is the most aggressively noisy dty
on earth. Mostly unnecessary noise. It was
Schopenhauer, annoyed by the whip-cracking
of Frankfort carters, who denounced noise as
a prime enemy of the intellect, denounced as
ladling in finer sensibility a nation or city that
endured noise. In our town he would have gone
mad. And Kttle rehef in sight for us.
As to the increasing horrors of ugly loft build-
ing in the very centre of the residential section,
that is a subject for sorrow to old New Yorkers,
No law can keep off these pernicious flocks of
locusts who ruin, aesthetically speaking, where-
ever they ahght. Entire Manhattan Island will
in not so many years become a vulgar Tophet
of industriaUsm. I doubt if even the present
rush to Long Island by manufacturers will long
72
dbyGoogle
THE MATRIX
avert the time when belching chimneys will be
so closely built as to swap smoke, and the nar-
row streets crowded with chaffering strangers,
Ichabod !
But I'm tiring you with all this futile talk, and
I'm tired myself of the East Side. When I left
the book-shop I went over to the Vienna CafS on
Broadway, a sort of alimentary modulation
from east to west, and as I crossed Second Ave-
nue at Tenth Street I saw the coach with Don
Quixote on the sidestep, the machine quietly
resting, the passengers as solemn as owls. The
megaphone man sardonically smiled at me as he
dusted from his coat some yellow particles:
" The highly civilised East Side ! I got this dose
of insect-powder on Essex Street." After all,
it depends on the point of view, doesn't it?
"Badi to La Mancha !" I called out. In reply
he waved his long ironic hand. He looked more
like Henry Irving than ever as the coach slowly
went northward. "Ladies and gentlemen this
was once the famous Boulevard Caf6," I over-
heard, as the rubberneck wagon faded from view
up the avenue.
dbyGoOgle
V
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
I
The mighty maw of New York ! Even Zola
might have handled the Brobdingnagian theme
inadequately. The avalanche of food that is
swallowed in twenty-four hours and the river
of liquid that disappears down parched gullets
on this island — decidedly, several Zolas would
have their hands full in dealing with the story.
Statisticians give you rows of figures, but to
interpret the huge crude symbol is another
matter. You remember how Zola treated in
Le Ventre de Paris (The Stomach of Paris) his
Cheese Symphony ! Truly a Rabelaisian per-
formance.
But New York is double the size of the Paris
of those days {1873), and instead of one na-
tional cuisine it boasts half a hundred, I am
at the outset trying to show the magnitude of
the task, a task I decline to undertake. But I
may succeed, after a fashion, in indicating the
resources of a city wherein even Pantagruel
could line his monstrous paunch and slake his
magnificent thirst.
74
dbyGoogle
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
With the possible exception of London, there
is no place like New York for versatility in eat-
ing and drinking. Nearly all cuisines are repre-
sented. You can eat kosher or munch birds'-
nests in the Chinese style; while French, Rus-
sian, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Hun-
garian, Polish, Austrian, Turkish, Syrian, Ru-
manian, Greek, Portuguese, Cuban, Mexican,
Liberian — why drag out the list? — are to be
found; everything from everywhere may be had
in our city — everything but fried oysters as they
cook them in Philadelphia. And that important
fact will be clearly set forth during the course of
this solemn sermon on gluttony.
It is only natural when a man's hair begins
to thin and he has gout in the gums that he
sadly turns to the "pleasures" of memory, a
bitter-sweet game, the shadow of a vanished
substance (this is a Celtic bull, but it is what I
mean), and one which always sets the teeth on
edge. Just why the man of the "lonesome
latter years" should recall the feastings of his
youth, I leave to psychologists.
He may have written at least one sonnet or
story, he may have painted a row of brilliant
portraits or landscapes, yet set him down before
a fire and straightway he faUs to musing about
the girls of yesteryear or that particular night
when the wine-cup was not red, but champagne-
coloured. Or Finelli's fried oysters. Or the
terrapin of Augustin (both in Philadelphia), Or
the salads and burgundies at Delmonico's. Or
75
dbyGoogle
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
— and this happens, too — the taste of those
oysters eaten fresh from the shell at a cart-tail
coram publico, say, on Fulton Street three dec-
ades ago. The miserable sinner should be
thinking of his soul and lo ! his belly is still his
god — that is not in reality, for he is a dyspeptic
and almost toothless, and Uncle Uric a daily
visitor, so it needs must be only memory images,
and poor entertainment such recollections usually
are. Mother Church, who has minutely cata-
logued every nuance of transgression, calls such
a perverse mental operation "morose delecta-
tion."
But it is not of such sour stuff that my dreams
are made. Contrariwise, I recall with intense
amusement the New York restaurants and cafes
of a quarter of a century ago. Were they any
better then than now? is the inevitable ques-
tion.
The answer is that we were younger then, our
appetites and teeth unafraid; nevertheless, there
are many changes and not all for the better.
The young folk nowadays are not epicures.
Wine palates they have not; cocktails and the
common consumption of spirits have banished
all sense of taste values. They are in too much
of a hurry to dance or to ride, to sit long at
table and dine with discrimination.
The number of cheap, quick-fire food hells is
appalling. One understands during the mid-
day rush that a glass of milk and a slice of pie
suffice, but when the day's toil is over and the
76
d by Google
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
upper town achieved, then we expect leisure
and elegance, taste in the evening menu. They
are seldom to be found. Noisy bands of music-
makers, ill-cooked food and hastily gobbled,
shrieking instead of conversation, and then —
dancing. This is the order of the evenuig.
The theatre is rapidly disappearing, I mean the
real theatre, and only in a few choice spots is
the cult and ritual of dining observed and per-
formed.
However, these few do exist, and there you
will find the remnant of a once-powerful con-
gregation, members of the Church of the Holy
Epicure. But they are doomed. Eating and
drinking are rapidly entering the category of
the lost fine arts. Bolting, guzzling, gum chew-
ing, and film pictures have driven them away.
Some day, say hopeful prophets, they will
return- I doubt it. Our age is too material-
istic. The noble ideals of the gourmets are
forgotten, and, as Matthew Arnold would ask
— in the eloquent phrases — shghtly altered —
of Maurice de Gu6rin: "The jealous gods have
buried somewhere proofs of the origins of all
good things to eat, but upon the shores of what
ocean have they rolled the stone that hides
them, O Macareus?"
When I first drifted into town from Paris,
about iS86,Iwas taken by the late Hugh Craig, a
cultivated literary man — the genre still existed
in those days — to the cafe of "Billy" Moulds,
in University Place, a centre for actors, writers,
77
dbyGoogle
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
artists, musicians, as well as business and pro-
fessional men. There I met the poet Francis
Saltus, truly a brilliant raconteur ; there I ate - —
on olT days, financially speaking ■ — the magical
decoction of the Moulds chef, a bean soup with-
out compare. And free ! There I met about
all the friends I now possess.
I have seen editors of trade weeklies, who
abused each other with a vituperation that was
vitriolic, forget the ardours of inky bottles and
drink harmoniously. Such was the atmosphere
of the estabhshment — also the persuasive per-
sonality of Mr. Moulds. I once watched the
famous Wagnerian tenor, Albert Niemann, swal-
lowing cocktails from a beer-glass. He "lived
to tel! the tale" the next night as Siegmund at
the opera.
While I was faithful to this first hospitable
house I soon found mettle more to my taste in
and around Union Square. Opposite Steinway
Hall, then the very hub of musical New York
and America, were Lienau's and Maurer's, and,
best of all, there was a certain place presided
over by a blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked young Ger-
man, whose amiability was proverbial, whose
beer was perfection. Need I add that the
elect saluted him as "Gus," or that to-day he
is August Liichow, millionaire importer and,
despite a few ounces extra of flesh, the same hos-
pitable soul he ever was.
At Lienau's there gathered such people as
WilUam Steinway, then a power in the political
dbyGoogle
THE MAW or THE MONSTER
and musical world, the Anton Seidls, Theodore
Thomas, Wilhelmj, Mr. and Mrs. C. F. Tretbar,
the Nahum Stetsons, Scharwenka, Joseffy, Lilli
Lehmann, Frank Van der Stucken, the Victor
Herberts, Constantine von Sternberg, Rosenthal,
Max Heinrich, Mr. and Mrs. Von Inten^ — the
very cream of the musical aristocracy. If you
tired of Lienau's — ■ with the celebrated fat bar-
man "Schorch," you could go over to Bru-
bacher's or the Hotel Hungaria. And then there
was "Andy" Dam, host at the Union Square
Hotel, or Webber's wine-house in Third Avenue.
A genuine atmosphere of Teutonic "Gemuth-
lichkeit" existed in those times that are no more.
The German theatres throve, both at the
Thalia in the Bowery and Amberg's in Irving
Place — afterward Conried's, now Rudolph
Christian's, The old-fashioned German lager-
beer saloon was still to be found, comfortable
havens with sand on the floor, pinochle on the
table, and even a pure brew. Do you recall
Eckstein's, Grambow's— he was in East Tenth
Street then — "Peter," in University Place;
"Pat" Schmenger, Theiss, Hubel, Goerwitz —
now Allaire's — Oscar Pusch ^ afterward Louis
Singer — Greitner, with the high-tenor voice;
Koster & Bial's, Mock's in Forty-second Street,
and Terrace Garden when Michael Heumann
was in charge? Or the old Moiiico!
Some of these places still exist, but there is
one tliat does not. Where Proctor's Theatre
now stands in East Fifty-eighth Street was a
79
dbyGoogle
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
small brewery operated by Peter Euckel. Big
trees pierced the floors of the piazza, and under
them you could sit and enjoy yourself; oppo-
site was Terrace Garden — it is still the same
old Terrace Garden — always filled with people.
The street then reminded me of a street in
Vienna.
The old Cafe Boulevard was worth while in
the beginning, before it became a fashionable
" slumming" attraction, and the old Fleischmann
Vienna Caf^, next to Grace Church, was a centre
for Conductor Anton Seidl, Antonin Dvorak, the
Bohemian composer — I am forced to explain
who these celebrated musicians are, for the horde
of philistines that invade our city know nothing
of art, little of manners, but much of money-
getting — and many visiting virtuosi; the excel-
lent coffee was the magnet.
Where is the Grapevine? Where is the spirit
of Philip Brod? Instead one may go to Jans-
sen's Hofbraii on Broadway or to Sokol Hall on
the upper East Side, or to Kaspar's old place
for Pilsner; or, best of all, to Dr. Knirini of san-
itarium fame in Pearl Street, where your thirst
is studied and prescribed for and where you get
beer at a healthy temperature, not forgetting
the privilege of capital conversation with the
worthy doctor.
I have a friend who devised on paper a Pils-
ner route thirty years ago, starting from the
Widow's in AtlanUc Avenue, Brooklyn, and
ending at the West End in One Hundred and
dbyGoogle
,THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
Twenty-fifth Street. There were not so many
of these hfe-saving stations then as now, but
then: paucity wet your expectation, not to say
your whistle.
Another peculiarity of the long ago was the
morning "bracer." Fancy champagne cock-
tails, a drink of doubtful virtue, consumed by
the young bloods and old bucks. To-day it
would be considered criminal to drink cham-
pagne at 9 A. M. But they did it, those copper-
lined stomachs. Now at the worst they con-
sume beer — a wise change. Men seemed more
vigorous to us then, and seem more fidgety and
nervous in this year of grace. Perhaps it is an
illusion.
There is not so much drunkenness in public
or private to-day; social opinion is hostile to it.
The phenomenal "tanks" of the eighties have
disappeared, dead or converted. I remember
at the Everett House, since demolished, an old
codger, rich enough to own a carryall, in which
day by day he transported his thirst from tavern
to tavern, winding up at the Everett, A quaint,
venerable party, indeed, who grunted, rather
than spoke. What an existence — riding from
"jag to jag" and growing in wickedness with
the years! A character for a novehst, his.
The more aristocratic never went to ordinary
bars, but to the bar of the Fifth Avenue Hotel
or the Hoffman House or the old Brunswick or
the Victoria, where notabifities, chiefly political,
were as cheap as nuts. We went to the St.
dbyGoogle
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
James when Dorval was there, or to Reisen-
weber's at the Circle when genial John was all
over his establishment. Really, personality
coimted then. Now you rush in as you would
to a drug store, gulp and away. For little cafes
like Philip Brod's, near the New York Athletic
Club, the personality of the host was its main-
stay. Think of the old Arena when William
Muschenheim was on deck. What a joyful
spot it was! Probably one of the reasons that
"Jack's" (John Dunstan's) cafS is liked so much
is the promenading between tables nightly of its
stately host. Personality still counts in an age
of "canned music" and automatic lunch taverns.
However, no one need suffer for a drink in New
York, despite the puritanical antics of the pro-
hibitionists (for revenue).
II
By a decided negative must be answered the
question: Are the chop-houses as good as of
yore? (Have you ever noticed when people
begin to talk of English cookery they say " yore "
or "anent," as they say "oui" at Mouquin's, or
"ausgezeichnet" at Liichow's?) No, they are
not, and you may point out a lot of places and
I'll say: These are gorgeous establishments, but
where are the fat English mutton-chops, the
musty old a!e, and, don't let us forget it, the
peaceful atmosphere?
At Browne's, then in a side street off Broad-
82
dbyGoogle
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
way, you were at your ease. In Adam Engel's
it was the same. Or at the Studio in Sixth
Avenue, or Stewart's, or Wallace's, Martin's, or
numerous places in the lower part of the town
whose very names I've forgotten. And where has
gone Parker's, which stood in Sixth Avenue near
Thirty-fourth Street? In Fourth Avenue, at
Twenty-first Street, was a chop-house kept by
a German named Eschbach. It was small, but
delightful. There, once upon a time, I listened
an entire evening to the muted conversation of
Rudyard Kipling, who was piloted to the house
by his brother-in-law, Wolcott Balestier. Here
assembled nightly actors, mostly from the
Lyceum Theatre, in the palmy days of Daniel
Frohman, and there came the prince of talkers,
Maurice Barrymore.
I was sorry to see Eschbach's go, though I 've
no doubt "Jack's," Healey's, Browne's — now in
Broadway — ■ are just as good. But I'm not as
good, and that is the pith of all rambling mem-
ories by old blades with a grudge against pres-
ent conditions. (Grouch is a more fashionable
word.) You would if you could, but you can't !
Anyhow, in my prime — and I'm not yet pre-
cisely tottering — they didn't call a Welsh rabbit
a "rarebit." (That's a knockout for pot-house
esthetics !)
One oyster house at least shows but little
change, except in its increased clientele. I
mean Dorlon's. I think there was a Dorlon's
down-town somewhere. Fulton Market, wasn't
83
d by Google
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
it ? I only frequented the Madison Square res-
taurant with the oyster clock outside. What
jokes have been made by men (a trifle how come
ye so!) about that clock. "I was up to 'V
minutes past '0,'" cries one chap, and is con-
Noilsed at his own nimble wit, Alas ! the pathos
of distant humour. Silsbe's is still in existence
in Brooklyn, near John Ryan's famous Pilsner
station (wireless).
Do they still eat macaroni and consume
Chianti in New York? If they do, show me a
Moretti — like the old Moretti in Fourteenth
and in Twenty-first Streets — a Martinelli (in
Fifth Avenue), a Solari — in University Place- —
a Riccadonna in Union Square, or even a
Pedro's, in Centre Street. The truth is that
there are hundreds of Itahan restaurants where
the spaghetti and the wine (Californian) are as
good as at Moretti's. Ah ! but the old man
could cook. Those veal-chops, the spaghetti,
rich and abundant, and the oily salad ! Excla-
mation-points fail to express the gustatory sen-
sations at Moretti's. Another restaurant where
personality was a heavy asset.
At Pedro's, down-town, discovered by news-
paper men, the surroundings were simple to the
point of dusty napkins and faded wall-paper, but
all was forgiven because of the flavour. Now
we eat to the accompaniment of delirious tango
music, pay tips to greedy Greeks, and go to bed
hungry for a savoury dish.
Cockroach Hall, so nicknamed, was farther
dbyGoogle
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
up-town, and it was well patronised till the ru-
mour got out that cockroaches were seen float-
ing in the soup a menestrone. After that I went
over to Maria del Prato's in West Twelfth
Street, where "Mickey Finn" threw bread at
you and you liked the poetic attention. (Maria
retired in affluent circumstances and was last
seen by Vance Thompson in Venice, healthy
and homesick for Gotham.)
Both the Mouquins' restaurants, up and down
town, are about the same as they ever were.
But a pure French cuisine in New York is not
possible. The "custom of the country" inter-
venes, meaning the palate, and imperceptibly a
chef adapts himself to his environment. Never-
theless we have here a true cosmopolitan cuisine,
from green corn to caviare, from snails to clams.
In the old days you singled out certain restau-
rants for certain dishes. At Sieghortner's, in
Lafayette Place (now Street), or at Heim's, in
Twenty-seventh Street (near the old Browne
chop-house), you were served with German
dishes of the rarest, also the most expensive.
Liichow's, where delicacies gathered from the
four quarters of the globe may be had, has not a
cheap tariff; indeed, it is a costly one, but the
two Germans I mention were very dear for those
days.
One item was the Rhine and Moselle wine —
the best bouquets, together with imported hare
— a luxury then — and Canada mutton — an-
other luxury, but not now — and you paid a
85
dbyGoogle
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
pretty reckoning. I recall Theodore Thomas,
the great conductor, and his concert-master,
Max Bendix, as frequent visitors at Heim's.
(Thomas was an epicure; Seidl ate what was set
before him, but craved strong black Havanas.)
At the Sinclair House, also a memory, you
ordered "angels on horseback" — in other words,
fish-cakes with poached eggs atop. Its tomato
soup was capital. The old Astor House had
its "specialties," as had Smith & McNeil's,
now vanished; as had Lyons's, on the Bowery —
they gave you better beefsteak than you could
get in a restaurant of a higher class. Oyster-
patties were better made, and raw oysters at
ten cents a dozen (no napkins) seemed celestial.
And the hot-corn Mammy, with her turban
and far, clear cry at midnight {in Third Avenue,
too) "Hot corn! Hot corn!" Cobweb Hall is
still in existence, though I believe the old pro-
prietor is dead. Even the salt was saltier, and
the butter more buttery than the sandy substi-
tute and oleomargarine in contemporary usage.
What's become of the little withered ItaUan
who sold matches from Fourteenth to Forty-
second Streets every night, with his comical
farewell: "Gooda nighta, Boss"? There be
men still living and in full possession of their
strength who not ordy frequented Andy Horn's
at the Bridge (there was only one bridge in
those remote days), and also "Doc" Perry's
drug store, there to absorb editorial culture and
" reportorial " quinine (sHghtly disguised). Of
dbyGoogle
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
course, they were newspaper men, not journal-
ists, of whom the late "Joe" Howard always
said; "It's the money of newspaper men that
pays the funeral expenses of journahsts."
HI
The Grand Union Hotel, which is no longer
on the map of life, was for years my pet hostelry
— was truly a landmark, and Simeon Ford and
Samuel Shaw national figures.
The "holy of hoHes" in my time was Del-
monico's. To-day it has a hundred rivals. Nev-
ertheless it remains Delmonico's, the unique.
Sherry's is very attractive — the name is an
aperitive ■ — and such gorgeous hostleries as the
Gotham and the St, Reg^s have menus to match.
But being a democratic person, I prefer down-
town Haan's, Bustanoby's, the Brevoort, or the
Lafayette — the oldest and the best of Martin's
restaurants. I never cared for his Delmonico
undertaking; it was neither good Martin nor
real Delmonico. At Shanley's — the original
Shanley's was on Broadway below Thirtieth
Street — Rector's, Churchill's, or the cafes of
the Plaza, Savoy, Netherland, Biltmore, Vander-
bilt, or Ritz you can order what you wish and
get it. I find little change in the Savoy Cafe,
and I am stiU fond of the al fresco character of
down-town Delmonico's, in Beaver Street.
On that street there are two or three Italian
and French restaurants — "Frank's," for in-
87
d by Google
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
stance — which for wine, cuisine, and service
have no superior up-town. Then there is An-
gelo's in Pearl Street, and Farrish's chop-house
in John Street. When James Ereslin conducted
the Gilsey House it was a hotel of the first mag-
nitude. And there are Billy the oysterman's,
Pontin's in Franklin Street, and other resorts
still in existence.
As for eating around and about New York,
the road-houses are legion since the advent of
the motor-car, and they have hurt the business
of the New York restaurants. Over on Long
Island, up in Connecticut, down on Staten
Island, you are royally fed at royal prices.
You can stop in Central Park at the Caano
(Dorval) or at McGown's Pass Tavern, and
then make a dash for Claremont, the most
picturesquely situated of aU the river houses.
There is the Abbey, or Ben Riley's — which
evokes the old Arrow-head Inn, Saratoga L^e
— or some pleasant French cafes on both sides
of the Hudson. The old Hudson Inn farther
down Fifth Avenue still holds the fort as a sol-
itary survival. But when in pursuit of the
Amlaer Witch out of town, I don't waste time
at any of the beaches — where they torture
beer into the semblance of discoloured ice-water
— nor do I go up the river, but simply get on
the Brighton Hne, dismount at Consumers' Park,
don't even look at the ball game at Ebbets Field,
and march into Fred Winter's garden, where
the herculean proprietor — he is a prize-winning
dbyGoogle
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
athlete — holds gentle sway, where the view of
either Prospect Park or the Brooklyn Institute
consoles the eye, and where — but why con-
tinue? The crickets are booming in Flatbush,
the hunters are up at Sheepshead Bay, God's
in his heaven and all's well with Tammany.
This mixture of Walt Whitman, good old Sir
Thomas Browne, Robert Browning, and Plato
(all Tammany braves are Platonists) must be
set down to the heady nature of my discourse.
But the greater the truth the greater the car-
icature.
I promised as a sort of a coda to tell you of
the absence in New York of the fried oyster.
Your cockney-bred New Yorker looks askance
at you if you mention fried oysters. No won-
der. The leaden, lumpy, greasy, tasteless wad
of flabby batter and hard, shrivelled oyster that
masks in Manhattan as a fried oyster is enough
to revolt the maw of a Patagonian.
I well remember Charles Delmonico telling
me years ago, and with a gesture of despair,
that he had sent a chef to Finelli's in Philadel-
phia; that said chef, a man of imagination and
technique, ate himself bilious at Finelli's trying
to solve the secret of the magical batter; that
he returned home with this secret — olive-oil,
the pan spluttering red-hot, and the oysters
quickly dropped in and harpooned at once —
and the first day he served the oysters at the
Broadway restaurant he lost his job. He had
absolutely failed,
dbyGoOgle
THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
But, strange to relate, in Philadelphia there
were others besides Finelii who knew how to
serve a fried oyster so that it tasted like a cross
between a poem and a croquette. Both Phil-
adelphia and Baltimore are renowned for their
terrapin, red snapper, ducks, pepper-pot, deviled
crabs, lobsters, and oysters — better oysters
than Cape May coves, about the middle of Sep-
tember, there are nowhere. McGowan's, in
Sansom Street in Philadelphia, can give you
the best of terrapin and fried oysters, and even
in Finelli's time there was a certain "Billy"
Van Hook, who was celebrated for his fried oys-
ters — his wife really cooked them. (Here is a
potent reason why woman should have the vote.)
She is still alive at her restaurant on Library
Street, where the oysters are as poetic as ever.
But New York never imported the dish; in
fact, I don't mind confessing that in the matter
of sea food and its preparation New York still
lags in the rear of Baltimore and Philadelphia.
However, on this rather pessimistic note I
shan't end; after all, sea food is not the only
reason for a good kitchen. The maw of New
York is the most capacious in the world, and
it is also the best-filled.
dbyGoogle
VI
THE NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND
EYES
I
In New York "the night hath a thousand
eyes." That is why all cats are not grey by
night. The Great White Way, pleasure-ground
of the world, is the incandescent oven of the
metropolis, and under its fierce glare all fchnes
appear alike. But grey, never.
The sad-coloured procession that slowly moves
through Piccadilly, the merry crush of the Fried-
richstrasse, and the gayer swirl on the Grand
Boulevard are not so cosmopolitan as Broad-
way on a summer's night. Every nationahty
swells the stream of petticoats; "As the lill
that runs from Bulicame to be portioned out
among the sinful women," sang Dante, and one
exclaims: Lo ! this is the city of Dis, when in the
maelstrom of faces; faces blanched by regret,
sunned by crime, beaming with sin; faces rusted
by vain virtue, wan, weary faces, and the tri-
umphant regard of them that are loved. You
think of Bill Sykes and his cry of terror: "The
eyes, the eyesl"
91
dbyGdogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
The city has begun its nocturnal carnival,
and like all organised orgies the spectacle is of
a consuming melancholy. No need to moralise;
cause and effect speak with an appalling clarity-
Through this tohubohu of noise a sinister med-
ley of farce and flame, the Will-to-Enjoy, winds
like a stream of red-hot resistless lava. In de-
scribing it your pen makes melodramatic twists
or else hops deliriously.
The day birds have gone to bed, the night
fowl are afield. The owl is a denizen of the dark
and Minerva's counsel, for all that wisdom is
not in the air. Even veritable cats as they
slink or race across the highway are bathed in
the blaze of a New York night with its thousands
of eyes. No, all cats are not grey by night in
Gotham.
But from the heights, what a different pic-
ture ! Then the magic of the city begins to
operate; that missing soul of New York shyly
peeps forth in the nocturnal transfiguration.
Not, however, in Broadway, with its thousand
lies and lights, not in opera-houses, theatres,
restaurants, or roof-gardens, but on some perch
of vantage from which the scene in all its mys-
terious beauty may be studied. You see a
cluster of lights on the West Side Circle, a lad-
der of fire the pivot. Farther down, theatreland
dazzles with its tongues of flame. Across in
the cool shadows are the level lines of twinkling
points of the bridges. There is always the
sense of waters not afar.
92
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
All the hotels, from the Majestic to the Plaza,
from the Biltmore to the Vanderbilt, are tier
upon tier starry with illumination. Beyond the
coppery gleam of the great erect synagogue in
Fiftii Avenue is the placid toy lake in the park.
Fifth and Madison Avenues are lon_g shafts of
bluish-white electric globes. The monoliths
bum to a fire-god, votive offerings. The park,
as if Uquefi.ed, flows in plastic rhythms, a lake
of velvety foliage, a mezzotint of dark green
dividing the east from the west. The dim,
scattered plains of granite housetops are like a
fcemetery of titans. At night New York loses
its New World aspect. Sudden furnace fires
from taU chimneys leap from the Brooklyn or
New Jersey shores; they are of purely commer-
cial origin, yet you look for Whistler's rockets.
Battery Park and the bay are positively operatic,
the setting for some thrilling fairy spectacle. A
lyric moonhght paves a path of tremulous sil-
ver along the water. From Momingside Drive
you gaze across a sunken coimtry of myriad
lamps; on Riverside the panorama exalts. We
are in a city exotic, semibarbaric, the fantasy
of an Eastern sorcerer mad enough to evoke
from immemorial seas a lost Atlantis.
Below in the theatres are the moving pic-
tures, those tantalising ocular spasms, or op-
tical shadow for dramatic substance. Let us go
to one of these mute entertainments (barring the
clattering orchestra), and to the best, "Cabiria,"
manufactured by a man of genius, Gabriele
93
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
d'Anuunzio, out of shreds and patches and frag-
ments from Flaubert's "Salammbo," "TheLast
Days of Pompeii," "Samson and Delilah," and
a dozen dime novels; a monstrous olla podrida
of incidents, a jumble of movements, all without
sense or relevance, nevertheless so filled with
action that the eye is rapt by the sheer velocity
of the film. No story can ever be definitely re-
lated, for the essence of photography is the
arrest of motion, and despite the ingenious mim-
icry of movement, there is no narration, only
poses.
The very faults of photography are exag-
gerated; the figures in the foreground are giant-
like, in the middle distance or distant perspec-
tive they are those of pygmies, so that in a room
a woman's figure at the edge of the picture sug-
gests a giantess, while her maid, supposed to
be a few feet away, is a miniature. And then
the wavering, swimming, flickering of sharp
points of light — the eye is more fatigued than
at a dramatic performance. Why music if the
films suffice? The truth is that the moving
pictures are a remarkable mechanical device,
but never for a moment can be considered in
the category of art.
Those mountains belching sparks and fire are
sensational, but not artistic pictures; panto-
mimes with tableaux is a better description.
One scene had an element of vraisemblance ;
it depicted a sweeping foreground, such as
Daubigny was fond of in his rare, larger can-
94
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
vases; a troop of savage horsemen appear on
the ridge of the hill, silhouettes in strong relief
against a clear sky. If these figures hadn't
cavorted down the slope, the picture would
have been an impressive one, but the move-
ment, paradoxical as it may seem, killed the
illusion.
Great art can suggest the rhythm of mul-
titude on a flat surface, but the pubhc, like
Mr. Crummies, demands its real pump. The
swimming episode with the splashing water is
"real" enough, but there is no art in it. I mean
no illusion. Those Salammb6 tableaux in tem-
ples, particularly the scaling of the citadel —
Spendius, you may remember in Flaubert's im-
mortal romance, got into Carthage with the
barbarian chief Matho by way of the aqueducts
— are duly exciting; but one phase of Flaubert
and the picture lives, isn't a shaky simulacrum. ■
When it was all over, when the last strident
blast of the brass, the last howl of the chorus, and
and the last absurd printed "plot" on the cur-
tain had ceased, I felt as if I had been at a ban-
quet where the food and drink were whisked off
the table before I could touch them.
Of what mental and emotional calibre are
the audiences that frequent such shows? The
world has been seized by a craze for them.
They demand the minimum of thought from
their spectators — who, incidentally, chew gum
— and give to the eye the maximum of sensa-
tion. The attitude is purely receptive. You
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
watch untouched by emotion the most "thrill-
ing" spectacles and hairbreadth escapes. Any-
thing hke simphcity is a bore.
I've tried to sit through so-called plays; I've
heard certain film actors and actresses — God
save the mark! — called "great," and their
gestures gave me the same impression one gets
before a cageful of monkeys. Only the mon-
keys are more amusing.
This shadowland is never dramatic, never
poetically suggestive, never human. The ab-
sence of the human voice, a marvellous instru-
ment that bridges the space between us and our
neighbour, is depressing, as depressing as the
enforced silence in a hospital ward. The sub-
stitute, usually vulgar, noisy music, is an im-
pertinence, A diversion for children, an aid to
science, an entertainment for deaf-mutes, but
not an art for intelligent people.
What has become of our taste these latter
years? "Carmed" .music, mechanical pianos,
moving pictures, dancing, these be thy gods,
PhoUstia !
I suppose the time predicted by H. G. Wells
is at hand, a time when reading shall have van-
ished, and with it the other arts; huge gramo-
phones will furnish the public its news and
bring to the parlour the muse of the mud gutter
^- and hterature — and the moving pictures
will be so extraordinary that all the world will
be a fihn. Truly, a millennium of vulgarity and
intellectual darkness, the glorious results of uni-
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
versal education! The second coming of the
Huns and Tartars of ignorance is overwhelm-
ing us.
n
Years ago I wrote a story of a musical com-
poser whose advent sets singing and dancing
the entire world, so potent is the appeal of his
rhythmic and magical art. In Italy his progress
was that of a trailing comet. The feminine
madness first manifested itself there and swept
the countryside with epidemical fury. Wher-
ever he played the dancing mania set in and the
soldiery could not put it down by force of arms.
Nietzsche's dancing philosopher, Zarathustra,
was incarnated in lUowski's compositions. Like
the nervous obsessions of mediaeval times, this
music set howling, leaping, and writhing volatile
Italians, until it began to assume the propor-
tions of a new evangel, a hysterical hallucina-
tion that bade defiance to law, doctors, even the
decencies of life.
For women his music was the moth's desire.
Wherever he went were women ■ — women and
children. Old legends of the ancient gods were
revived. The great god Pan was said to be
abroad. Rustling in the night air set blushing
young folk. Like a torrid simoon, an emotional
renascence traversed Europe. The fountains of
the great deeps of democracy were breaking up.
Music was become ruler and the world and his
wife danced on the pinions of song. Likewise
97
Hosted byGoOgle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
on their heads and heels. The very earth was
shaken at its axis. The dance was triumphant.
Well, some such fantastical nonsense I wrote,
but after I laid down Rupert Hughes's brilliant
book, What Will People Say? I realised the seri-
ousness of the present situation. But Tango,
instead of my Russian composer, Illowski, is
king.
I determined to investigate. I haunted roof-
gardens (so-called, though some of them are
subterranean), I jostled the common people, my
own kind, in nickel dance pavilions; on glassy
floors I saw with wide-open eyes couples ill-
assorted but whirling, and amid tropical shrub-
bery on sultry m'ghts I sweated for my sins, that
I might satisfy the meanest of all venial vices,
curiosity.
I became a regular Paul Pry. I edged my
way through panting humans to catch some
gleam in their fever-sunken eyes which would
betray the psychology of their obsession. I went
to palm gardens and cabarets, I saw people Hft-
ing their legs at ice-cream dancing "parlours";
Sunday-school dancing did not scandalise me,
for I rem.embered that David danced before the
ark (or was it Noah? I know that Noah, too,
had his ark) ; and at a church picnic the dominie
danced, and there were film pictures.
At the Astor, the Vanderbilt, atop of the
Strand, in the Biltmore, at the Jardin de Danse,
the McAlpin, the New Amsterdam, at the Ritz,
at Rector's, on Madison Square Tower, at a
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
half-hundred other places I sought and did not
find. The novel I mention had inflamed my
imagination as the dancing had evidently in-
flamed the imagination of its author. But Mr.
Hughes was luckier than I.
This is what 1 saw everywhere — a composite
picture. Let .me select the Biltmore, whose
floor next to the roof, with its approaches, de-
serves the appellation palatial. A vast dinner
salle, an oblong dancing floor, the general scheme
of decoration a muddle of Japanese and various
discordant elements, a high estrade in which a
weary orchestra always played in one tonality,
the placid key of F; towering above was a tall
statue of Neptune, hence the title of the floor,
"Les Cascades." Why Neptune and his trident
(he looked hke Bernard Shaw fresh from the
bath) in a dancing salon I can't say.
A water-god, his presence had a decidedly
temperate effect — I saw Uttle if any drinking.
The Herr Oberkellner seemed shocked when I
asked for plain hops. I argued with him that
in the entire room there wasn't any one drink-
ing champagne.
"Ah, non!" he replied, "the war, you know!"
"It's Neptune, you mean," I retorted. Then
the band began to play, and in the tepid key
of F I forgot the beverage, my eyes agog.
Ah ! where was the orgastic fury, where the
exotic abandon of these dancers? No spoor of
deUrium, and absolutely nothing bacchanalian.
Intoxicated by the ice-water that they so reck-
99
Hosted byGoOgle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
lessly absorbed, I saw middle-aged, bald business
men with their mature partners (their wives, of
coursej your "Go up, thou baldhead!" doesn't
dance with maturity unless it is a matrimomal
obHgation), slide and slip and twist and twirl in
such a decorous fashion that I shuddered.
I remember that when I arrived in Paris for
the first time — it was October, 1878 — the
Jardin MabiUe did not dose its doors till later.
I have participated in the Bal Bullier on the
"other side of the river," and I knew Mont-
martre when it was Montmartre and not a Pari-
sian Chautauqua, I've seen all the cancans
worth mentioning — rather, xinmentionable —
and while I did not expect in our staid Quakerish
old New York any such license, I did yearn for
a little more animation. Why, it was a Brook-
lyn sociable on a larger scale !
Occasionally a little pot-bellied fellow tried
to clutch his massive partner, but in vain. It
was a living picture of the old woodcut by
Rowlandson, "Thou art so near and yet so
far," in sober terms. The portentous gravity
of the entire function impressed me. Perhaps
these very middle-class- appearing persons were
overcome by the magnificence of their surround-
ings; perhaps the jarring decoration oppressed
them, or it may have been the Turkish-bath
atmosphere. I was afraid to ask the head
waiter, for I saw that I was under the ban.
The key of F, damnable iteration, struck up a
valse rhythm, and then the dancers, one and all,
100
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
essayed a two-step. The cross rhythms, so
piquant in Chopin's A flat valse, were translated
from the psychical to the physical plane, and
fearing for my morals I sneaked away, won-
dering if there were such dances as the Tango,
Maxixe, or Gummy Grip, the Lame Duck, Fox
Trot, or Honey Bug — perhaps I should say.
Bunny Hug. After pa"ying my bill at the hat-
check department I found I had just enough
money left to go home, and home I went. I had
eaten my peck of dirt that day, and I should
have been satisfied. But I was not.
The next night found me on the roof of the
New Amsterdam, said to be the true home of
twinkling heels. Also the spot favoured by the
Mayor and his official family; ours is a dancing
administration. Anything Ziegfeldian ought to
be edifying, and I found myself between two
musical fires — an orchestra of coloured men and
a band of Spanish-looking gents who plucked
guitars, or balalaikas, and made music of a more
exotic but less rhythmic character than their
dark-skinned rivals.
These rival organisations hammered away at
one another, and there was some zest in their
performance. The dancers, too, displayed fire.
But the men, the men, why will they dance?
Good and bad, they aU look so stupid in their
dinner jackets (a costume devised for waiters),
their legs like stovepipes, their thick-soled shoes
clumping about. Even if a woman is clumsy,
her drapery attenuates her lack of grace. In
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
costume a man is barely endurable as a dancer
— say in the opera or Russian ballet — but in
our ugly daily dress he is simply absurd.
There were several young chaps who danced
lightly enough, but grace they knew not. The
girls made a more pleasing impresaon. They
exhibited all the new steps, most of them idiotic
in their simian distortion of natural rhythms,
and they gyrated with a certain degree of reck-
lessness. But at Steeplechase the dancing is
heartier, more clever, and at any negro ball the
coloured lassies outpoint their white sisters in
elasticity, in swaying rhythms, and diabolic
abandon. Compared with the dancing I saw
at Madrid and Seville of Spanish gipsies, some-
times on table tops, all that I've witnessed thus
far in New York is tame and so respectable.
Did you ever watch a Polish woman dance
the Mazourka? Or a Hungarian the Czardas
— I don't mean the mock-turtle paprika of our
dance palaces? These so-called "fashionable"
fakers who wriggle to the admiration of a heavy-
footed crowd are caricatures. The dance is not
in their nerves, it's in their pocketbooks. I
understand the success of the moving pictures
— it's a lot of gaudy nonsense for Uttle money,
but the meaning of the dancing mania has taken
me much time to solve. An excellent custom
for young and old it is, a foe to the use of med-
icine, and generally provocative to the appetite,
yet the search for health does not account for
its popularity.
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
My notion is this, and I may be mistaken;
In the dance the world, instead of playing spec-
tator, is itself the chief actor in the pageant.
On this popular stage every one may star. They
can have all the pleasures of professional artistic
life without its penalties. The ego has found
its own (shade of Max Stirner !) — and theatres,
moving pictures, even motor-cars, must bow low
to the victorious dancing dervishes. I am look-
ing forward to the aeroplane as the next avatar
of pleasure. Till then America will be satisfied
with perfectly proper dancing capers, films, and
chewing-gum. However, we outhved the roller-
skating and the rinks thirty-five years ago; so
let us not despair. But the incredible abuse that
was lavished upon poor, respectable Salome of
Strauss and Wilde is, like the proverbial curse,
coming home to roost— more's the pity.
in
The room is long and narrow, its walls mir-
rored; the ceiling is too low for the good of the
lungs, because every one was smoking the night
I went in after leaving the Strand. It was too
early for "Jack's," too late for the vaudeville
at Hammerstein's Victoria, so I thought of the
Canary Cage, the most popular of resorts given
over to Bohemians and other rainbows. Half-
cabaret — where the solo performers are the
guests — half bird bathtub, where the wines do
not prompt to a fall, the Cage is the most engag-
ing of all the nightly spectacles in Gotham.
J03
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
Naturally for the "highbrow," the "low-
brow," or "bonehead" is not made free of this
republic of arts, letters, and canaries; I did not
arrive too soon. The band up-stairs was play-
ing at its top notch, the diners had descended
to the ground floor, and the windmills were
agitating their arms and theories in every comer.
There sat the professor who nightly demon-
strates how the Japanese could have captured
Berlin in three moves: move one, with the salt-
cellar; move two, with a teaspoon; the third,
with the fork; positively, the table is worn with
ruts because of this continuous war strategy.
When he isn't warring, the professor whispers
to you — confidentially, of course — ■ about the
young genius he has discovered, a painter who
can give points to C6zanne. But at bottom,
he is conservative. He never favoured the
"extreme left" of crazy cubists and concubin-
ism, expressivists, zonists, futurists, vortidsts,
and post-impressionists who make their drinks
warm with their oaths and rantings. Indeed, he
shivered every time a shriek of "Nietzsche" or
"Marinetti" came from across the room. There
sat the choice cenacle at a long table, putting
away everything from absinthe to zoolak. (I
am sorry to state that the man who drank the
latter was a nuisance.)
A Matisse-versus-Picasso controversy was in
full sway when I joined the party — not with-
out audible dissent from some boys who called
me "that antiquated bric-&.-brac who thinks
104
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
Chopin wrote music," I knew these admirers
of Arnold Schoenberg, and I knew that they had
never heard a note of the Vienna composer, and
when they did they wouldn't be able to dis-
tinguish it from Yankee Doodle.
But the name ! Ha ! a musical iconoclast !
Down with the old fogies ! Down with Richard
Strauss, the reactionary ! They smashed repu-
tations. They sneered at the major gods, also
the minor. One person (he wasn't over twenty) ,
attacked Walt WTiitman as the type of the per-
fect classicist, and after the noise of broken
glass had ceased and the head waiter had sep-
arated the combatants, the table was cleared
of broken bottles, and the argument began
anew. A genius trumpeted like an elephant,
and the cock-crowing evoked memories of the
Latin Quarter.
I was captivated. My youth was renewed by
the battle, the sound of cannon, and the neigh-
ing of the steeds; I, too, said " Ha ! ha ! " to the
mules — at least they were as stubborn — but
I was ruled out. No nineteenth century, back-
number iesthetics ! Give us futurism or give
us oblivion; and they sought the latter at the
very spigot.
I was not disconcerted. It was only natural
for the younger generation to kick in the panels
of the door. Grandfathers and other antiquated
relatives should submit to curfew. And the
tolling of young bells is the tolling of their knell.
So I listened, remembering it did not seem so
105
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
many years ago that I had helped in the same
sacred cause of "knock your neighbours while
you live; else get knocked." How this gang of
painters, sculptors, poets, etchers, philosophers,
writers, and pudding-heads did hit every head
that moved on the contemporary map of litera-
ture or art !
In my time critics quarrelled over the emo-
tional quality and technical merits of poets. I
discovered that to-day in America a poet is a
joke. Let us wrangle over the rights of inter-
esting criminals, the ethics of sewer-pipes, or
the sentimental social rehabihtation of moral
lame ducks (not drakes) ; but poetry — fudge !
Marinetti writes poetry. (So does a telegraph
operator.) The leader, who is a prose rhapso-
dist doubled by a vaudevillist, challenged me
to duel, the weapons to be Velasquez and
Matisse. I selected Each, and the matter was
dropped. An Irishman always knows the trick
of spUtting the dilTerence, and I think Johann
Sebastian Each a greater painter than either the
Spaniard or the Frenchman in dispute,
A Scandinavian made us roar at the yarn, a
new one, about the son of Bjomstjenie B jornson,
the Norwegian poet, who had intruded himself
uninvited on the bridge of an ocean steamship.
When politely asked by the captain to go to the
lower deck he haughtily responded; "Do you
know to whom you are speaking? Do you
know you are addressing the son of Norway's
greatest poet?"
io6
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
" No matter," replied the captain softly.
"You must leave the bridge, Mr. Ibsen." The
poor man must have fallen overboard at the icy
irony of the answer.
A minute later a fresh conflict was in progress.
Some one cried: "Ibsen! Oh, the Land of the
Midnight Whiskers ! Why not drag in some
other mouldy dramatist, like Moli^re or Shake-
speare ? "
"Or Bernard Shaw?" came in a flash, and the
air was tliick with war-cries. "Nietzsche!"
"Schoenberg!" "Wedekind!" "Marinetti!"
"Matisse!" "Picasso!" "George Luks can
smash the slats of the whole crowd for pure
paint." The professor shook both fists at the
ceiling, groaning with Celtic emphasis: "Ah!
Les ratfe." The band which had come down-
stairs, intoned the Marseillaise, and the house
vibrated with the refrain, "Marchons; march-
ons!" "This is not a 'Canary Cage,'" I rumi-
nated, "but a cage of yoimg eagles. The name
of the place should be changed to the 'Cafe of
To-Morrow.'" Here the sun never sets, but
always rises, though it never seems to attain
the meridian — possibly because these briUiant
midnight sons go to bed every day before noon.
I made my retreat from this covert of van-
dals behind the cloud of a thunderous chorus,
in wiiich verbal splinters floated: "Mari-
netti!" "Encore de biere!" "Matisse!" "Im-
b6cile!" "Schoenberg!" "Hund!" "Nietzsche!"
"Let's all go up to Jack's !"
107
dbyGoOgle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
I quickly melted in the mist as the band
moved up the avenue, chanting and praying.
From his attic of dreams, from his tower of
ivory and spleen, the morose impressionist saw
unrolling beneath him a double lane of light,
tall poles, bearing twy-electric lamps, either side
of nocturnal Madison Avenue, throwing patches
of metallic blue upon the glistening damp pave
— veritable fragments of shivering luminosity;
saw the interminable stretch of humid asphalt
stippled by rare notes of dull crimson; exi-
gent lanterns of some fat citizen contractor.
Occasional trolley-cars, projecting vivid shafts
of canary colour into the mist, traversed with
vertiginous speed and hollow thunder the
dreary roadway. It was now midnight. On
the street were buttresses of granite; at un-
ryhthmic intervals gloomy apartment-houses
reared to the clouds their oblong ugUness, at-
tracting by their magnetism the vagrom winds
which tease, agitate, and buffet unfortunate
ones afoot in this melancholy canon of marble,
steam, and steel. A huge, belated, bug-like mo-
tor-car, its antennae vibrating with fire, slipped
tremulously through the casual pools of shad-
owed cross-lights; swam and hummed so softly
that it might have been mistaken for a novel,
timorous, amphibian monster, neither boat nor
machine. To the faded nerves of the fantastic
impressionist aloft in his ineluctable cage this
undulating blur of blue and grey and frosty
108
dbyGoogle
NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES
white, these ebon silhouettes of hushed brassy-
palaces, and the shimmering wet night did but
evoke the exasperating tableau of a petrified
Venice. Venice overtaken by a drought eternal;
an aerial Venice with cUff-dwellers in lieu of
harmonious gondoliers; a Venice of tarnished
twihghts, in which canals were transposed to
the key of stone; across which trailed and
dripped superficial rain from dusk and impla-
cable skies; rain upright and scowling. And
the soul of the poet ironically posed its own
acid pessimism in the presence of this salty,
chill, and cruel city — a Venice of receded seas,
a spun-iron Venice, sans hope, sans faith, sans
vision.
dbyGoogle
VII
BRAIN AND SOUL AND
POCKETBOOK
There is no escaping the spirit of pragma-
tism which circulates about Columbia Univer-
sity. It is in the air, and you encounter it as
soon as you reach Broadway at the One Hundred
and Sixteenth Street Subway.
Here, you say to yourself, is the very cortex
of the city; it represents its intellectual ideals,
and with the unfailing mimicry of nature, it
seems to be what it represents — I mean its
simulacrum gives one the impression of a very
busy centre of study: above all a practical one.
No mooning on these sunlit heights as you
would at Harvard or Oxford. The sternly prag-
matic ideal of New York is reflected in its chief
seat of learning. The wooded walks and soli-
tude-haunted spots of certain European uni-
versities have no counterparts here. Even the
George Grey Barnard statue Pan looks askance
at his own pagan nudity. Business first, dream-
ing afterward — ■ if at all — might be the motto
blazoned at Columbia.
The bustle even during the summer session
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
is highly gratifying. Groups of young women
may be seen going into commons or standing at
the hall of philosophy. The hard, unromantic
aspect of the various buildings — magnificent,
some of them — coupled with the encroachment
of the town, robs our university of all provincial
colour; not even the green campus, where they
play everything from Maeterlinck to croquet,
disturbs the hard, self-assured picture of scho-
lastic success.
One need not fear that at Columbia any use-
less art will be found encumbering the curricu-
lum. The {esthetic note is absent, but it is
more than compensated by the 'presence of the
cheerful pragmatic or the powerful material-
istic. And yet — and yet I think that huge
doses of Ralph Waldo Emerson should be daily
administered to offset the deadening of lofty
ideals; above all, to stifle the pernicious belief
in majorities, in quantity instead of quahty,
in the mob in place of the man. There are no
types; there is only the individual. But what
is pragmatism to one man, to another may be
poison.
I could wish for more esthetic "atmosphere"
about Alma Mater. The equipment is of an em-
inent order. I don't know how many students
are annually turned out bright and shining and
bursting with knowledge upon the community,
but the number must be great. That they
make "culture hum" may be rated in the high
standard of our theatres and literature.
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
And the teachers — how many there must
be!— none with "dandruff on their coat collars,"
for they are all paid huge salaries and can af-
ford such luxuries as clothes-brushes and trips
to Europe. I saw some of them lounging on
the grass in dignified attitudes, some who earn
as much as poor bank presidents slaving below
in the heart of the city.
They impressed me. Little wonder New
York is the very hub of the universe in the mat-
ter of culture. Columbia is a vast asset in the
intellectual hfe of the city. To be sure, we
never hear of any extraordinary idea, book, or
work of art emanating from its cloistered shades,
but only consider the amount of bright young
■wits it unleashes to do business in " our midst."
Pragmatic! Why shouldn't it be pragmatic?
Business men, not poets or symmetrical char-
acters, is the modern need, and this university
is prime in its manufactory of practical youth.
For the girls I can't say as much. Barnard
has its statistics. The specimens I saw were ad-
mirably ambitious, plain, and preoccupied with
their studies.
You don't saunter at Columbia; there is too
much intellectual ozone in the air, even on hot
days. The spick-and-span condition of the col-
leges and their approaches finally gets on your
nerves and you escape either to Morningside
Drive or over to Claremont.
In and around Morningside may be the com-
ing new "Fifth Avenue," The old can't long
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
resist the attacks of the commercial philistines.
Why shouldn't this part of the town be the
home of our "aristocracy"? There is space,
commanding views, the air is pure, and there is
the absence of the crowd. Spaciousness is the
key-note.
From the top terrace of Morningside Park the
scene is fascinating — a tremendous city lies
spread below you. Its chief quahty is its va-
riety (and gas reservoirs). Now, from River-
side Drive tjie landscape is monistic — if I dare
employ such a term; from Morningside it is
pluralistic. The perspective of Broadway — ■
up here of stately width — with the Subway
cars emerging into the sunlight is very attrac-
tive. You have the feeling that another New
York could be housed on these heights; and
will be — the march upward is unmistakable.
I crossed through One Hundred and Twenty-
second Street and reached the Drive, near
Grant's Tomb. At Claremont I again saw the
tomb of the "amiable child" and again nearly
wept at the thought of this, the last amiable
child, dying too soon. Since then he has had
no successors in our city.
I always admire the far-away Tudor-hke tow-
ers of the College of the City of New York, dark
field stone and white terra-cotta, and under
their shadow there are pleasant walks. The
unfinished Cathedral of St. John the Divine is
imposing at a distance, and Fordham College
is attractive because of its leafy surroundings.
"3
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
As for the New York University, thereby
hangs a tale. I had seen the Hall of Fame from
the Harlem River and found other view-points,
and I determined to visit the place, a daring
enough proposition for a New Yorker,
I made tentative inquiries, as I wished to
av-oid notoriety — the mere notion of a narive
visiting the Hall of Fame might lead to inter-
national complications. A Subway guard, after
consulting the map of his memory, counselled
me to take the Broadway train and alight at
One Hundred and Eighty-fet Street. This I
did on the hottest day of August. Then a news-
man told me to catch the Univeraty Avenue car.
I did so, my wonderment momentarily in-
creasing. I knew I wasn't quite in Albany or
Poughkeepsie, for I saw the legend: "Amsterdam
Avenue" when I came out of the Subway "lift"
(it is as deep at One Hundred and Eighty-first
Street as in the London Underground). But
University Avenue and the various viaducts, the
glorious sweep of the valleys and hills — the
coolness, the purity of the air. Where was I?
Was it Sunium's Heights? The conductor of
the swift trolley-car told me the neighbourhood
was known as "Kike's Peak." He said this
soberly and I could see he meant no offense: he
but recorded a simple fact, so I told him in
return that God was ever good to the Irish and
to his own.
After that diplomatic stroke we got on fa-
mously, for he was Irish himself.
114
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
I was dropped at the Hall of Fame terrace
about ten minutes of a too short ride from
Amsterdam Avenue. Everywhere open coun-
try, with avenues of comfortable houses, man-
sions, and cottages. The stroll up a quickly
ascending iiill was reassuring.
The college buildings came into view. One,
with a cupola, I recognised as the Hall of Fame
— as I had supposed, but it was the library with
its large rotunda and excellent appointments.
I asked a man who was operating a lawn-mower
the whereabouts of the hall. "There!" he said,
indicating a colonnade that wound about the
college halls and faced the Harlem River. A
handsome, ornamental granite loggia led me
from one end of the terrace to the other.
There is a museum where there are portraits
and other memorials. I didn't visit it. It was
the bronze tablets that interested me. Only two
portrait busts were to be seen. All the names
of the celebriries are not yet in bronze. I found
Longfellow, but not Poe; then it occurred to
me that perhaps his name would never figure
among the mediocriries of the hall; perhaps also
pious prohibitionists had headed off the inclu-
sion of the name of a notorious drunkard, and
thus evaded a painful scandal.
I was further convinced when I discovered in
the Women's Hall the name of a temperance
advocate. What a charming idea ! By sheer
negation you may become famous, while Poe,
poet and "alcoholic," might prove the contrary,
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
and thus be a dangerous precedent. Poor Poe !
Far better is he in his last resting-place at Balti-
more. I know I slightly annoyed an attendant
in the library by asking foolish questions. How-
ever, if you wish to secure a niche in the Hall of
Fame call early and register with your urn.
The only disqualification is the possession of
genius, and as that is a rare quality in any land
we have all a chance for immortality. How the
celestial convicts in heaven, as they execute their
matutinal rhythmic lock-step, must envy their
neighbours who happen to be in theHallof Fame.
A mounted policeman showed me the homeward
route. But of all the prospects that from the
colonnade of the New York University is the
most arresting. Even the chimneys of an elec-
tric-light plant can't quite spoil the view. Why
more people don't make this pilgrimage instead
of crowding the dirty beaches at Coney Island
must be set down to perversity. There are
no peanuts on this "Pike's Peak" of the Brain
of New York.
II
When I first made known my plan I was
scoffed at, then commiserated, and finally ad-
mired for my audacity. Never, I was warned,
would I survive the shock. But I persisted.
I had seen the basement of a department store
from the Subway and the outside of another in
Brooklyn, why shouldn't I venture within?
Once I attended a suffrage meeting and I still
ii6
dbyGoogle
Brain and soul and pocketeook
live. Why is a bargain day at a department
store more dangerous to a man? Besides, I
had read Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames, and
could reality be more gigantic than that par-
ticular fiction ? In Berlin a visit to Wertheim's,
on the Leipzigerstrasse, hadn't daunted me, nor
the stores of Tietz, nor had the Grands Magasins
du Louvre or Au Printemps in Paris ruifled me;
indeed, I found some of these establishments
diverting though disappointing, after their Amer-
ican rivals.
In London, Selfridge's, Peter Robinson's,
Snelgrove's, or any of the other smart shops
in Regent or Oxford Streets did not convince
me that imitation is always the sincerest form
of flattery. Certainly the London big stores
are modelled after ours, and their imitation is
far from the original. I am not boasting, only
stating a hard fact known to every New York
woman who shops abroad.
But could I stand a bargain day in New York?
That was the rub. After praying to escape
battle, murder, and sudden death and inspect-
ing my life-insurance policy I placed myself in
the custody of one who knew the ropes, and,
closing my eyes, entered one of the biggest. I
was at once whirled to the top of the palace and
shown a spotless kitchen. I saw people eating
in large, airy dining-rooms, from the balconies
and windows of which the city might be en-
joyed. The quality of the cooking amaaed me,
but not as much as the tariff. That's why men
117
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
were present. A man dearly loves a "bargain"
luncheon. I dived down to the cellar in an ex-
press elevator and inspected acres of things.
Each floor I repeated the same experience. I
thought of the once-celebrated French conjurer
and prestidigitator, Robert Houdin, the first
to apply electricity to clocks, the clever magidan
who invented "second sight."
I remembered how he had, in company with
his son, his "accomplice," so trained his eye
and faculty of attention that, after passing a
shop-window heaped up with a hundred articles
he could remember them all and write down the
list for verification. I wondered if his shrewd
and embracing vision could have captured the
distracting number of objects on a single floor
here. In a multicoloured dream I wandered
through a maze of matter, labyrinths of glitter-
ing shapes. As in a nightmare I saw carpets
that courteously saluted me and grand pianos
in company with tin pails that gossiped to-
gether.
Haughty damsels regarded me icily. " Going
up ! " became a Leitmotiv at every landing. With
admiration I registered the memory of the
coloured gentlemen who manipulated the ele-
vators. Ladies, hot, cool, fat, and slender, en-
tered at every stop. They didn't seem dan-
gerous. I passed vast rooms all white, or red,
in a mysterious half-light. I looked the other
way when we encountered oceans of lingerie.
Finally, a shght hubbub told me that we were
ii8
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
near the seat of war. Yet everybody stood.
Seats, an army of them ! I saw a mass of fe-
males in an inextricable tangle, and I thought
of the Stock Exchange. Nothing was different
except the absence of shouting.
But in lieu thereof a serried battalion of de-
termined feminine warriors swept the bastions,
and the enemy was theirs. The only wounded,
strange to say, was a thin, tall door-walker. He
hmped away in the direction of the wholesale
perfume department.
I timidly asked what was the booty of war,
and promptly received a snub: "Didn't you
read this morning that gimp was marked down
one-half ? " Bon Dieu ! What is gimp, and
why should it be "marked down"? "What
sor^s the sirens sing!" once wrote Sir Thomas
Browne.
Elsewhere we experienced no bargain rushes,
only plain bargains without battle. The base-
ment positively intimidated me. People really
go to these shops unafraid and unarmed. Think
of the miles and miles of material spread before
you ! Think of the tax on eyes and legs involved
in a day's shopping ! Yet women, day after day,
thus put in their time walking and bargaining
and staring. On Sundays they devour the ad-
vertising pages of the newspapers in search of
the particular article they long to procure at a
bargain. Little surprise that we are a nation
of idealists when womankind " uplifts " us
through the subtle "marking down" of values.
119
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
I traversed, not without grumbling — the
pace was beginning to tell — such stores as I
had read about. Arriving at the most palatial
rather fagged but still determined, I found there
an air of classic restraint. The open centre to
the roof is refreshing after some oppressive ceil-
ings I had passed under.
Nowhere on the globe are there shops like
ours. If people say Paris or London or Berlin,
simply reply — New York ! You may buy any-
thing from an elephant skin to a needle. But
so lacking in the "bargain" sense are men that
when I finally escaped, about five o'clock, to the
park I found that I had not bought a penny's
worth except some luncheon and an ice.
In other words, I was an impostor. But there
are thousands such, chiefly women, who pass
the day agreeably in pricing goods they never
purchase. It is their substitute for alcohol, and
a less dangerous one. (Ahem !) As I watched
some who really bought after much chaffering
for the sake of chaffering, I recalled Rabelais's
description of a dog with a marrow-bone: "If
you have seen him you might have remarked
with what devotion and circumspection he
watches and wards it; with what care he keeps
it; how fervently he holds it; how prudently
he gobbets it; with what affection he breaks it;
with diligence he sucks it." Bargain day is a
marrow-bone sweet to woman; sweeter even
than the Votiform Appendix.
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
ni
When I began this series of studies devoted
to intimate New York I had no intention of
describing the town at large, only the corners
that appealed to me; but as you are carried
against your will in a human maelstrom, so I
find myself far from my original plan.
I have, for myself, rediscovered New York,
Its vastness almost appals. No fear of over-
populating, if the East Side congestion could be
tapped. There is room enough for millions
north of us, and without crossing the rivers.
On the libraries I shan't dwell. They are at
your elbow if you choose to visit them. I stiU
regret the old Lenox Library, possibly because
of its position. Certainly no structure will
duplicate its dignity and massiveness. With
the New York Library I am not yet well ac-
quainted. I have dropped in to some excellent
exhibitions of Frank Weitenkampf, curator of
the print department, but I feel strange in the
library proper, possibly because I miss the
htanely atmosphere of the Astor Library.
Of the clubs and hospitals there is naught to
be said here, and it would be superfluous to find
fault with the ugly Metropolitan Opera House
when so much beautiful music is made within;
or with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so
beautiful without.
I wonder who would read literature in our pub-
lic libraries or visit the Metropolitan Museum
dbyGoOgle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
of Art if there was no East Side ! Isn't it odd
that these "foreigners" are in the majority
among the visitors of our art institution in Cen-
tral Park? To be sure, there are warmer places
in town on a June Sunday afternoon. This fact
is appreciated by a large number of folk hailing
from the East Side. You meet them there any
time after the dinner-hour — German mode —
and in any of the side streets from Sixtieth to One
Hundredth, starting from Avenue A. They wear
holiday clothes, and they beam with satisfaction.
A treat is ahead of them. To wander in the cool
twilight of the lower galleries; to flirt in the face
of the Egyptian mummies; to giggle and gossip
among the monster plaster casts; to stare at the
marbles or sit placidly before bright-coloured
pictures — what joy for the " uncultured " classes
of the far East Side ! You see them streaming
up Fifth Avenue. Their faces are shiny. It is
hot. Fathers and mothers with famihes, some-
times numbering eight or ten — ask the door-
keepers, who groan and growl as the entire
"mishpogah" attempt to push through the turn-
stile at the same moment — Russians, Italians,
Poles, Hungarians, Bohemians, Serbs, Croats,
Greeks, Roumanians — Hebrews many of them
— file by and ramble about, content to be re-
minded of some European or semi-Asiatic city,
where, on their native heath, they once looked
at pictures with the same appreciarion.
A Walt Whitman catalogue alone could sum
up the ethnical and kaleidoscopic variety of the
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
mob that besieges the museuni gate on summer
Sunday afternoons. Yet a decorous, on occa-
sion even a reverent, crowd, especially before
sacred subjects, and a mob startlingly garbed.
The children prefer the ground floor. It is of
stone and cooler, there are "queerer" things
to be seen than up-stairs. Sleighs shaped like
boats, and dead men and women in marble on
tombs, and churches, too; above all, Notre-
Dame and the Pantheon. How delightful would
it be if there were such toys at home. How the
babies would crawl in and out of the big doors !
Perhaps they might make a big bonfire if straw
and matches could be gathered ! The mummies
— what a jolly set of ugly mugs in painted,
canoe-like coverings ! What a glorious ride on
that CoUeoni horse, whose feet must wear in-
visible seven-league boots, so magnificent the
possibility of their stride ! The George Grey
Barnard group always elicits puzzled remarks;
a wrestling-match, with the under man down
and out for ever, is the usual verdict.
But before Borglum's Mares of Diomedes
there are no doubts expressed. "A good run
for your money!" says a sporty youth, with
hair plastered on forehead. His girl nods. It
is an object-lesson in the psychology of sex to
watch the procession passing Makart's monster
panel, with its riot of women in dazzling nudity.
The girls always gaze unaffectedly at the explo-
sive colour and large-limbed creatures. Their
masculine escorts look carefully in the opposite
123
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
direction. Why? It may not be amiss to
state that the museum authorities displayed
admirable judgment in their refusal to fig-leaf
modern statuary. At the Louvre, at the Vat-
ican, at a dozen other galleries in Europe, this
needlessly offensive custom prevails. New York,
with all its infernal prudery and prurience, has
not thus defaced Rodin's superb bronze, I'Age
d'Airain. It is Rodin at his best; nervous the
touch, sinewy the figure, the planes of which
melt into the ambient atmosphere no matter
from which point you approach. It is as good, if
not better, than the original at the Luxembourg.
Its stark power, however, carries no message for
the Sunday guests, though you note an occa-
sional look of awe; but to the multitude it is one
naked man the more; therefore to be warily
circled.
What charm lurks in the bronzes by Jules
Dalou ! Mother's Love is a centre of attrac-
tion. As for the lace collections ~ they are
ever difficult to reach, because of the women.
The merits of Manet, Monet, and Whistler may
be left to crirical mankind; but every woman
who enters the building, whether she wears a
shawl on her head or rides there in a motor-car,
is an authority on lace. Go and judge for your-
self. Mrs. W. K. Vanderbiit has donated a
"creation" in Brussels appKque, once the prop-
erty of Isabella, late Queen of Spain (a lace-
like lady in her diaphanous day). As it is a
baptism dress with veil, the women are literally
124
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
mad over it. But let us fight our way up-stairs.
On the main staircase we stumbled over a
family party comfortably settled for an im-
promptu luncheon; the cold eggs were being
tapped when an attendant, on the verge of a
righteous apoplexy, came to the rescue, and
wails of indignation arose from the lungs of six
hungry children. "Art be hanged!" is what
the father muttered in Czech, as he piloted his
crew to the green and more hospitable park.
The museum men have their troubles.
The Morgan collection is a Mecca for the ma-
jority. They make for these galleries — as a
rule the hottest in the museum — with a una-
nimity that spells for the curious the colossal
attraction in the name of J. Pierpont Morgan.
This loan collection includes some beautiful
pictures, but not the best in the museum. How-
ever, the crowds flock to Georgiana, Duchess
of Devonshire, because of her legend as well as
her hat. The name of Gainsborough you hear
last. A favourite is Miss Farren, by Lawrence.
The Raphael is not a big drawing card. It
leaves the multitude untouched — seemingly;
I can only Judge by appearances. Nor are the
Hobbema or the Van Dycks much admired; but
Reynolds — Lady Betty and Her Children —
the Greuze, the Hoppner, and other canvases
of the ilk never miss an audience. Subject, not
art, is the lodestone. It was ever thus, and ever
will be, let critics scold as they may. A little
girl playing with a kitten would swerve the
I2S
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
attention of the public from such a master-
piece as The Maids of Honor, by Velasquez.
Naturally, the furniture and porcelains in
this section come in for their due share of
homage.
Though we have no Salon Carr^, no Tribuna,
in the museum, there is a certain gallery, with
its priceless works of art, that would be a par-
adise to Uve in. With the two small Rodins
for company regard the old lady of Trans Hals
and her sober-faced husband. There in the
Rembrandt Sibyl, or the well-fed gentleman wear-
ing a turban, you may see the self-portrait of
Rembrandt. The Goya is flaimtingly brilliant
in comparison. But it is rather disconcerting
to observe the blank air of non-recognition with
which the collection in this gallery is observed.
The same is the case with the new Vincent Van
Gogh, or the wonderful sketch by Manet of a
Montmartre funeral. The mob presses through
to the adjoining room, there to admire pink sun-
sets, silly flower girls, glazed marines — a con-
glomeration of the most indigestible pictures in
the building. It is the subject that attracts the
throngs. All the afternoon you hear the babble,
and if you are a linguist you may remark the
similarity of the questions and exclamations be-
fore the Winslow Homer canvas, which dra-
matically depicts a sea scene: "Oh, my! Look
at the black man ! He's dead. No, he isn't,
but he soon expects to be swallowed up by
those sharks. What sharks? Isn't he fishing?
126
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
There's his Une, that coloured rope. Unsinn !
It's a devil-fish, see it wriggle its eight arms !
Yes, eight, Just count 'em. There's a water-
spout! The ship! the ship! Ain't the water
wet and green?"
About a half dozen keepers succumb of a Sun-
day in answering the questions put to them.
No wonder. Homer has painted better pictures
than this framed melodrama of piratical hor-
rors, but none so popular. The Renoir group
is comparatively neglected, the Manets abso-
lutely neglected, with the possible exception of
the Boy with a Sword. Possibly the rich har-
monies of the Renoir-Charpentier family por-
trait do not appeal. I saw several persons
study the Uttle girl sitting on the large dog, but
whether it is the child is not pretty enough —
as a matter of fact, she is adorable — or because
the bluish tone distracts, only a shrug of the
shoulder happened before this work. It prob-
ably denotes suspended opinion; no such shrugs
occur in the face of the two Claude Monets,
which hang hard by — frank grinning is often
accompanied by laughter. The vivid beach
scene with the choppy waves and lovely sky are
too much for many. Because it evokes nature
this marine offends or tickles the risible rib.
If the water had been pink, the sand inky, and
the sky full of woolen clouds, and the human
figures carved out — oh ! what cries of amaze-
ment and joy. Meissonier ! That's the chap
for us. His soldiers, his horses (hair, hoof, hide),
127
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
you can see them all — count the hairs — - clear
as glass or brass. Besides, he tells a story.
So does Detaille. What good is that ugly
guitarist of Edouard Manet ? Why, he looks like
a little old Spaniard in Houston Street who
plunks out Iberian melodies for you, and is glad
to earn a copper. That's the trouble. He is too
lifelike, this Manet, even for the Academy Sig-
nori — extremes meet, the East Side and learned
academicians. His silhouette may be as mas-
terful as if executed by Goya; his eyes, they
bum with a hard fire; and look at his hat, his
costume — no ! all this is mere imitation. The
proletarians are idealists, as are our academic
painters. They all want to dream; they long
for the unreal; their ice-cream is pink of hue.
They sigh for Marble Halls by Lord Leighton
and Alma-Tadema. Life is dull, drab, cruel —
at times, vile; in art let us get away from life as
far as possible ! Thus do Laura Jean Libbey,
Marie CorcUi, Hall Caine, and the East Side
touch hands with our immortal academy. A
little touch of pink paint makes all the world kin.
With or without his note-book, a likely re-
porter could glean columns of Sunday after-
noon stories at the museum. I notice that the
"popular" guide, in the guise of a young lady,
has already begun. Students of character after
"human interest" anecdotes, and sociological
sleuths, would be embarrassed by the richness
of the soil. There are girls enough there on
Sundays to people our barren moon; they are,
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
for the major part, broad of girth, squat of figure,
bright-eyed, and often possess a pretty wit.
Said one, before that too voluptuous Cabanel,
The Birth of Venus (a capital soap advertise-
ment): "Sadie, what's she called?" "The Bath
of Venus," replied the other. No one smiled, for
the improvised title fitted. Whistler's Falling
Rocket is not popular. "It's too dark to see
the sparks," said a man who had sneered the
Monets off the map of his acquaintance. But
one painter's — I've forgotten his name — pic-
ture of the forging of a shaft, with its glow of
molten metal, is a perpetual object of interest.
No one stops in front of the portrait of a
Spanish Lady, by Mariano Fortuny. Why not
replace it by an Eastman Johnson "coon" sub-
ject? There's a popular idea for you! The
Vanderbilt gallery is always crowded; the va-
riety of themes and its painters make it beloved.
Nor should the supercilious critic wave inef-
fectual flags of protest. Deeply implanted in -
the human consciousness there is a craving for
the tale simply told. The Vanderbilt gallery
supplies many examples. The Millets, Dau-
bignys, Meissoniers, De Neuvilles, Detailles,
Benjamin Constant, and the Oriental subjects
of Fromentin, GerOme, Decamps, and others
are always the centre for admiring visitors.
And who shall gainsay their taste ? This mid-
century art was once the shibboleth of our
fathers, to whom misty impressionism, angular
cubism, and imbecile futurism was, and is, a
129
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
riddle and an eyesore. Take them, by and
large, the East Side crowds that fill the Metro-
pohtan Museum on Sunday afternoons are as
excellent judges as the visitors on pay-days.
At least they know what they dishke.
A more gracious form of public benefaction
is hardly conceivable than the Benjamin Altman
donation of art treasures to the Metropolitan
Museum. Mr. Altman loved pictures and porce-
lains and sculptures, and, while not a man with
a fixed idea or belief in any one school, still he
knew what he wanted and procured it. His
picture-gallery was not the result of long years
of meditation and collecting, though his china
was. He had certain preferences, notably the
quaint old Dutch school, some Flemish prim-
itives, and the noble Spaniard, Velasquez, Yet
that did not prevent him from admiring the
Italian primitives, and, while his magnificent
gift to the museum is in no sense a representa-
tive gathering of any particular school, never-
theless it reveals the catholic tastes of its donor.
But we must guard against the prevalent opin-
ion that the Altman collection is faultless, is
above criticism; indiscriminate admiration nat-
urally enough expressed just now in the first
flush of gratitude at the magnitude of the gift
may prove a stumbling-block to both student
and amateur; in a word, all the pictures jind
art objects in this collection are not master-
pieces. Far from it. There are private col-
lections in America that excel at every point,
130
dbyGoogle
BRAIN ANB SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
quality and quantity, the Altman; furthermore,
there is bound to be a slump in critical values
if the key is pitched too high at the outset.
Consider the case of the Morgan collection and
the now openly expressed disappointment of con-
noisseurs who had expected something fault-
less, whereas, setting aside the Raphael, the
Fragonards, and the Gainsborough Duchess,
there are some pessimistic people who assert
that the gem of the collection in the museum is
the portrait of a little Dutch baby, and that by
an unknown master, for masterly it is.
Therefore, it is well to guard against imcritical
enthusiasm. All Rembrandts are not master-
pieces — ■ especially when his pupils painted
them; and Frans Hals painted unequally, as the
Altman examples prove up to the hilt. Nor
must the rather reckless use of such sacred names
as Giorgione and Titian be accepted without pro-
test. But the Rembrandt Gallery is a hand-
some one, a baker's dozen of the masters, and,
while it cannot be compared en masse with the
Cassel Gallery assemblage — what gallery can
outside of the Rij'ks Museum? — lie Altman
Rembrandts are his trump-cards. Several, at
least, are masterpieces; all are of interest,
though not equal in artistic merit. The Old
Woman Cutting Her Nails is a magisterial,
almost montunental, work, and is already the
lodestone for visitors. Yet, after two or three
visits it ceased to make the profound appeal it
should have done, because it is obviously not
131
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
Rembrandt at his mightiest. For one thing,
the figure is overmodelled; the bulk is sculp-
tural rather than pictorial ; there is more than a
suggestion of pose, of a self-consciousness that
robs the composition of pristine simplicity, of
the effortless art of whicli Rembrandt knew so
well the secret. Dramatic is this old woman
with the untrimmed nails, but she is also out of,
and not in, the frame — like an operatic prima-
donna she faces the footlights ready for her
exalted aria. Of the paint quality there is no
doubt — it is beautiful in its easy sweep and fat
richness. The imagination of the Seer of Am-
sterdam is greatly daring, and the head is sibyl-
line, but not altogether in the clear-obscure of
the painter. Simplicity is the quality least in
evidence. If this sounds like hypercriticism,
please remember I've lived with the Rembrandts
of the Louvre, National Gallery, at Cassel, and
in Holland. Srili, what a piece of luck for Mr.
Altman to have secured this rare specimen, for
it is unlike any Rembrandt I've ever seen in its
rhetorical quality. From the sombre heart of
darkness the master plucked mystery, and,
except in his etchings — after all, the man at-
his best — he seldom touches earth with his
august feet; touches reality, as did, say, Vermeer.
But this old woman like her neighbour, also
an old lady, is far from being the Elizabeth Bas
of the Rijks. More characteristic is the Toilet
of Eathsheba, on another wall. This lovely
dream in gloom and old gold I studied for years
132
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETEOOK
in the back room of Count Steengracht's man-
sion on the Vyverberg, at The Hague. How
many visitors to that fascinating Dutch city
have admired this woman who tempted the royal
psalmodist ! She is not subtle or comely as are
the Titian women, but she is compelling enough,
and she is placed in an enchanting glow which
Rembrandt alone could evoke. For me, Bath-
sheba is the Rembrandt of the Altman collec-
tion, and after the first imperious pull of The
Old Woman Cutting Her Nails relaxes, you will
find yourself returning to the magnetic portrait
of the unfaithful wife, which has the true vis-
ionary aspect of Rembrandt. Why the Rijks
Museum authorities allowed this masterpiece to
escape may be set down to the fact that too
much money had been spent on the new Ver-
meers from the Six coDections. And a Vermeer
is always worth a dozen Rembrandts on the
sheer score of rarity.
The Lady with a Pink is attractive, as is the
portrait of The Auctioneer. The Pilate did
not intrigue me; it seems rather vague or empty.
The Man with a Magnifying Glass is psycho-
logically strong. The others are more or less
negligible. Hendrickj'e Stoffels is distinctly in-
ferior to the portraits of the same lady in the
Louvre and the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin.
The so-called Little Masters were a disappoint-
ment, the Vermeer — Holland's master colourist
— being an early effort, the so-called Dnmken
Servant Asleep, said to be from the historical
133
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
sale of 1696; though Burger-Thor6 believes Mr.
Widener's picture with the same name, but dif-
ferently treated, is the original of that sale.
Certainly it is better painted than the Altman
example, which latter is a rather dull, heavy per-
formance — its edges are too soft for the mas-
ter — lacking the magic atmosphere, spacing,
and exquisite touch of Vermeer, Some of the
still-life shows his touch, and there are passages
of paint in the rug that are superb; the wall, too,
is very swell; but, as a Vermeer, this does not
rank with Mr. Widener's Woman Weighing
Pearls, Mrs. Gardner's, Mr. Frick's, or Mr. J.
G. Johnson's, in Philadelphia. Go, after study-
ing it, into the Marquand room at the Metro-
politan Museum, and look at the thrice-lovely
girl with the pitcher, sometimes called The Girl
Opening the Casement. That is beautiful Ver-
meer, with its blue, yellow, and silvery-grey
tonalities, much more so than the Morgan Ver-
meer, which hangs hard by. I confess that the
De Hooch, Nicholas Maes, the Gerard Dou, the
Terburg (or Terborch) did not interest me; like
the three Frans Halses, they are mediocre. The
Wheatfields, by Jacob Van Ruisdael, is fine and
better than the Hobbema. Of the three ex-
amples by Frans Hals, two of them are in his
bacchanahan, bombastic vein — a Jan Steen
vein. I recall The Merry Company from the
Hudson-Fulton Exhibition. Its pattern is in-
genious, its colour scheme hot and flamboyant.
None of the three display the virtuoso brush
134
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
work of the brilliant Dutchman. I like better
the Marquand Halses, not to mention the Rem-
brandts; but not the so-called Hille Bobbe, or
The Smoker, which are both unhappy attribu-
tions; the original of Hille is in the Kaiser
Friedrich Museum, Berlin. It wouldn't sur-
prise me to learn that several of these Halses
are by Dirk, not Frans.
The Christ of Velasquez is, as De Beruete
relates, an early work. It is hot and heavy in
colour, as heavy as Caravaggio. A Velasquez
for the student of his various manners it is, but
not very convincing. The Philip IV is a pale,
feeble school piece, possibly by his son-in-law,
Mazo. At the Prado, and in the National Gal-
lery, the real Philip IV may be seen; not here ■ —
above all, not in the Boston Museum, where the
PhiHp might be a replica of the Altman, or
t'other way about. The two Van Dycks are
nice, though hardly significant; nor by the same
token is the Titian. Giorgione and Vermeer are
such rare birds that it is arrant blasphemy to
place their names in a catalogue unless the pic-
ture ascribed to either of them is unmistakable.
Mr. Berenson believes this Altman portrait to
be an unquestionable Giorgione, and there is no
disputing Berenson. Nor Bode, either. But
even if it is a Giorgione, does that say much for
this particular canvas? It is the Venetian of
his period, and exhales a certain charm, as do
many Venetian artists of Big George of Castel-
franco's days.
^5
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
A few years ago I happened to be in Hamburg,
and reading the advertisement of Consul Weber's
pictures, I visited his house, and there found a
few good pictures, also a profusion of junk and
wholly worthless attributions. A small Rem-
brandt, the head of a boy, was capital, and at
the sale later eagerly snapped up. Down on
the dismal cellar-like first floor were about a
half acre of Flemish, German, and Italian prim-
itives. Among them The Holy Family, by
Andrea Mantegna, which Mr. Altman was
happy in capturing. It is the treasure of his
Italian section, a work of exceeding charm and
nobihty, Mantegna is not often encountered
in European galleries, and now artistic Europe
may visit our museum to see this Mantegna. I
wish I could become as enthusiastic over the
Memlings — of which one at least betrays Ger-
man origin (all these Memlings are doubtful),
or the Albrecht Diirer — once known as Our
Lady of the Gumboil, and full of poisonously acid
paint; or over the Botticelli (?), or Memhng's
Betrothal. Whosoever has tarried in Bruges will
not long delay before this well-executed com-
position, devoid though it be of spiritual atmos-
phere. The Diereck Bouts is excellent, and the
Cosma Tura very attractive, attribution correct
or not. That's precisely the verdict that may be
passed on ^he majority of the Altman collection.
Many of its pictures are beautiful without their
resounding names. So why worry over precision
in attribution? What could be lovelier than
136
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
the Gerard David, The Christ of the Miniature
(in case B}? One must go to Bruges to better
it. The MaJnardi, the Barend Von Orley, the
Lippi (?}, the Fra Angelico (?), the Verrocchio
(?) are all of moment, aside from their ascrip-
tions. The portrait of a Lady by Bartolommeo
Montagna is a specimen of Venetian art that,
notwithstanding its modest position, is engaging.
The Hans Maler I've seen elsewhere; hke the
Holbeins, it is characteristic. The latter are
as hard as nails, with wiry silhouettes. The
Franda and Messina portraits are vital.
The porcelains, enamels, furniture, tapestries,
and miscellaneous art objects would take a year
to describe. The sculpture is generally impres-
sive. There is the Houdon Bather, a splendid
marble, full of elusive, slippery modeUing, with
enough accents to redeem the figure from sus-
picion of prettiness. The Clodion terra-cotta
was formerly entitled The Triumph of Pan, in-
stead of the conventional Intoxication of Wine.
(I remember it at the Doucet collection sale in
Paris.) It represents in plastic perfection the
culmination of ecstasy, the very apotheosis of
passion, withal, in terms of idealised art. The
facture is marvellous. Only think of such a
gathering of names as Mina da Fiesole, Germain
Pilon, Verrocchio (?), Sansovino, Rossellino,
Benedetto da Majano, Luca della Robbia, John
of Bologna, Alessandro Vittoria, and Donatello.
I am not sure but that when the authoritative
critical appraisement of the Altman collection is
137
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETEOOK
finally made, his sculptures will rank the rest.
The Donatello Madonna, the Mino Head of St,
John — in the round and the youthful charm of
which is irresistible — the Sansovino Charity,
and the Madonna of Robbia, not forgetting
the dehcious rehef of the Madonna and Child
of Rosselhno, these, with Pigalle's Mercury
and the Houdon and Clodion examples linger
longer in my memory than the pictures — the
provenance of which need concern us less
than the consideration of their intrinsic artistic
merit.
If you alight at the One Hundred and Fifty-
seventh Street Subway station, west side, and
walk down a block you will come upon a struc-
ture of Indiana limestone, of an architectural
type that is a happy compromise of classic and
romantic. It is not more than one hundred feet
in length, and in depth seventy feet. The
building stands in One Hundred and Fifty-sixth
Street, west of Broadway, in Audubon Park; air
and sunshine have plenty of space to play about
its severe and graceful lines. It is the Hispanic
Museum. Mr. Archer M. Huntington, a pro-
found student of Spanish archasology, Hterature,
and art, has brought together an extraordinary
collection of antiques, manuscripts, marbles,
bronzes, books, Hispano-Moresque ware, medals,
coins, letters. In Europe — Madrid for example
— this house beautiful would be an objective
shrine for passionate pilgrims. New York is so
■38
d by Google
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
interested in dancing that it has little time to
visit the Hispanic Museum unless a sensation is
provided such as the impressionistic pictures of
Scroll a.
A tiled space after you have entered fay the
big iron gates on the granite stairs gives an im-
posing perspective. The attention is first caught
by two gigantic repousse bronze doors from
Egypt, of the fourteenth century. They were
found by Mr. Huntington at Cairo, and were
formerly the wings of a door on the mosque of
the Mameluke Sultan, Barkuf, whose name is
inscribed in Arabic. Tiles and mosaics on the
walls and halls evoke dreams of the Alhambra,
of Spain when it was most beautiful — Moorish
Spain. If one may dare say it, the interior of
the museum is of a cosy magnificence. It is not
large, nor yet is it cramped. The spacing and
arrangement of the various objects of art have
been planned by a master hand. You have a
sense of intimacy. You wish to linger, to "loaf
and invite your soul " under that glassed patio,
from which you may peep over into the read-
ing-room with its fifty thousand volumes. A
small boy in buttons, who is not even half
Spanish, offers you a leather plaque, upon which
are inscribed the names of the masters whose
pictures adorn the walls — some thirty odd. It
is a moment to rejoice. New York has never
seen, in a public place, such a gathering of Goyas
and El Grecos, while the two Velasquezes, won-
derful examples, are claimed by certain experts
139
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
to be the only genuine ones in America by the
great Spaniard.
One portrait is supposed by those whose judg-
ment is worthy of credence to be tliat of a cer-
tain Cardinal Pamlili, or Pampliili, spoken of
by Palomino. (What visions of cool bosks and
sweet meadows are evoked by the old name, the
Pamphili gardens at Rome !) Velasquez painted
the heads of many churchly dignitaries while
in Rome — the Pope and several cardinals.
His Innocent X in the Doria Palace once seen
will never vanish from the secret chambers of
the brain. The present portrait is that of a
man in the flower of his age. Though wearing
scarlet cope and biretta he still preserves a youth-
ful air. He sports, as did many a noble priest
of those days, a little moustache. His is a sleek
face. The eyes suggest a shrewd nature, not
easily fathomed. Its depth and lustre, the sohd
modelling of the head, the planes of the face, to
assess a few values, are all masterly. The ex-
pression is both powerful and dehcate. The
figure swims in space. Viewed from the oppo-
site end of the galIery,you feel as some one alive
were looking at you through an aperture framed
in gold. Vitality, nobility in characterisation,
and superb paint are displayed in this portrait.
If Velasquez did not paint it — and such au-
thorities as the late Senor de Beruete and Pro-
fessor Venturi assert that without the peradven-
ture of a doubt he is its author — then who in
the name of El Cid was its creator? Certainly
140
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
a glorious artist. It would be too cruel to com-
pare it with the alleged Velasquezes I have seen
here. It has quality, that indefinable quality,
like unto the golden, floating tone of a Stradi-
varius violin (or its richly varnished belly).
The Granddaughter Portrait by Velasquez
comes from the collection of the late Edouard
Kann, of Paris, and is a life-size bust portrait
of a sweetly grave little girl. Senor Beruete
believes her to represent the daughter of the
painter Mazo and his wife Francisca Velasquez,
therefore a granddaughter of Velasquez. The
tonalities of the picture are subtly beautiful,
the modelling mysterious, the expression vital
and singularly child-like. It is a fitting com-
panion to the aristocratic cardinal. Of the
Grecos there is a brilliantly coloured Holy Fam-
ily; a St. Joseph, said to be the portrait of the
painter, and a large canvas showing Christ with
several of his disciples. The most magisterial of
the El Grecos is the portrait of Cardinal de
Guevara, from the former Kann collection. A
notable work. The Goyas are unequal but in-
teresting. One depicts the horrors of war, andis
probably a sketch for the picture at the Prado,
Madrid. We know it through the etched series,
entitled The Horrors of War, a companion set to
the Caprichos. Cruel, violent, exuberant, it is
truly Goyaesque. So is its neighbour, a bucolic
bit. The portrait of the Duchess of Alva,
a large canvas, shows us that coquettish dame
pointing to her feet, where the artist has
141
dbyGoogle
ER.\IN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
scrawled his signature in the dust. It is mod-
em in feeling, as modem as Zuloaga, though
a trifle wooden in the articulation of the wrists
and ankles. The Duke of Alva (The Bloody-
Duke), is by Antonio Moro — strongly mas-
culine in feeling. In dull-coloured armour, car-
rying across his arm a truncheon, this sinister
nobleman does not belie his fierce reputation.
What power, what painting ! Note the tactile
values in that sceptre, not of iron but of wood;
one has the sense of lesser weight as it reposes
on the steel-clad left arm — not to mention
the justness of the rendered texture. General
Forastero, by Goya, hangs on the same wall, and
also a man's portrait by Murillo. The general
effect at the other end of the gallery is brilliant.
Carreno de Miranda's Assumption of the Virgin
hangs in the centre. On either side are two
Morales, a Valdes Real, and a rich-toned Murillo.
The Miranda might have been painted yester-
day, so clear and fresh is the body of its paint.
On the two long walls, south and north, there
are portraits by Spanish artists — an excel-
lent one of Philip IV — and altar-pieces and
ecclesiastical subjects, Hispano-Moresque lustre
ware, sacred vessels, gold, silver, precious stones,
bronzes, door-knockers, iron-work, coins of rare
value. Moorish, Roman, Carthaginian, and
Spanish coins may be seen and wondered over,
a wonderment that finally modulates into the
theme of the collector's indomitable patience
and sagacity. Mr, Huntington is an authority
142
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
on Spanish and Moorish coins. He has written
a history concerning them. And the collection
of old books, unique maps, and manuscripts !
It will be the work of a lifetime to catalogue
the riches of this museum, which, excepting the
British Museum, has no rival. Francis Lathrop
painted in monochrome the heads that are
ranged under the galleries; also two capital
copies of the Velasquez masterpieces in the
Prado, The Maids of Honor (Las Meninas) and
The Spinners (Las Hilanderas). The decora-
tions throughout are warm in tone, the various
carvings tasteful. Medallions adorn the outer
walls with appropriate names of great Spanish
artists and thinkers. Loyola is one, a significant
indication of the donor's catholicity. Flanking
the Hispanic Museum is the Numismatist So-
ciety's home.
IV
Of the theatres there is no end. Neverthe-
less true drama is not yet lodged here. The
heterogeneous elements that make up our the-
atre-going public demand amusement of the
most elementary variety and get what they ask
for.
With music the case is different. We have
an extraordinary conductor, an Italian born,
and only one orchestra that vies with the Vienna
Philharmonic Society orchestra; of course, I refer
to Toscanini and to the band from Boston, the
Higginson veterans; but there are several capital
M3
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
orchestras in the city and plenty of minor organ-
isations. America still imports its music and
music-makers. Thus far our musical genius has
found fullest expression in the invention or the
development of mechanical toys, pianos, and
the like; such as the soulless phonograph with
its diabolical concatenation of sounds and the
malignant "records" of famous singers, whose
voices, because of this sinister "sea change,"
become colourless, rasping, pinched, metallic, a
very caricature of the original. Edison is bet-
ter known now than Beethoven.
The most characteristic example of American
music is, thus far, Edward A. MacDowell's
Indian Suite, and not Antonin Dvorak's so-
called New World Symphony, which latter, de-
spite its occasional utilisation of negro tunes,
is a composition more Bohemian in colour and
character than American. {Why go to the
negro for "American" melody: he is not an
aboriginal, the Indian is; besides, the negro in
America, be it understood, never created native
music. And has the so-called "African" music
exerted anything but a debasing influence ?)
If you insist on the African element then Stephen
Foster and Louis Moreau Gottschalk are the
greatest American composers, for both invented
"negro" tunes, the latter, so-called Creole music.
Our greatest American noveUst still lives in
England, and the "great" American novel will
never be written because art is not a question of
magnitude, but of intensity. The average con-
144
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
ception of the "great" American novel is a
bundle of dialects. But the human soul has
no dialect.
With painting and sculpture the case is
brighter. We have a native school of land-
scape, and if our figure-painters do not lead in
the world's procession our sculptors make a
showing. New York is full of hideous public
statuary, as it is full of horrible architecture, but
the Sherman, Nathan Hale, Farragut, Hunt
Memorial, Ward's Pilgrim, Browne's Washing-
ton in Union Square should make us forget the
Dodge, the Cox, and other attempts.
I confess that in the Mall of Central Park
there is a nerve-destroying aggregation. But
how about the marble abominations of the
Siegesallee, Berlin ! To everycity its municipal
bad taste. Paris is alone the home of outdoor
statuary that does not offend the taste.
On the other hand, some of our churches
soothe the eye. St. Patrick's Cathedral makes
perfect Gothic music in moonlight nights, and
the very bulk of the St. John Cathedral on the
Heights is imposing. The new St. Thomas, de-
spite its newness, pleases the eye with its har-
monious lines, as Trinity does by its age. St.
Paul's Chapel, Grace Church, old St. Mark's, to
menUon a few classic examples, are show-places.
If you search for the soul of New York you
must not go to its market-place, but to its
churches; therein its still small voice may be
overheard. Without the roar is mundane.
145
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
I might have included the newspaper build-
ings under the caption of "The Brain of New
Yorli," but just now there seems to exist such
a prejudice against "highbrows" that it is more
prudent not to place "journalists" in that cate-
gory. But the newspaper buildings belong to
the " sights " of the town. Anything more
architecturally charming than the Herald,
dwarfed as it is by its giant neighbours, does
not exist here, and of the Times I once wrote
— having a vantage-point then in upper Mad-
ison Avenue: "To enjoy the delicate and mas-
sive drawing of the Times Building as etched
against a southern sky — now ardent, now fire-
tipped, jewelled, or swimming in the bewitching
breath of a summer's day — one must study it
from the north. A silhouette in the evening,
and often like a child's church of chalk lighted
at Christmas, it flushes rosy in the morning,
and during the afternoon the repercussion of the
sun waves drowns it in an incandescent haze.
The fronds of stone ranging below it support
this bell-tower — for it is of the true Campanile
order from afar — as if it were an integral part
of them. It, too, spires northward, where the
park blooms, an emerald obiong. On its pin-
nacle the city below wears the precise, mapped-
out look and checkered image it has from a bal-
loon, or pinned on a surveyor's chart."
As to the Stock Exchange, Custom House,
Clearing House, Sub-Treasury, and Chamber of
Commerce — their beauties are perennial.
146
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
Of the little things to be seen in our intimate
New York I might make a book. Not always
the wide waterways or vast spaces bring to the
eye such ravishing impressions as those caught
at the corner of some alley or through the arch
of one of the big bridges. There is Baxter
Street. There is Edgar Street, the shortest
street in the city. Or there is Dutch Street
And there is Fletcher Street. Go find it and see
the Singer Building from its coign; or Brooklyn
Bridge from Frankfort Street; or Coenties Slip;
or that ever delightful part of New Street where
it ends at Markettield Street and the Produce
Exchange.
There's an intunate corner for you, and an-
other is just off the narrowest and highest street
of all (I hope this is so !), Exchange Place, east
of Broadway, On the hottest days Exchange
Place seems cooler than the street, as you crane
your neck to see the slit of blue sky.
Then, if craving magnificent dimensions, there
is the Grand Central Station, the largest in the
world, and the end is not yet. Wonderful as are
its proportions, the facade in Forty-second Street
is disfigured by the little shops beneath; nor does
it convey the majestic power of the Pennsylvania
Railroad Station, to my mind the most beautiful
without of all railway stations and the most
imposing within. It is a unicum; the Grand
Central Station a complex of buildings.
I have seen strange sights. An American flag
flying from the gilded dome of an East Side
synagogue; a man blocking the way in a sudden
147
dbyGoogle
BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK
little street, yet a shaft of sunshine and a bit of
landscape showing through him so bow-legged
was he; a cat raising a litter of chickens — in
a Brooklyn back yard as seen from a train; a
hen in Flatbush that crows before laying eggs.
I once saw a crowd so dense that City Hall Park
was impassable. It was at the beginning of the
war when the city was charged with anticipation
as if by electricity, I tried to push by, but
vainly. It was in front of the Evening Sun
office, and finally I asked the policeman the
latest news from Belgium. I thought he spied
me curiously. "Look for yourself," he lacon-
ically replied. I did and saw by the baseball
score that the Giants were not in the lead.
It was a typical summer-afternoon crowd. I
hadn't realised the happy fund of indifference
possessed by the crowd. Truly happy thus to
forget — in a game — the tragedy across the
water. A meeting of street Salvationists far-
ther down the street made uncouth sounds like
savages pacifying their idol — all alike in their
worship of ugliness.
The old saying, "See Naples and die!" may
be replaced by "See New York first!" She
may be enormously vulgar, and the genius of
her is enormous, and never suggests mediocrity.
You may hate or love her, but you cannot pass
her by; and if Stendhal were alive to-day he
would rechristen the city Cosmopolis, the nois-
iest Cosmopolis that ever existed, but also the
New Cosmopolis, the most versatile city on our
globe.
148
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
I
BY DAY
It was a poster that sent me to Coney Island
again, although I had sworn never to tread
again that avenue of hideous sights and sounds,
had taken a solemn oath to that effect years ago.
But that poster ! Ah ! if these advertising men
oniy knew how their signs and symbols arouse
human passions they would be more prudent in
giving artists full swing with their suggestion-
breeding brushes.
This is what I saw on the poster: A tall, ener-
getic band conductor waving his baton over a
succulent symphony of crabs, lobsters, fruit,
fish, com, cantaloups, clams, and water-melons
— truly a pretty combination, for the over-
tones are Afro-American, the undertones Asiatic
cholera. Nevertheless, an appealing orchestra
to palates jaded by city restaurant fare and the
hot, humid streets. I was in haste to be off. I
mentally saw that gustatory symphony, I
heard its colicky music. I tasted its clambake
instrumentation- I must take the boat at once.
149
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
As the tall, architectural chimneys at the
lower end of the Island slowly receded I noted
the waffle-like effect of the myriad windows set
in their staring walls. Waffles! Yes, that is
the new note in American architecture; it is the
very soul of the art. Waffles ! This discovery
comforted me somewhat, and I began to enjoy
life and sought for a fresh thrill by gazing steadily
at the Brooklyn shorescape.
Perhaps the first definite impression made
amid the thousands of confusing, beckoning,
and mutually destructive sights as one comes
up the harbour is Brooklyn Bridge, seen across
the green of Governor's Island. The woven
wires of the structure seem to float; no water,
except that in the immediate foreground of the
spectator, suggests the notion that this is a
bridge; rather is it a fantastic apparition strung
across an emerald prairie, a huge harp ready
for the fingers of some monstrous musician,
whose melodies would be hurricane-like, not
ieolian. The illusion vanishes the farther down
or up one sails; it is trapped at its best near
Staten Island.
The coast-line of Brooklyn does not lend itself
to optical enchantment. But it is not more
depressing than, say, the docks of London after
you leave Blackfriars Bridge going down Green-
wich way. Brooklyn is more cheerful because
of the greater spaces of waterway, because
of more diversity as to sky-line. In London
the heavens seem closer to earth, the sky
ISO
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
not as far away as ours. High buildings are
rare along the Thames, while Brooklyn boasts
many. The time is not long since the Hotel
Margaret was the proud monarch of all it sur-
veyed across the harbour. Now it has numerous
rivals. They are beginning to string down the
shore and run a race with the church spires that
gave to the town of Beecher and Talmage its
nickname. With the picturesque villas and the
old fort, the interest merges into the strand,
into the superior beauties of Bath Beach and
Norton Point,
The same old iron steamboats, with the same
old band of itinerant musicians, arouse mem-
ories. They still play Non e ver, as they did a
quarter of a century ago. And more memories
when the Grand Republic passes cityward, its
flags and pennants flying, the venerable steamer
as attractive -looking as ever; dwarfed, to be
sure, since the advent of ocean leviathans, she
still makes a gallant showing.
Is our river-excursion service commensurate
with the volume of its business? It far out-
shines in efficiency and in the size of its craft
the Thames or the tiny boats on the Seine.
Nevertheless, our steamers are not equal to the
strain put upon them; they are old-fashioned,
cramped, and with mediocre accommodaUons.
They are crowded, too, beyond the danger-line.
A fire, a panic, a collision, and the inherent un-
worthiness of most of the excursion boats in our
harbour would be revealed in a moment. The
151
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
great god Chance is the patron saint of pilots
and owners. Votive candles in abundance
should be burned before his image by grateful
worshippers, for it is due to his graces that wc
somehow or other muddle through season after
season without serious accidents. But when
one arrives it is usually in the category of the
catastrophic.
As I first recall Coney Island, one could walk
on a wide, clean, shining space of sand from the
Point to the Oriental Hotel. No vile barracks
and booths snouted their noisome features to
the water's edge. There was no Sea Gate in
those days, and the top of the Island was prac-
tically barren and given over to fishermen. To-
day the villas and hotels at Sea Gate have im-
proved matters; but go up the beach a bit, and
what disillusionment follows!
From where the Brighton bathing pavilion
stands, down as far as Ravenhall's, is the cra-
ziest collection of tumble-down hovels — you
can't dignify them with any other term — that
ever disgraced a beautiful sea-view. There are
exceptions: the Oriental Hotel, — which hasn't
changed, — the Brighton BeachHotel, the several
large casinos and restaurants clustering about
the end of the ocean boulevard, and also the
municipal bath-house, a building worthy of its
purpose. I may have omitted a few others, and
I'm duly sorry in advance; yet do I cling to
my behef that if the whole horrible aggregation
of shanties, low resorts, shacks masquerading
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
as hotels, and the rest were swept off the earth
by some beneficent visitation of Providence,
the thanksgivings of the community would be in
order.
This sounds selfish, but it's not a question of
personal feeling; it is a pestilential fact that the
municipal authorities tolerate such a plague —
for it is a centre of moral and physical infection
— - on the very heels of the city. This rings of
humbug "uplift," but it is the naked truth.
Privileges usurped from the pubhc are granted
to a lot of greedy money-muckers who bam-
boozle the people. The poor, more than the
rich, rob the poor.
But the people, the poor people ! Must they
be deprived of their day's outing, of the inno-
cent, idiotic joys of dear, dear old Coney? You
know the senrimental cant of the East Side
sociologist and the friend of the "peepul." No,
this is no attempt to depreciate the enjoyment
of the masses and classes (the latter are much
given to visiting the Island as a sort of vicious
open-air slumming spot), there is more than one
centre of amusement — unhke Sodom, Coney
Island can boast at least ten good inhabitants
— -but they only serve to set off the repulsive
qualities of their neighbours.
I know that you can't make the public enjoy
the more refined pleasures of a beach free from
vulgarity and rapacious beach-combers, male
and female, unless it so wishes. Even mules
will not drink unless thirsty. The Montessori
153
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
method applied to an army of excursionists
would be ludicrous; it's a sufficient infliction on
children. In a word, it is not a. question of re-
striction but of regulation; decency, good taste,
and semibarbarism should not be allowed to
go unchecked. Coney Island to-day, despite
the efficiency of the police, is a disgrace to our
civilisation. It should be abolished and some-
thing else substituted.
And now, having abolished the eyesore by a
mere waving of my wish-wand, let me tell you
of the Joys I experienced after I had landed at
the Steeplechase Park pier in company with
some hundreds of fellow lunatics of all ages and
conditions, for when you are at Coney you cast
aside your hampering reason and become a plain
lunaric. It was a great French writer who ad-
vised his readers to make of themselves beasts
from time to time, to kick over the slow and
painful step-ladder of moral restraint and revert
to the normal animal from which we evolved.
It is never a difficult precept to follow, although
the writer didn't mean his text to be exactly in-
terpreted as I am now doing.
After the species of straitjacket that we wear
in every-day life is removed at such Saturnalia
as Coney Island, the human animal emerges in
a not precisely winning guise. He and she and
the brats are a mixture that sets you thinking
over the idle boast that our century is the
flowering of culture. As Gustave Flaubert says :
"The patriot doesn't always smell nice."
154
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
Again you think — cleanliness is greater than
godliness, and if maniind were friendlier to
soap this old globe of ours would be a sweeter
place to live on. But where can they keep
cleaner than at the seaside, and what seaside is
so cheap, so near by as Coney? Sound and un-
answerable arguments. The man with the
Brobdingnagian mouth who salutes you from
the signs as you enter the portal of Steeplechase
would smile still wider if you attempted to
answer them. So let us throw logic to the dogs
and simply be happy because we are alive, be-
cause the wind is not only in the heather, brother,
but because the smell of the frankfurter "dog"
as it sizzles over the fire ascends to eager nos-
trils on the dock.
The fisherman sits line in hand as we pass; a
sign infonns that there are twenty-five thousand
bathing-suits to hire, and we listlessly gaze at the
hulk of the only American vessel captured in the
war with Spain. The barkers arouse us. We
buy a string of parti-coloured tickets. They are
so many keys that unlock to us the magic cham-
bers of this paradise of secular joys and terrors.
You may swim or guzzle; on the hard backs of
iron steeds, to the accompaniment of bedlam
music, you may caracole or go plunging down
perilous declivities, swinging into the gloom of
sinister turmels or, perched aloft, be the envy
of small boys.
There is an Italian garden where basket
parties are forbidden — the only spot in the es-
155
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
tablishment — and a vast hall where, as if prac-
tising the attitudes and steps of some strange
religious cult, youths and maidens indulge in
simian gestures and in native buffoonery. Food,
mountains of it, is cooking. The odour ascends
to the stars; but you forget as in a monster
wheel human beings are swung in a giant drde.
Coasting parties clatter by or else are shot
down a chute into irritated water. Every de-
vice imaginable by which man may be separated
from his dimes without adequate return is in
operation. You weigh yourself or get it guessed;
you go into funny houses — oh, the mockery
of the title ! — and later are tumbled into the
open, insulted, mortified, disgusted, angry, and
— laughing. What sights you have seen in
that prison-house, what gentlewomen — with
shrill voices — desperately holding on to their
skirts and their chewing-gum.
What I can't understand is the lure of the
Island for the people who come. Why, after
the hot, narrow, noisy, dirty streets of the city,
do these same people crowd into the narrower,
hotter, noisier, dirtier, wooden alleys of Coney?
Is the wretched, Cheap John fair, with the
ghastly rubbish for a sale, the magnet? Or is
it just the gregariousness of the human animal ?
They leave dirt and disorder to go to greater
disorder and dirt. The sky is bluer, but they
don't look at the sky; clam chowder is a more
agreeable spectacle; and the smacking of a
thousand lips as throats gurgle with the suspi-
■S6
d by Google
CONEY ISLAND
dous compound is welcome to the ears of them
that pocket the cash.
How's that for a rhythmic cadence after the
manner of Flaubert?
The iate Jacob Riis once told me that many
times he despaired at the apparent hopelessness
of his efforts to instil the love of cleanliness
among his poor. To their ancient habits these
people revert, like the beast-folk in H. G. Wells's
The Island of Doctor Moreau. And at Coney
Island where the mob is thickest, where your
ear-drums are shattered by steam-organs, sheet-
iron bands, and the yelling of barkers, the
"people" hurry. I looked, as others before me
have looked, for Walt Whitman's "powerful
imeducated persons," but in vain. By way of
compensation every one seemed content.
But the joylessness of it all ! The miserable
children, sick from their tenements, sit on dirty
newspapers spread on the dirty sand and in the
poisonous blaze of the sun — for some reason
this sun is supposed to kill in town but will work
wonders at the beach. What kind of food is
swallowed I leave to your imagination. The
place should be called Ptomaines Beach. Fam-
ily parties with baskets (ever welcome) are bet-
ter off; they know what they swallow.
I looked up my orchestra of sea food and
found it. I confess I enjoyed its crabbed music.
Once indoors, away from the glare and roar,
your nerves begin to simmer and your throat
craves the cool of an element not washing the
157
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
front door of the hotel. Then you try to think.
Impossible. It is a world of screams and hoot-
ings.
Farther up at Brighton matters improve,
though wooden sheds disgrace the beach and
bar people from its use, I sighed over — I
always do — the thought of 1888 and the pa-
vilion at Brighton Beach where Anton Seidl
gave us ambrosial music. Coney Island was as
bad as it is to-day, but the Seidl music furnished
an oasis in a dreary desert of vulgarity. There
were some New Yorkers ahve in those dear but
distant days. New York was not yet an open,
noisy trench; nor was it then the dumping-
ground of the cosmos. However, I am not a
pessimist, and if I rail at the plague spot, Coney
Island, it is with the hope that some day it will
vanish and be succeeded by pleasant parks,
trees, sea-walls, and stone walks. This madland
of lunatics, who must go up in the air, down in
the earth, who must have clatter and dirt, might
be relegated elsewhither. Certainly people don't
go to Coney for the sea or the air or the view.
If the worthy ladies and "upUfters" of inde-
terminate sex (chiefly old women in trousers)
would turn their attention to miaking the seaside
beautiful, or if not beautiful then decent, they
would justify their civic existence. Here is
where the busy female, with or without a ballot,
can come in. A new and attractive Coney
Island should be their slogan. But the public
likes to be fooled, swindled — alas !
158
d by Google
CONEY ISLAND
Where stood the old Manhattan Hotel Is
now a comely terrace which, when the trees have
grown, will be a garden by the sea. The bath-
ing pavilion is still there — too small for its
clientele, yet cleaner than Brighton and less
populated. As I no longer bathe at the beach,
I hold no brief for any particular location, I
am stating the bald, unflattering facts.
There is Brighton, England, as an example
to emulate. What a beautiful boulevard by the
water it has built, so satisfying in its solidity
and spaciousness. The hotels are massive, the
view unobstructed. Ostend and Scheveningen,
two other European resorts, are also examples
for the heedless and conceited public administra-
tors who let our beaches go to rack and ruin or
evade the issue by erecting temporary structures.
That's why so many Americans go to Europe
in the summer. They get something for theh
money.
But if you want to experience the "emotion
of multitude," there is no spot on earth for the
purpose like Coney Island.
II
AT NIGHT
It was the hottest night of the summer at
Coney Island. All day a steaming curtain of
mist hid the sun from the eyes of men and
and children; yet proved no shield
159
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
against the blasting heat. Humidity and not
the sun-rays had been the enemy. And when
a claret-coloured disk showed dully through the
nacreous vapours jiist before setting we knew
that the night would bring httle respite from
the horror of the waking hours. It was a time
to try men's nerves. The average obligations
of life had faded into the abyss of general indif-
ference, one that had absorbed the exactions of
daily behaviour — politeness, order, sobriety,
and decency. Add a few notches upward on
the thermometer, and mankind soon reverts to
the habits and conditions of his primitive an-
cestors. The ape, the tiger, and the jackal in
all of us come to the surface with shocking ra-
pidity. We are, in a reasonable analysis, the
victims of our environment, the slaves of tem-
perature. Heat and cold have produced the
African and the Laplander. At Coney Island
during a torrid spell we are very near the soil;
we cast to the winds modesty, prudence, and
dignity. Then, life is worth living only when
stripped to the skin.
Three seasons had I passed without a visit to
this astonishing bedlam, yet I found the place
well-nigh unrecognisable. Knowing old Coney
Island, the magnitude of its changes did not so
much amaze and terrify me. One should never
be amazed in America. After an hour's hasty
survey, Atlantic City seemed a normal spot.
Broad stretches of board walk, long, sweeping
beaches, space to turn about — these and other
1 60
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
items might be added. But at Coney Island
the cramped positions one must assmne to stand
or move, the fierce warfare of humanity as it
forces its way along the streets or into the crazy
shows — surely conceived by madmen for mad-
men — the indescribable and hideous symphony
of noise running the gamut from shrill steam-
whistles to the diapasonic roar of machinery;
decidedly the entire place produced the sensa-
tion of abnormality, of horrible joys grabbed at
by a savage horde of barbarians, incapable of
repose even in their moments of leisure. Some
one has said that the Englishman takes his
pleasures sadly; then we must take ours by
rude assault. All Coney Island reminded me
of a disturbed ant-heap, the human ants fero-
cious in their efforts to make confusion thrice con-
founded, to heap up horrors of sound and of sight.
There must be in every one, no matter how
phlegmatic, a residuum of energy which may boil
over when some exciting event knocks at the
door of our being. It is, psychologists assure
us, the play-instinct of the animal in us that
delights in games innocent and dangerous. If
forty thousand people assemble to see a game of
baseball, how many more would gather with
feverish gaiety if there were a surety of the um-
pire's death at every game ? The Romans daily
witnessed men and women destroyed in the
arena of their circus — witnessed it with a sat-
isfaction esthetic and profound. The reason
was not that they were less civilised than the
i6i
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
modems, but only more frank. Their play-
instinct was more fully developed and the clas-
sical world was not hampered by our moral
prejudices.
As CTuelty is proscribed among highly dv-
ilised nations to-day — the game of life being
so vilely cruel that the arena with its bulls and
tigers is unnecessary — our play-instinct finds
vent in a species of diversion that must not be
examined too closely, as it verges perilously on
idiocy. Coney Island is only another name for
topsyturvydom. There the true becomes the
grotesque, the vision of a maniac. Else why
those nerve-racking entertainments, ends of the
world, creations, heUs, heavens, fantastic trips
to ugly lands, panoramas of sheer madness,
flights through the air in boats, through water
in sleds, on the earth in toy trains ! Unreality
is as greedily craved by the mob as alcohol by
the dipsomaniac; indeed, the jumbled night-
mares of a morphine eater are actually realised
at Luna Park, Every angle reveals some new
horror. Mechanical waterfalls, with women and
children racing around curving, tumbling floods;
elephants tramping ponderously through streets
that are a bewildering muddle of many nations,
many architectures; deeds of Western violence
and robbery, illustrated with a realism that is
positively enthralling; Japanese and Irish, Ger-
mans and Indians, Hindus and Italians, cats
and girls and ponies and — the list sets whirring
the wheels of the biggest of dictionaries.
162
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
In Dreamland there is a white tower that
might rear itself in Seville and cause no com-
ment. (This was so before fire destroyed the
place.) Hemming it about are walls of mon-
strosities — laughable, shocking, sinister, and
desperately depressing. In the centre flying
boats cleave the air; from the top of a crimson
lighthouse flat, sled-like barges plunge down a
liquid railroad, while from every cavern issue
screams of tortured and delighted humans and
the hoarse barking of men with megaphones.
They assault your ears with their invitations,
protestations, and blasphemies. You are con-
jured to "go to Hell — ^gate"; you are singled
out by some brawny individual with threaten-
ing intonations and bade enter the animal show
where a lion or a tiger is warranted to claw a
keeper at least once a day. The glare is ap-
palling, the sky a metallic blue, the sun a slayer.
And then the innumerable distractions of
the animated walks, the dwarfs and the dogs,
the horses and the miniature railway. Inside the
various buildings you may see the cosmos in
the act of formation, or San Francisco destroyed
by fire and quake; the end of hfe, organic and
inorganic, is displayed for a modest pittance;
you may sleigh in Switzerland or take a lulling
ride in Venetian gondolas. But nothing is real.
Doubtless the crowd would be disappointed by
a glimpse of the real Venice, the real Switzer-
land, the real hell, the real heaven. Everything
is the reflection of a cracked mirror held in the
163
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
hand of the clever showman, who, knowing us
as children of a larger growth, compounds his
mess, bizarre and ridiculous, accordingly. There
is little need to ponder the whys and wherefores
of our aberrancy. Once en masse, humanity
sheds its civilisation and becomes half child,
half savage. In the theatres the gentlest are
swayed by a sort of mob mania and delight in
scenes of cruelty and bloodshed — though at
home the sight of a canary with a broken wing
sets stirring in us tender sympathy. A crowd
seldom reasons. It will lynch an innocent man
or glorify a scamp politician with equal facility.
Hence the monstrous debauch of the fancy at
Coney Island, where New York chases its chi-
mera of pleasure.
Nevertheless, with all its perversion, its ob-
lique image of life, is Coney Island much madder
than the Stock Exchange, the prize-ring, roller-
skating, a fashionable cotillion, a political mass-
meeting, or some theatrical performances ? Again
I must bid you to remember that everything
is relative; that the morals of one age are the
crimes of another; that I am, comparatively
speaking, a stranger to our summer cities and
perhaps not peculiarly well fitted to judge of
such an astounding institution as Coney Island,
The madness converges below Brighton, reach-
ing its apex on Surf Avenue, Jammed with plea-
sure-seekers, fringed by "fakers" and their ut-
terly abominable wares. Farther up the beach
order reigns, men and women are clothed in
164
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
their right mind, walk, talk, and act rationally.
At the Oriental dignity prevails- Few people
are to be seen. The place slumbers. You feel
that in such a hotel you may live as you wish.
Manhattan, no longer queen of the beaches, has
its interest. The bathing attracts. The wide
porches and the dining couples are pleasing to
see. A theatre there is for those to whom the
ocean is not a stimulating spectacle. Walk
farther. We reach Brighton. There the pot
begins to bubblet A smaller Coney confronts
you. You pass on. Stopping before what was
once Anton Seidl's music pavilion, you indulge,
more sadly than sentimentally, in memories of
those evenings, over two decades ago, when the
sound of the waves formed a background for
the dead 'master's music-making ^ Beethoven
and Wagner and Liszt.
Instead of Briinnhilde and her sisters' wild
ride, we hear the wooden horse orchestrion
screeching "Meet Me at the Church." Move
on? Has public musical taste moved with the
years? Meet me at the madhouse ! We reach
the Boulevard and note its agreeable vastness.
The sun has set and the world is become sud-
denly afire.
Then Coney Island, with its vulgarity, its
babble and tumult, is a glorified city of flame.
But don't go too near it; your wings will easily
singe on the broad avenue where beer, sausage,
fruit, pop-corn, candy, flapjacks, green corn, and
again beer, rule the appetites of the multitude.
d by Google
CONEY ISLAND
After seeing the aerial magic of that great pyro-
technic artist Pain, a man wlio could, if he so
desired, create a new species of art, and his noc-
turnes of Jewelled fire, you wonder why the entire
beach is not called Fire Island. The view of
Luna Park from Sheepshead Bay suggests a
cemetery of fire, the tombs, turrets, and towers
illuminated, and mortuary shafts of flame. At
Dreamland the little lighthouse is a scarlet in-
candescence. The big building stands a daz-
zhng apparition for men on ships and steamers
out at sea. Everything is fretted with fire-
Fire delicately etches som_e fairy structure; fire
outlines an Oriental gateway; fire runs like a
musical scale through many octaves, the dark-
ness crowding it, the mist blurring it. Fire is
the god of Coney Island after sundown, and fire
was its god this night, the hottest of the summer.
At ten o'clock the crowds had not abated.
Noise still reigned over the Bowery, and the
caf^s, restaurants, dens, and shows were full of
gabbling, eating, drinking, cursing, and laugh-
ing folk. I had intended to return either to my
hotel or to New York, but the heat pinioned
my will. In company with thousands, I strolled
the beach near the Boulevard. An amiable
policeman told me that few people would go
back to the city, that, hot as it was at Coney,
the East Side was more stifling. The sight of
cars coming down crowded at eleven o'clock and
returning half-full at midnight determined my
plan of action. I went to my hotel, put on a
i66
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
sweater and a cap, changed a bill into silver, and
with a stick for company I returned to the West
End, There were more people than before,
though it was nearly one o'clock and the lights
were beginning to dim. I searched for the
friendly policeman, but instead found a surly
one, who warned me that it would be a risk to
venture upon the beach if I had a watch or
money. I longed for a Josiah Flynt who would
pilot me through this jungle of humanity. The
heat was depressing and mosquitoes made us
miserable. They knew me for a fresh comer
and exacted a sorry toll from my hands, neck,
and face. I wavered in my resolution to spend
the night on the beach, I had left my rake at
home, and as I am not a socialist I could not
emulate the performances of the "white mice,"
as the East Side names the good, well-dressed
young men and women of means who make
sociolo^cal calls on them, note-books in their
hands, curiosity in their eyes, and burning en-
thusiasm in their hearts.
All the lights of the pleasure palaces were ex-
tinguished. Across at Riccadonna's there was
still a hght, and peering over the Brighton pa-
vihon there was a pillar of luminosity that looked
a cross between a corn-cob and a thermometer
afire. I sat down on the sand. I would stay
out the night. And then I began to look about
me. In Hyde Park, London, I had seen hun-
dreds of vagabonds huddled in the grass, their
clothes mere rags, their attitudes those of death,
167
d by Google
CONEY ISLAND
but nothing in England or America can match
what I saw this particujar night. While the
poorer classes predominated, there was little
suggestion of abject pauperism. Many seemed
gay. The white dresses of the women and
children relieved the sombre masses of black
men, who, though coatless for the most part,
made black splotches on the sand. In serried
array they lay; there was no order in their po-
sition, yet a short distance away they gave the
impression of an army at rest. The entire
beach was thick with humanity. At close
range it resolved itself in groups, sweethearts in
pairs, families of three or four, six or seven,
planted close together. With care, hesitation,
and dif&culty I navigated around these islets of
flesh and blood. Sometimes I stumbled over a
foot or an arm. Once I kicked a head, and I
was cursed many times and vigorously cursed.
But I persisted. Like the "white mice," I was
there to see. Policemen plodded through the
crowds, and if there was undue hilarity warned
the offenders in a low voice. But it was im-
possible for such a large body of people to be
more orderly, more decent. I determined to
prowl down the lower beach, between the
Boulevard and Sea Gate.
My sporting instinct came to the surface.
Here was game. Not in the immemorial mob,
joking and snoring, shrieking and buzzing,
would I find what I sought. I tried to pass
under the bathing-houses, but so densely packed
i68
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
were the paths that I was threatened by a dozen
harsh voices. So I pursued a safer way, down
Surf Avenue- It was still filled with people —
men and women, battered, bleary, drunk or
tired, dragged their weary paces, regarding each
other as do wolves, ready to spring. We all
felt like sticky August salt. Reaching the
beach again, I was too fatigued to walk farther.
I propped my head against the wooden pillar of
an old bath-house and my eyes began to droop.
I heard without a quiver of interest the sudden
scream of a woman followed by ominous bass
laughter. Some one plucked a banjo. Dogs
barked. A hymn rose on the hot air. Around
me it was like a battle-field of the slain. A
curious drone was in the air; it was the monster
breathing. A muggy moon shone intermittently
over us, its bleached rays painting in one ghastly
tone the upturned faces of the sleepers. The
stale, sour, rank smell of wretched mankind
poisoned the atmosphere, thick with sultry
vapours. I wished royself home.
Then a gentle voice said — the accent was
slightly foreign:
"What a sight the poor make in the moon-
light!" I did not turn, but answered that I
had thought that same thing. The voice pro-
ceeded. It was not strong, though a resonant
barytone:
"You are alone, good sir; but look at my
brood, and don't wonder at people dying with-
out asking the world's pernussion."
.69
d by Google
CONEY ISLAND
I half arose, expecting that it was a beggar
who addressed me. A child began whimpering.
I saw a woman on her side holding with relaxed
grasp this crying infant — the wail was hardly
perceptible above the swish of the surf. Near
her were two older children. The man who had
spoken to me was sitting, his head plunged
ahnost between his knees, his skinny hands sup-
porting his head. He was exceedingly poor,
wearing only a ragged shirt and trousers. His
head was large and curly with thick hair. He
could not have been more than forty. When he
lifted his head his eyes in the moonshine were
like two red cinders. A wild beast — and with
a gentle, even cultivated, voice. I went over
to him. The child still moaned as the fingers
of the exhausted woman opened farther. I
forgot sociology and wondered if here was a
case of starvation — a hungry family in all the
Gargantuan feast of Coney Island. The idea
was horrible.
"What's the matter, Batiushka?" I asked,
adopting a familiar form of Russian salutation.
He fell on his knees.
"Brother," he panted, "are you a Russian?
A Jew? Help us. We have not eaten since
yesterday moming." I confess I shuddered. I
confess also that I didn't believe him. A man,
a Jewish man with a family, in New York and
starving ! New York, with its rich charitable
institutions ! And this fellow tried to make me
think that he needed food; that his wife and
170
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
children needed food ! I had eaten my dinner
at the Manhattan, and I enjoyed that selfish
credulity which an able-bodied gourmand feels
when he is approached by some one who has
tasted no food for days.
And this miserable being came nearer to me,
feebly, supplicatingly. His eyes were like red
dots in the head of a famished animal. His hot
breath issued as from an open grave. The
child sobbed louder, and the mother, half awake,
clutched it. She sat up. The other two chil-
dren arose, alarmed, silent. It was too much for
my pampered nerves. Bidding the man remain
where he was, I ran across the beach to the
Bowery and into a little saloon full of half-
drunken, vicious people. Ten minutes later
we sat at an improvised supper of pretzels, cold
fish, and beer. I knew this family wouldn't
touch anything else. Starvation itself would not
force them to break their tribal law. I have
an idea that I was thirsty myself, for I enjoyed
the flat beer and I enjoyed the subdued ferocity
with which the family ate and drank. The
baby did not stir. It had fallen asleep. The
mother, a worn-out woman, still young, me-
chanically put the food into her mouth, not
looking at us, not speaking to the two girls.
She was numbed by hunger and heat.
"See here, what's your name?" I asked.
"My name," he stammered, "is Hyman." "I
mean your family name," I demanded; "Hy-
man is your first name." He gave me a keen
171
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
glance. Then he quietly replied: "You are
right. My full name is Hyman Levin." "Have
you a home ? " I pursued. I felt my importance.
I was playing the r6Ie of benefactor, and what
philanthropist, great or small, does not desire
the worth of his money? Besides, it is good
policy to cross-examine a starving man. He
appreciates your interest at such a time. (Oh,
what smiling villains are we all !)
" I live in an alley near Oliver Street. Usually
we go to the recreation pier near Peck Slip, but
the child was so sick that I came down here last
night." "Last night?" "Yes, I pawned my
coat to get the car fare."
This is a truthful report of the man's conver-
sation. He was out of work — sickness — and
he had pawned, piece by piece, bit by bit, every-
thing in the house. His wife went to the pawn-
house, while he, scarcely able to hold up his
head, watched the baby. The children lived
in the streets, feeding at the garbage cans,
thankful for such a chance. Is this exaggera-
tion? If you think so, then you don't know
your own city. Such things happen every day.
The neighbours were kind, especially the Irish.
But they, too, could scarcely boast more than
one meal a day. Hyman coughed; he evidently
was marked for the death of a consumptive.
Yet he fought on. The charities were available
— for a time. But funds ran low; public in-
terest also ran low. The Levins found them-
selves within five days of rent time in their room,
173
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
a musty, dirty garret. Life from heat and in-
suffident food became intolerable, and, half
crazed with fever, on that hot Monday, they
contrived to reach the seashore. With only a
few pennies, yet they were happier; they could
at least breathe fresh air, see the water. But
so forbidding was the appearance of this un-
happy family that they were warned off the
board walk and frightened away from the crowd
of pleasure-seekers. We do not care to see these
death's-heads at our feasts. Finally they found
refuge under the bath-house, and there I met
them.
Worse remains. When the dawn came up
softly like the vanguard of an army without
banners I shook the sleeping Hyman. I awoke
the woman. I had heard queer sounds in the
throat of the child, noises like water slowly
dripping into a well. Why should I go on?
The child was dead, and I was not surprised.
Nor were the parents. They made no outcry,
but covered the little thing with the mother's
old pelisse. Stunned by their cumulative mis-
fortunes, this death was accepted with the
fatalism of a Russian. I told a pohceman the
story, and a half-hour later the entire family was
carted away with the promise that they would
be given food and shelter.
There was a bitter taste in ray mouth. If a
poor devil of a tramp or a working man had met
me then I should not have been able to look
either one in the eye. Oh, how cheap is charity !
173
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
The silver I spent did not relieve the Levins.
They had scarcely bade me good-bye, so op-
pressed were they by their sorrow, their shame.
They must have hated me. The man was not
ignorant. His English betrayed a reader. He
had conversed well about Gorky and Tolstoy, had
read Karl Marx, and knew the names of all his
saints of anarchy. A socialist ? I do not know.
I only know that your bookish theories go to
smash when you hear a man's voice thrill with
anguish. A pauper, you say, a lazy, good-for-
nothing? Ay, perhaps he was — perhaps they
all are; but drunkard, thief, even murderer,
must they starve? Anarchs and infidels? So
were the Americans of 1776, according to the
English.
Remember what Richard Jeffries wrote:
"Food and drink, roof and clothes are the in-
alienable right of every chQd born into the light.
If the world does not provide it freely — not as
a grudging gift, but as a right, as a son of the
house sits down to breakfast ^ then is the
world mad. ... I verily believe that the earth
in one year produces enough food to last for
thirty. Why, then, have we not enough? . . ,
It is not the pauper — oh, inexpressibly wicked
word ! — it is the well-to-do who are the criminal
classes." Grant Allen said that all men are
born free and unequal. True. But should they
be allowed to want for bread?
Don't ask me the remedy, I am neither a
professional prophet nor a socialist. Don't
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
throw socialism at my head. Ready-made
prophylactics smell suspiciously. The "dismal
science" scares me. Before the fatal words
" unearned increment " I retreat. And the
socialist's conception of the state approaches
singularly close to the old conception of mon-
archy, I know that there are many Levins in
New York, of many nationalities. Starve in
New York, the abundant city, where "God's
in the world to-day"? Impossible! cry the
sentimentalists. I didn't believe it, either,
until I met the Levins. That adventure has
cured me of aU foolish optimistic boasting.
I have told the story plainly. I realised of
how little account to people in such awful
straits is the clangour of contending political
parties. Of what interest to a man, his belly
pinched by starvation, whether one Jack in
office is ousted by another Jack who desires the
place; whether this one is President, that one
is governor? A flare of fireworks, a river of
beer, on the East Side for a night, and the people
are forgotten by their masters. It has been so
always; for eternity it will endure. Does not
Campanella's sonnet sing:
The people is a beast of muddy brain
, That knows not its own strength, and therefore stands
■ Loaded with wood and atone;
Its own are all things between earth and Heaven;
But this it knows not, and if one arise
To tell this truth it kilb him unforgiven.
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
Grunting, growling, spitting, coughing, the
huge anny of thousands began in maelstrom
fashion to move citjTvard, Some stopped at
the half-way house of whisky; many break-
fasted, but the main body made a dash for the
cars. Tlie night had been a trying one, the new
day did not promise; yet it was a new day, and
with it a flock of fresh hopes was bom. The
crowd seemed rested; in its eyes was the lust of
life, and it was absolutely good-humoured. I
heard a vague tale about a man-hunt during the
night- — how a thief had been chased with
stones and clubs until, reaching Sea Gate, he
had boldly plunged into the water and disap-
peared. His hawk-like features, the colour of
clay from fright, had impressed the old man who
related the story. In return I told the Levins'
heart-breaking tale, and he did not appear much
interested. What signified to all those strong,
bustling men and women the death of a tiny
girl baby — ■ dead and hardly clad in a wisp of
blackened canvas?
"Better dead!" The mobs thickened. Po-
licemen fought them into line. The hot sun
arose, in company with the penetrating odours
of bad cofEee and greasy crullers. Another day's
labour was arrived. Soon would appear the first
detachment of women and children sick from the
night in the city. Soon would be heard the
howHng of the fakers: "Go to Hell, go to Hell —
gate!"
I felt that I had been very near it, that I had
176
dbyGoogle
CONEY ISLAND
seen a new Coney Island. I went home, after
this, the most miserable night of my life — mis-
erable because my nerves were out of gear, I
was once more the normal, selfish man, think-
ing of his bed, of his breakfast. I had, of course,
quite forgotten the Levins.
dbyGoogle
Hosted by Google
CERTAIN EUROPEAN CITIES
BEFORE THE WAR
d by Google
d by Google
VIENNA
I
I ALWAYS know when I am in Austria; the
coffee is much better than the watery, flavour-
less compound you are offered in Germany.
Perhaps the sharper accents of the Viennese
cuisine may not appeal to you — the German
cookery by comparison is colourless — but the
superiority of the coffee and pastry is manifest.
I am sure this is not a happy way of begin-
ning to sing the praises of Vienna, the magnifi-
cent; but, after all, sufficient for the day is the
Baedeker thereof. Open that invaluable vol-
ume penned by a man and brother, and you will
find sound advice as to seeing Vienna and its
environs in three days, more or less. Now I
submit that is not the way to do it; ten years
in the Austrian capital wouldn't exhaust its
charms, yet as most travellers allow themselves
about a week or ten day^, it is best to follow the
advice of good old Br'er Baedeker. And here
I leave him, for I am essentially a rambler, a
prowler, lazy, leisurely curious, and seldom
sorry when it's dinner time. (Mrs. Ralph Waldo
Emerson once remarked that Thoreau never
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
went beyond the sound of the dinner horn, and
who am I to be ashamed of a similar weakness ?)
Of course, the proper manner of writing on
such a resounding theme as Vienna would be to
begin, as do ajl the guides and guide-books, with
St. Stephen's Cathedral (old "Steffel," as it is
called by the natives) for the central point of
departure, trailing around the churches, trapes-
ing through the art galleries, and finally going
to the Prater.
You recall the popular lecturer, the spot-light,
the "ladies and gentlemen, this evening we pro-
pose to visit the city on the blue Danube. To
the right you may notice the spire of the won-
drously beautiful cathedral erected in the year"
— click, and the screen shows you the church !
The stomach of Vienna first interested me, not
its soul, and after a ride around the city in the
"saloon carriage" of the Municipal Street Rail-
way line I started out to investigate the places
wherein Vienna eats and drinks. Please par-
don this unconventional method. Doesn't a
traveller when arriving in a city eat and drink
before he goes sightseeing?
Let me hasten to tell you that I have been in
Vienna both winter and summer. The latter
season is incomparably the better time to enjoy
the town, but if you haven't been there in win-
ter you only know Vienna one-half.
June is lovely. December more brilliant,
more stimulating. I confess at the outset I like
the Austrian kitchen better than the German.
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
Hungary lends her paprika, her paprika-chicken,
her gulyas, her Esterhazy roast, and Vienna
has her bread, her real Schnitzel, various stews,
risi-bisi (rice and peas), suckling pig, splendid
fish, sausages, rich soups — Minestra, an [Ital-
ian variety — and dumplings in a dozen shapes.
And Apfelstrudel ! And Kaiserschmarn ! A half
hundred delicious desserts, with the aroma of
coffee as an aureole at the close of the meal (or
at five in the afternoon). Nevertheless, there is
seldom repletion; you are satisfied with the
flavouring and do not, as in Germany, eat, eat,
eat, as if in search of something you seldom find.
If I whispered that the difference between
German and Austrian cookery depended upon
butter and the judicious use of the humble
onion you would, perhaps, smile. Yet is it so.
The onion and its more athleric relative, garlic,
is the foundational base of not only Austrian
but the best cuisines in the world. I see you
hold up hands of horror, nevertheless a nuance
of garlic lends many a meal its flavour. (I said
a nuance !) It is the chromatic scale in the
harmonies of taste. Viennese cooks know this,
and without your leave employ that so-called
offensive vegetable, the onion, so skilfully that
you eat and admire.
Naturally no one wil! admit this, tourists are
so scared of the health-giving product. But my
mouth still waters over my memories. The noble
art of glutting is cultivated in all Austria.
I strolled from Sachet's on the Augustiner-
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
strasse, where the menu is first-class, high in
price, the wines impeccable, over to Hartmann's
on the Ring, It is across the street from the
Grand Hotel, and I'll wager there is no restau-
rant in Vienna where one hears so much English
(usually American-English) as in this comfort-
able, comparatively cheap establishment. Its
cuisine is Austrian mixed with French. The
cooking is excellent and sets a pace. Meissl
and Schadn's on the Karntnerstrasse is typical
Viennese, with its suckling pig, risi-bisi, pickled
veal, and sauerkraut (such sublimated sauer-
kraut), to be had at far from high prices. The
Stephankeller (Caf^ de I'Europe) is another
meeting-ground for good livers. At Cause's,
the Rother Igel, the Rathhauskeller, you may
taste the wines of the country, rather too thin
and shrewd for my palate; Voslau, Gum-
poldskirchen, Nussberg, Klostemeuberg, Retz,
Pfaffstadt, Mailberg, and the heavier Dalmatian
vintages. As I stuck to my favourite beverage,
Pilsner, I can lay no claim to being an expert on
the subject of the wines; furthermore, my pro-
nounced taste for peppery, highly flavoured
food is hardly a criterion for the milder palates
of visitors from abroad. The big hotels know
this, and there you get the "international" cook-
ii^, which prevails over all Europe, even in the
dining-cars, a something that belongs to no na-
tion, neither French, German, nor English —
cosmopolitan, in a word. There are exceptions
in Vienna; for example, at the Bristol, with its
184
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
French chef, you fancy yourself in Paris at Pail-
lard's — that is to say, if you order a special
dinner. Otherwise one hotel table d'hdte is like
another: neither fish nor flesh, nor good red
herring.
But the Pilsner in Vienna ! That would need
a complete chapter. While it is not so super-
latively fine as at Prague, with that supernal
touch which never can be elsewhere duplicated,
it is wonderful enough, though I noted with
dismay, as I noted in Stuttgart, Munich, Dres-
den, and Berlin, that the invasion of the Amer-
ican had been fatal in the matter of tempera-
tures. The European now drinks his beer cold,
even icy. In few spots could I find the precise
degree of temperature at which Pilsner is at its
bloomiest.
I do not think it necessary here to allude to
the numerous beer restaurants, where all the
world, his wife, mother-in-law, and the children
eat daily and sip the almost non-alcoholic dark
and light brews. I speak of certain semisacred
houses where the rifual of beer-drinking is ob-
served, where at prescribed hours fanatics meet
and solemnly absorb the amber brew. Woe to
the waiter if the foam is not of the creamiest !
Woe to the host if any marked variation of tem-
perature is felt !
In a little old house, which might be called
"quaint," on a httle street near a Greek church,
is the Reichenberger or Grieschenbeisl. There
the best-kept Pilsner in Vienna may be found.
dbyGoOgle
VIENNA
There also many artists, actors, musicians as-
semble of nights, and a merry company it is.
However, Vienna is not a "late" city, as is,
for example, Berhn. At midnight the streets
are deserted except at Carnival time or New
Year's eve — last New Year's eve the crush
was as bad as on Broadway.
In Berlin I have seen intoxicated persons,
seldom in Vienna have I encountered one. The
point is significant, as is the agreeable cooking
of the city. Food plays a greater r61e in our
psychology than our thin-sidrmed idealists will
admit. Possibly our national cooking may be
the bar sinister in our artistic productivity, for
a country which is given over to fanatics and
prudes — in the domain of eating and drinking
— will never give birth to individual art.
H
The gayest city I have ever lived in is Vienna,
Paris is feverish. Paris takes its pleasures very
much as does New York, in a hurry, as if to
snatch at the fugitive moment and like Faust
cry: "Stay! Thou art so fair." Berlin, I found,
was too self-conscious, too cultured to relax,
while Munich is a trifle too so^y, too "wet."
Vienna, for me, hits the medium of gaiety with-
^out hectic symptoms and leisure without Prus-
sian stiffness. The elements of the Austrian race
are heterogeneous; the Slavic counts, and counts
the Magyar. The tongue is Germanic, the cul-
i86
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
ture is, minus a heavy Teutonic quality, also
Germanic; there is a lightness in the moral
atmosphere that might be called Gallic.
The Viennese man is an optimist. He re-
gards life not so steadily, or as a whole, but as
a gay fragment. Clouds gather, the storm
breal^, then the rain stops and the sun floats
once more in the blue. Let to-morrow take
care of itself, to-day we go to the Prater and
watch the wheels go round. This irresponsi-
bility is confined to no class. Whether all the
folk you see in the restaurants, caf6s, and gardens
can afford to spend money as they indubitably
do, I cannot pretend to know. They eat and
drink the best, and, as a native said to me, if they
were without a roof they would still go to the res-
taurants. Well fed, with good, flavoured food,
therefore eupeptic, not dji^peptic, the Viennese
are seemingly contented; they look so, and they
are always cheerful.
Their tobacco is better than the tobacco of
France or Germany — it is both odorous and
cheap. Coffee is the magnet late in the after-
noon, and it is difficult to get a seat after five
o'clock in any of the numerous places. I re-
member one caf6, on the Kamtnerstrasse, which
is appropriately called the Guckfenster, from
the windows of which you may stare at the
passing show. Every afternoon I went there
early so as to secure my favourite seat, and there
I sipped and stared and stared and sipped, and
in the dolce far niente I marvelled over the f util-
187
d by Google
VIENNA
ity of life, especially the futility of American life,
its hurry, bustle, money-making. In six months
I told myself I would be transformed into a
joyous looker-on in Vierma, quite oblivious to
the ambitions of the Western world.
Oh, how mistaken I was ! No one works
harder than the Vienna business man and
woman; their hours are at least a third longer
than the hours of an American, yet they contrive
so to space them that they appear to have limit-
less leisure. How do they do it? The climate
is soft, which allows of open-air life; the women
work more than the men; the piety of the peo-
ple at large is pronounced — the churches Sun-
day morning are as crowded as are the caf^s
Sunday afternoon — there is unmistakable pov-
erty, nevertheless the mercurial spirit prevails
everywhere.
It gives Vienna its primal charm, it hums in
the air. No wonder Johann Strauss composed
his music; no wonder the otherwise ponderous
Johannes Brahms preferred this spot to his birth-
place, Hamburg; no wonder Beethoven here
wrote the scherzi of his symphonies. Vienna
inspired these composers, as it inspired Mozart
and Schubert. Some of these musicians cursed
the frivolity of the capital, but her deep, abiding
charm held them close to her.
The obverse of the medal is this same frivolity.
But there is also an earnest intellectual and
artistic life. In one week last winter I attended
conferences by Gerhart Hauptmann, Geoi^
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
Brandes — the latter dealt with Goethe and
Strindberg — and I heard Moriz Rosenthal,
Eugen d'Albert, Godowsky, and the Rose quar-
tet, and attended a performance by the greatest
of orchestras, the Vienna Philharmonic, under
the leadership of Felix Weingartner, who gave
a reading of the Brahms fourth symphony (in
E minor), which, according to the interpreta-
tions of most conductors, is a grey-in-grey,
crabbed pattern, instead of the glowing, lumi-
nous and eloquently ejqjressive masterpiece it
became under the hands of Weingartner, Not
a bad record, is it, for the city on the brown
and turbid Danube?
Then there is the opera, there are the theatres,
and, to jump to the other side of the scale, there
are the medical schools and surgeons and phy-
sicians who have not their equal anywhere.
And the university life.
I only know Vienna superficially, the inner
social life not at all, but to my inexperienced
masculine eyes the Vienna woman is the best
dressed in the world after the American, {Paris
is, of course, hors concours.) There, again, the
touch is Gallic. The beauty of the Viennese
women is proverbial. That gipsy-like colouring,
hair, and eyes, the fresh complexions, the gen-
eral style — best described as fesch — is to be
found in no place but Vienna. The men dress
like Londoners, are more particular than the
Germans in the cut of their clothes, the colour of
their ties, and the set of their silk hats, A pros-
dbyGoOgle
VIENNA
perous, prodigal, vivacious population, hard as
nails if driving a bargain, as hospitable as can
be when business is over and the hour of recrea-
tion is at hand: I'heure exquise, not of absinthe,
but of coffee. And then there is Vienna, the
magnificent.
ni
Vienna, the magnificent ! I fear the approach
of the dithyrambic. Vienna is truly the city of
magnificent distances; not even Washington
deserves the title as much. Every vista has its
picture, either a church, a monument, a palace,
or a park. You range and range and seemingly
never exhaust the possibilities of the city. If
you pick out the green shade of the Prater on a
sunny day you presently find yourself in the
thick of life at the Wiirstl Prater, or Venedig in
Wien, a glorified Coney Island, Atlantic City,
Crystal Palace, and Vincennes gingerbread fair,
without either ocean or board walk. But gaiety
prevails. If you are in the mood historical you
have a field to work that is practically inex-
haustible. Esthetic cravings are satisfied by
the superb architecture, the ceaseless music-
making, the round of theatrical novelties — not
to mention the artistic acting — and the royal
museum, which houses so many old masters.
Of modern Viennese painting I can't say so
much; however, tastes differ. I prefer the sim-
plicities of Franz Defregger to the gorgeous
190
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
arabesques of Hans Makart. The mixture of
Celt, Roman, Slavic, and German in her veins
has made Austria singularly sensitive to foreign
influence. Under the Babenbergers she boasted
a Walther von der Vogelweide, and such a dra-
matic poet as Grillparzer or Anzengruber can
hardly be passed by. She almost starved
Beethoven, and by her neglect helped Hugo
Wolf, the composer, into madness. If you are
interested in the modern there is a gallery of
young talent, largely derivative, I admit, but
interesting. Arthur Schnitzler — whose work
has thus far not been adequately interpreted in
English — Hermann Bahr, Richard Beer-Hoff-
man, the author of the drama Der Graf von
Charolais, the clever novehst, Felix Salten, Hugo
von Hofmannsthal (Loris), the poet and libret-
tist of several Richard Strauss operas; Stefan
George, poet, are a few names I recall; and then
there are the poet J. J. David, the poet and
dramatist Glucksmann of the Volkstheater,
Karl Schoenherr, a Tyrolese, whose drama
stirred all Austria (Glaube und Heimat), and
many others. The special graciousness and
charm that are characteristic of Vienna may be
found best reflected in the writings of Arthur
Schnitzler,
For the sake of curiosity, I made a computa-
tion of the number of fountains, parks, churches,
etc., in Vienna. I discovered thirty-eight foun-
tains, imposing ones, I need hardly remind you.
The same figures cover the churches of every
191
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
creed, and of monuments there are eighty, pub-
lic parks thirty-nine, and I forget how many
palaces. It is the gigantic scale on wliich the city
is planned that impresses. London and Paris
are at times stuffy, but the light and air of
Vierma are so abundant that stuffiness is never
experienced. I don't particularly admire the
architecture of the residences; banal is the
word that best describes these edifices, not
always cheerful to gaze upon. There are too
few first-class hotels; Berfin beats all Europe in
its modern hotels, and Vienna is far behind
Berlin in the matter of apartments. In the
suburbs they are beginning to erect them. They
are not as comfortable, as commodious, nor so
cheap as in Berlin. In one I found that the
steam heat never sent the thermometer above
fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and despite the remon-
strances of the tenants the landlord was obdu-
rate in his refusal of more steam pressure. But
chilly rooms, ill-lighted, are not confined to
Vienna; London is as bad as Paris, and Berlin
is the most comfortable in this respect. No
doubt Vienna will march in the procession later.
In the parks and pubhc squares you see stat-
ues erected to the memory of celebrated men:
Beethoven (two), Brahms, Schubert, Bruckner,
Anzengruber, Goethe, Grillparzer, Gutenberg,
inventor of printing; Robert Hamerling, the
poet; Josef Haydn, Theodore Korner, Lenau,
poets; Makart, Schiller, Mozart, Strauss, and
Lanner are represented, and with them an army
dbyGoOgle
VIENNA
of royal mediocrities and municipal celebrities.
Think of the Central Cemetery, where is the
empty grave of Mozart; where are the remains
of Beethoven, Gluck, Franz Schubert, Johann
Strauss, near his friend Brahms, and where lie
such men as Von Suppe, Milloecker, Bruckner,
Herbeck, Hugo Wolf, Makart, Clement, and
the pedagogue Czerny! Vienna also honours
Hebbel and Lenau in an appropriate manner.
There is a Lisztgasse, named after the Hunga-
rian composer, and it may be remembered that
it was in Vienna that the youthful Chopin won
his first triumphs outade of provincial Warsaw,
There is a Beethovengang up on the Kahlen-
berg, outside of the city, a shady walk as you
ascend by the Schreiberbach, in which Bee-
thoven often strolled, hatless, singing to himself
the motives he was weaving in his skull. The
Viennese of his days pronounced him half mad.
Perhaps he was, but he was also Beethoven.
From the famous Karl Goldmark, the most ven-
erable of Austrian composers (since dead, 1915),
to the precocious composer, Erich Komgold,
the chain of active musical effort is unbroken.
Vienna is very musical, although I care less for
its opera-house than I did in the days when
Mahler and Weingartner reigned.
Instead of beginning a chant royal of admira-
tion for the cathedral, which is the "star" of
the sacerdotal architecture in Vienna, I prefer
to speak of the Karlskirche on the Karlsplatz,
y because its pompous splendour and com-
193
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
manding position impress one more than the
cathedral, too closely besieged by surrounding
buildings. There can be no comparisons as to
interiors — the miraculous altars and pulpits of
the cathedral bear off all honours, and while the
lace-like spires of the Votive Church are more
attractive than the Karl's Church, the latter has
an exotic semi-Asiatic exterior that fairly rivets
the eye. It is named after its donor, the Em-
peror Charles VI, and is a notable example of
German baroque. It was erected 1721-6, in
commemoration of the extermination of the
plague of 1716. There is an oval cupola; spiral-
shaped columns flank the main facade. They
are ornamented with basso-relievos and lantern-
crowned. A lunar-shaped portico. The rehefs
on the Trojan pillars show scenes from the life
of St. Carlo Borromeo by Mader and MattieUi.
An imperial circle crowns them. Low bell-
towers terminate on either side of the facade,
which form a vaulted entrance to the interior.
There is a great marble altar with a statue of
Borromeo. The frescoes are distinguished-
I am not in the least tempted by the desire to
tell you that Vienna was founded before the
Christian era and was known during the first cen-
tury A. D. as Vindobona, or that Marcus Aure-
lius is said to have died there. Ah, these wise
old guide-boobs ! — but I may dare to intimate
that the present Vienna owes most of its munici-
pal magnificence to the present Hapsburg, the
beloved Kaiser, who mounted the throne in 1848,
194
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
Franz Joseph I. (He at the present writing still
smokes the long rat-tail cigars with a strong tang
and drinks his glass of Pilsner daily.) He prac-
tically rebuilt the city.
In the Neuer Markt stands the old church of
the Capuchins, Maria zu den Engeln, and its
mortuary vaults hold much that is dear to the
old Emperor: his murdered empress, Elizabeth;
his ill-fated son, the Crown Prince Rodolph; the
unfortunate Maximilian, once Emperor of Mex-
ico, betrayed by the Emperor of the French,
Napoleon III — in whose veins no Bonaparte
blood flowed — also the tomb of the Duke of
Reichstadt; a tablet to the memory of Peter
Marcus Avenarius; and the sarcophagus of the
Empress Maria Theresa. But tombs sadden;
I prefer the light, and let us go out into the an-
imated highways; let us go through the thriv-
ing Graben, the high-water mark of Viennese
business streets, and if I pause before some bril-
liantly lighted cafe, arrested by the vision of
pretty girls, the majority smoking innocuous
cigarettes, don't blame me. All said and done,
I am only an American avid of new sights and
sounds, not to speak of new faces,
IV
And how about that famous walk? Isn't
time to take it? Well, you start from the Step-
phanplatz and you see the Stock im Eisen (a
trunk of a tree studded with nails), said to mark
195
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
the spot to which once upon a time the Vienna
forest {Wiener Wald), extended; it is enclosed
in a niche to which, so legend hath it, all jour-
neymen locksmiths paid a visit before their
Wanderjahre and drove a nail into the tree to
spite the devil.
On our way we pass the Mozarthof , a building
erected in 1848 on the site of the house where
Mozart died. The glorious cathedral, cele-
brated in picture and prose, need not be here
described. Nor the Graben. In the Hof are
the War Office, the Credit Institute for Trade
and Commerce, the Radetzky monument — do
you remember in your childish years the stirring
httle Radetzky march, by the elder Strauss?
It still tinkles in my ears to the tonahty of D
major. We see the palace of Count Harrach,
the Scots Church, the fountain: then, through
the Herrengasse, with its many public buildings,
we achieve the imperial palace, the Hofburg — ■
two monumental fountains, past the gateway
to the Franzensplatz.
Another big monument. A military band is
playing. A fine rain is falling, but the place is
black with people. We see the Rathhaus, the
museums, the House of Parliament; we go to
the Maximilianplatz and admire the Votive
Church; look at the monument and the Stock
Exchange and the university; then we stand
amazed before the majestic proportions of the
Hofburg Theater, whose entrance and stairway
are the finest in Europe; admire the spacious
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
Volksgarten, note the monument to the Empress
Elizabeth, past the Voikstheater to the Burg-
ring, with the pair of imperial museums, the
Maria Theresa memorial, as far as the Opern-
ring, on the right the Schillerplatz (Academy
of Fine Arts, full of canvases); opposite the
Goethe statue, a stout, mature gentleman in a
badly fitting frock coat, and the opera-house, a
very imposing structure. Continuing along the
Karntnerring through the Kunstlergasse we pass
the home of the Musikverein and the Kiinstler-
haus on the Karlsplatz, which also holds the
Polytechnic School; the Brahms monument is
worth while studying; then you go across the
Schwarzenbcrgplatz, where stands the palace of
that name, to the Kolowratring ■— Vienna topo-
graphically is like a circular saw — to the city
park, with its numerous monuments, handsome
Kursalon, and well-laid-out walks, back to the
Kaiser Wilhelmring, where there are palaces,
and on to the Stubenring, a museum of art and
industry. As for the post-office, the Chamber
of Commerce, the bridges crossing the arm of
the Danube, the Tegetthoff monument, the
Rotunda in the Prater, and the pleasant trip to
the imperial palace of Schonbrunn — these are
subjects that cannot be seen, much less dis-
cussed, in a day.
One thing is certain — the surroundings of
Vienna are parricularly beautiful, whether at
Semmering or Baden, the Klosternburg or
Grinzing, the Kahlenburg, Leopoldsburg, Mod-
197
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
ling, Laxenburg at Franzenberg, or Mariazell.
And how the town mice do visit their kinsmen
in the country when the weather is fair ! And
the Prater has only one rival in Europe as a
driving resort, the Bois de Boulogne. Among
the private art collections, that of the Prince
Liechtenstein is the most celebrated. There is
a great Frans Hals, the portrait of Willem van
Huythuysen, and Rubenses, Rembrandts, and
Van Dycks of prime quahty. Count Harrach has
an excellent collection ; also Count Sch5born, and
in Count Czernin's palace I found the greatest
Vermeer, said to be the painter's atelier with the
portrait of his wife and himself.
In the Albertina, the library of Archduke
Albert, there are fifty thousand volumes, an ex-
traordinary collection of drawings and engrav-
ings (autograph drawings by Diirer and Raphael,
the Green Passion by the Nuremberg master),
and two hundred thousand copperplates, in
which is the finest work of Marc Antonio Rai-
mondi. I only mention these treasures, not to
emulate the catalogues but because I saw them
and admired. In the modern gallery I didn't
find much that I liked, except a grand Van Gogh.
There are complete collections of Egyptian
antiquities and the Imperial Art History Mu-
seum. They must detain us. Also a Museum
of Weapons and Armour.
In the picture-gallery of the Imperial Museum
there are nine authentic canvases by Velasquez,
a Madonna by Raphael (his Florentine period),
dbyGoogle
VIENNA
numerous early Italian masters, Giorgione's
Geometricians, Diirer's masterpiece The Trinity,
and some of the best Holbeins I ever saw (por-
trait of Derick Tybis); the Cranachs are dis-
tinguished, while Rubens and Van Dyck are
abundantly represented. The old masters of
the Netherlands, Italy, and elsewhere are of the
best quality. If you made a trip to Vienna only
to see its art treasures you would not be wasting
your time. For me Count Czernin's Vermeer
will ever prove a lodestone.
I have only skimmed the surface. Instead
of spending all your vacation in Berhn or Paris
or London, take the Oriental express to Vienna
and enjoy that glorious city. Besides, Budapest
is but five hours down the Danube, and while
I never met a Viermese who was enthusiastic
over Hungary, its capital deserves a visit. Of
all the European cities (after New York, if I
may be pennitted to perpetrate a mild Celtic
bull, for New York is becoming more European
than Europe) I best like Viemia, the magnificent.
dbyGoogle
11
PRAGUE
When the Bohemian composer, the late Dr.
Antonin Dvorak, with the much-accented name,
was director of the National Conservatory two
decades ago, I often talked with him about his
native land; above all, of its music. For
Dvorak there was a musical god, and he was
Bedrich Smetana; Bohemia's greatest musician,
the composer of the opera Dalibor, of the string
quartet Aus Meinem Leben, of many songs and
symphonies.
One work of his had always piqued my ad-
miration, a symphonic poem, with several sec-
tions, one called Vltava — the Bohemian name
for the river Moldau, which winds its shining
length through the city of Prague; another
Vysehrad, the name of the ancient fortress in
the same place.
But Vltava caught my ear. I remember ask-
ing Dr. Dvordk to pronounce it for me, which he
willingly did, as he disliked his beloved river
to bear the heavy Teutonic appellation of Mol-
dau. Like the majority of his countrymen, the
200
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
composer of the New World Syinphoiiy was not
enthusiastic on the subject of the Germans.
There is a reason for this antipathy, as we shall
later see.
The music of Smetana for me was merged in
that blessed word Vltava, surely as blessed as
the old lady's Mesopotamia, or as was the Sus-
quehanna for Robert Louis Stevenson.
And from sounding Vltava to myself I longed
to see the precious river and the historical city
of Prague, built on both its banks. I often
sought a verbal setting for Prague: Prague, the
picturesque; poetic Prague ; but after I had lived
there I found the precise combination — Prague,
the dramatic.
Prague is the most original city in Europe,
not perhaps so startling or so melodramatic as
Toledo in Spain, yet more original; and that it
has preserved this originality is remarkable, if
you consider that pretty, placid, modern Dres-
den is only four hours away, and farther down
the map lies Vienna.
Now, Toledo is isolated. Many travellers go
to Madrid and Seville, but do not dream of vis-
iting the town perched high over the Tagus,
whereas Prague is a stopping-off spot, the Slavic
city farthest west, the gateway to the Slavic
lands. Cosmopolitan, nevertheless it has pre-
served its proud individual profile.
The first time I passed it I was en route for
Vienna and Budapest. In my ears the mu-
sical sequence of words reproachfully hummed;
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
Vltava, Vysehrad, Vysehrad, Vltava! and I grew
indignant when the railway guard pointed out the
"Moldau." The cathedral and castles grouped
on the hill made a fascinating silhouette against
the sky-line; yet I stayed in the train, from sheer
inertia, I suppose, and it was several years after
that I paid the city my initial visit. I could not
forget the alluring prospect of wood, of noble
architecture; above all, of the sanguinary pages
of its history. Arthur Symons put it well when
he wrote that to a Bohemian "Prague is stiU the
epitome of the history of his country; he sees
it as a man sees the woman he loves, with her
first beauty, and he loves it, as a man loves a
woman, more for what she has suffered." It
was love at first sight when I peeped at Prague
from a moving train.
Who hasn't heard of the Bridge of Prague (the
Karlsbrilcke), and who of the older generation
cannot recall that thunderous pianoforte piece
known as The Battle of Prague ? It even
smote upon the tender ears of Thackeray. To-
day I haven't the remotest notion of its com-
poser, nor do I care to know his name; such
music. The Maiden's Prayer included, is im-
mortal. But I always puzzled over the par-
ticular battle this particular morceau is sup-
posed to musically illustrate. Probably the
fierce one of 1757, and a bloody battle it was,
with the Germans.
I also made the astounding discovery that
Prague is spelled "Praha" by the natives, pro-
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
nounced Prah, and that the famous Prager
Schinken (Prague ham) is not so good in the
city from which it takes its name; also that
PiJsen, a few hours away, is spelled Plzen, and
that its magic amber brew tastes better in
Prague. Verily, you may exclaim with George
Borrow: "Those who wish to regale on good
Cheshire cheese must not come to Chester, no
more than those who wish first-rate coffee must
go to Mocha."
Tossing the proverbial advice of guides over
my left shoulder for luck, I left the Blauer
Stern on the Hybernska Ulice — the words
begin to blister your eyes — went through the
powder tower opposite the hotel, and by the
Celetana place reached the Rathhaus, or Town
Hall, passed the historic Tein (or Tyn) Church;
also the old Jewish cemetery, and presently
found myself on the river's edge at the Cech
Bridge, a modern affair, quite wide, flanked by
tall columns at both ends and leading to the
delectable territory which I had earlier viewed
from afar. It was only the night before that I
had arrived from Vienna, and I was too tired
to rove about; besides, Prague is not a brilliant
night city. The Graben, or main thoroughfare,
is not wonderfully illuminated, and the inhab-
itants retire early, or seem to; at all events, I
preferred a good rest to noctambuHstic prowl-
ings.
The morning proved cloudy. Rain was im-
minent. And, not in too high feather, I was
203
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
on the point of crossing the bridge when a polite
official held out his hand for a tiny toll. At this
juncture, and as I searched for small change,
the sun stabbed through the mist high on the
hills the imperial palace and the Hradschin, or
Capitol (on the Hradcany), the pinnacles of St.
Vitus's Cathedral (Veitdom), the four Ottokar
towers, and two towers of St. George swam
gloriously in the air above me, a miracle of
tender rose and marble white with golden spots
of sunshine that would have made envious
Claude Monet,
The spectacle was of brief duration, for the
day cleared, and as I mounted the broad road
leading to the pile of masoru^y I could note the
sohdity of what was once ancient Prague, its
impregnability in case of siege, and its extraor-
dinary romantic beauty.
It is the lodestar of the city. No matter your
position, your eye finally rests on the Hradcany.
I went to the Schloss Belvedere, and from its
terrace I had another view of the cathedral.
Close by it is more wonderful, especially the
apses. From the Karl's Bridge you see it in
profile; from the Marienschanz it is not so ef-
fective. But always it dominates the city, it is
the leitmotif in an architectural symphony; yet
never has it since showed for me such supernal
beauty as that first morning when the sun
had decomposed its massive lengths and trans-
formed its masonry into a many-hued opales-
cent vision.
204
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
I confess that I was rather disappointed with
the celebrated Chapel of St. Wenceslas (Wen-
zel) in the cathedral. It was built about 1360,
and there is a display of Bohemian jewels that
make a garish impression. The frescoes are
dim, and the little picture depicting the mur-
der of the saint — his amiable brother, Bolealay,
was the assassin — is said to be of Cranach's
school, but it is mediocre. A ring in the door
was grasped by Wenceslas when he was slain.
The church is crammed with the bones of
buried kings. The shrine of St. Nepomuc (St.
John Nepomucane) is of more interest. It is
composed of nearly two tons of silver. Modern
iconoclasts deny the existence of Nepomuc, but
there is his tomb, and, if my memory serves me
right, I think there are rehcs of his in Phila-
delptiia, where they are said to have worked
miracles.
However, I was not sorry to leave the cathe-
dral after vespers, for the air within was heavy.
I descended by way of the Mala Strana (Klein-
seite), enjoyed the view of the Hasenburg, with
its lofty tower, then crossed the Karlsbriicke,
counted its many stone saints and heroes, and
finally reached the Town Hall (Rathhaus) m
time to see the old and curious clock of the
Erkeskapelle perform its httle play for the
benefit of a throng of peasants and others.
It was made in 1490 by a patient, pious, and
ingenious person called Magister Hanus. It an-
nounces the hours and the rising and setting of
205
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
sun and moon. Over the clock is a Uttle win-
dow, in which the figures of Christ and his apos-
tles appear when the hour strikes. The best
part of the show was, of course, the people who
with serious expression watched for the clock-
maker's puppets as if assisting at a solemn ser-
vice. I told myself that the age of faith is not
dead; that whether Hussitek or Catholic, the
Bohemians always were, and still are, of a re-
ligious nature. On Sunday the churches are
packed, and if the citizen and his family enjoy
themselves in the afternoon, vespers show no
falling off in attendance; indeed, the favourite
promenade after the midday dinner and before
the afternoon coffee is up the Hradcany Hill,
there to visit either Sankt Veil's Cathedral or St.
George and attend the vespers service. Along
the river bank is another favourite promenade,
or up to the Star Hunting Lodge, where in 1620
was fought the battle of the White Mountain.
These same people, despite the Germanic
strain, are as Slavic as the Hungarians are Mag-
yar. Since the revival of the national tongue,
in the early part of the nineteenth century, the
speech is preferably Czech (or Cech, as they
spell it), German not being so universal as it
was. All the storekeepers speak German, Eng-
lish, and French, but interrogate the average
man or woman in the streets and you will seldom
be answered in anything but Czech. This is a
gratifying evidence of reviving patriotism.
It must not be forgotten that Prague, as
206
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
Count Lutzow has pointed out in his valuable
books on Bohemia, "is now an Austrian provin-
cial town, though Bohemia has always been
offidally described as a kingdom, not as a prov-
ince." Reserved to the point of reticence even
when you are made free of their homes and wel-
comed with unaffected hospitality, the Bohe-
mian is persistently Slav. He speaks with
affection of the aged Emperor Joseph, but he
does not in his heart of hearts love Austria.
Centuries of warfare have made him both
hardy and suspicious. He will fight at the drop
of the handkerchief, but will hold his tongue if
you mention the Tripartite Kingdom, which is
as it should be. The Hungarians are less pru-
dent.
I walked much in Prague town, old and new.
I never saw so many pretty girls elsewhere,
either in Vienna or Budapest, which is saying
a lot. Now, since the Bohemian emigration to
the United States is considerable, the peculiar
type of beauty may be familiar in our coast
cities. Not always brunette, though, as a rule,
these young girls, chiefly of the peasant and
poorest classes, are noted for their brilliant col-
ouring, eyes as magnificent as those of Tuscan
belles, strong, well-knit figures, and in bearing
extremely proud. Splendid, is the comment
you make as at eve or early in the morning hun-
dreds and hundreds of these healthy creatures
pass you to and from work. Saturday evening
the Graben is crowded with them shopping,
207
dbyGoogle
coquetting in anything but a subtle fashion,
gossiping, and thoroughly enjoying their holi-
day.
The hotels in Prague are second-class, the
cafes, with one exception, not of the sort you
have so regretfully left in Vienna, but there are
compensations. The cuisine, while its chief
ingredients are Austrian, is Bohemian. There
is a Czechjc nuance in the pastry and I have
seldom tasted such apple tarts, muffins stutfed
with poppy-seed jam, dumplings of cream cheese,
crumpets unparalleled, ham, egg, cream, and
apricot jam. A Bohemian cook "cuts up a
bird, spices its hver in a casserole, boils its back
and serves it with rice, spices its breast and
bakes it, and makes a brown stew of its giblets
and feet." I quote from a weU-known author-
ity. And I have enjoyed just such "goUy-
gubs" as the little Bohemian Hungry Henriettas
would call their titbits at the Blue Star, where,
frankly speaking, the cooking is better than any
I tasted at Berlin in vaunted restaurants.
As for the Pilsen Urquell — and you can't go
to Prague without drinking its chief beverage
— I can only say as a humble admirer of the
liquid that makes pleased the palate but does
not fatten, that not in Pilsen, its home, is the
brew so artfully presented.
One night I went down — or up — the
Graben to a narrow street, well-nigh an alley,
called the Brentgasse, there to find a restaurant
consisting of several small rooms, the ceilings
208
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
low, the tables bare of linen, a huge stove in a
corner producing the necessary heat, and the
ventilation not very good. I gave my order
and it took exactly eight minutes for me to get
what I had asked for. But it was worth wait-
ing for a year. At a table hard by sat a group —
three officers, two clergymen, and one civilian.
They spoke low and earnestly. I suppose they
took at least an hour to empty one glass, yet
that glass of Piisen looked as If it were newly
born. As they conversed in Bohemian, of which
I understand one word, "Plzen," I never en-
joyed a pleasanter hour.
Sensible people, temperate in eating and
drinking, are the people of Prague.
The newly built Representatives House, next
to the powder tower, is a gorgeous building,
with flaring lights, thronged with coffee drinkers
between five and seven in the evening, and con-
taining an excellent restaurant, the best outside
of the Blauer Stem. I should like to print a
specimen menu card for your edification, but I
fear printers and proof-readers would rebel. I
had an Omleta royal, a Fogos fish, a Telec filet
specatky, and Ledovy crSme, ending with an
Americky compot, and, of course, some Austrian
light wine.
Oh, the joy of roaming at night in a dark,
strange city! I often found myself in quiet,
mean streets, the windows and doors of the
houses as if sealed, the silence of death about all.
However, I believe I did overhear snoring on
209
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
more than one occasion, a hint that I did not
fail to take.
Once in my hotel I disdained the snail-like
"lift" and went to the second floor, perhaps not
without panting, but happy when I could find
my room. Fancy about a mile of dimly lit cor-
ridors, freakish twists and turns, sudden little
staircases that lead to sprained ankles or else
blasphemous ejaculations; then another vista
of doors, with boots, secret-looking, sinister
boots, in front of them; comes a familiar curve,
and you are not at home, though in a hallway
large enough to hold your trunks and a horse and
carriage besides, but in a safe harbour at last.
The old-fashioned bathroom, with a tub as
deep as a well, as big as the Giant's Causeway,
tells you that you are not in America but in the
land — meaning Europe — where bathtubs are
not taken seriously, where, indeed, no man in
love with art will sell his spiritual birthright for
the sake of a bathtub; where — and then you
fall asleep to dream the battle of Prague and its
cannonading.
But there are plenty of sights left for the soft
daylight. If you should happen to be in the
mood antiquarian or ethnographical there is
the oldest Jewish synagogue in Prague, built,
so tradition hath it, by the first fugitives from
Jerusalem after its destruction. Certainly it is
known to have been rebuilt in 1338, a date suf-
ficiently far oS to gladden the heart of the lover
of mould.
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
A large flag testifies to the bravery of the Jews
during the siege of Prague by the Swedes in 1 648
and was presented by Ferdinand III. The
Jewish burial-ground near by is a quaint spot.
It has not been used for over a century. There
are literally thousands of tombs covered with
vegetation, many of which bear either the names
of the occupants in Jewish script or else the
symbol of the tribe to which the deceased be-
longed. A strange and not too cheerful place.
The view from the Palacky Quay (named
after the great Bohemian statesman) is pictur-
esque; bridges, palaces, and churches lie in the
perspective.
The Bohemian Narional Theatre is pleasantly
situated. The theatrical performances are high
class. Somerimes Dalibor is a favourite —
DaHbor, after whom is named the Daliborka
town, was a knight who was in revolt, impris-
oned, and beheaded. He was a violinist and
became the theme of many romantic tales. He
is also the hero of a novel by Wenceslas Vlcek.
At a concert in the Representatives House I
heard a programme consisting of a scherzo by
Dvorak, a symphony by Smetana, a new sym-
phonic poem entitled Prague by Josef Suk, one
of the most gifted of contemporary Bohemian
composers, and a work by Sdenko Fibich (a
much-neglected composer in America). Truly a
feast for patriots as well as the musical.
I may say without fear of denial that the
Bohemians are musical to the pitch of exaltar
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
tion. They dearly love a good fiddler. And
wasn't Prague the very hub of violin playing,
for there the pedagogue Sevcik has turned out
such pupils as the faulty faultless Kubelilc,
Kocian, and how many others? The Sevcik
school is in Vienna at the present.
And now I approach the more serious, nay,
tragic, side of my little recital: the history of
the religious wars which for so many years
ravaged the fair land of Bohemia — a more
romantic-appearing land does not exist, not even
Ireland — spilled cataracts of blood divided
father and son, daughter from mother, put a
curse on progress, and all this devastating misery
for what ? For something that to-day has
as much interest or value as certain medieval
scholastic discussions regarding the number of
devils that dance on the head of a needle.
What a waste of human life for naught! I
remember once some one saying to me: "Relig-
ion is made for mankind, not mankind for re-
ligion," which very liberal opinion coming from
the mouth of a wise and pious person caused me
to stare. I have thought of this remark each
time I read the history of Prague, and I have
wondered what would have been its history if
the Huss embroilment had been left out by the
gods, on whose laps are shaped the destiny of
nations. But such a thought is worse than
futile.
When Kaiser Franz Joseph visited Prague as
a young archduke he said; "It is impossible to
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
conceive a history of Bohemia from which the
Hussite wars are excluded." He was right.
Like the Irish, the Bohemian is a theological
man. He loves the knotty discussions that
lead nowhere, or else to the battle-field; he is
stubborn, without the natural fund of humour
the Celt possesses, but he is as quarrelsome, and
no quarrel is as attractive as one over doctrinal
issues.
I said just now that the Huss-Wycliffe-
Catholic- Church controversy seems futile in
the light of modern reason, but some centuries
ago it was the very bone and sinew of the Bo-
hemian race. For John Huss or against John
Huss; that was the question, and the theme
that stirred so mightily an entire race then is
bound to stir us now. Every dog has its day.
John Huss, who set Prague by the ears, was not
even born there, nor did he die there. Be-
trayed by the lying promises of King Sigismund,
he was burned at the stake in Constance (No-
vember, 1414).
I found the speech of the Austrian Emperor
quoted above in Count Liitzow's exceedingly
readable book about Prague. Not only a pa-
triotic Bohemian, Liitzow, who writes EngKsh as
if it were his mother tongue, he is also a mem-
ber of an old and noble family (you surely re-
member the legend of Liitzow's Wild Hunt), dis-
tinguished in the .history of his race. He has,
therefore, written with sympathy and an inti-
mate linowledge pecuharly valuable to those
213
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
foreigners for whom the larger works on the
subject are naturally inaccessible.
He tells us in his story of Bohemia of the
legendary Libussa, who succeeded her father
Krok, or Crosus, on the throne, although she
was the youngest daughter. Finding her task
as a ruler difficult, she decided to call in the aid
of a husband, and to accomplish this she prophe-
sied to her malcontent councillors. Pointing to
a distant hill, she said: "Behind these hills is a
small river called Belina, and on its bank a farm
named Stadic. Near that farm is a field, and
in that field your future ruler is ploughing
with two oxen marked with various spots. His
name is Premsyl and his descendants will rule
over you for ever. Take my horse and follow
him; he will lead you to the spot."
This beats the story of Cincinnatus, But
the lady prophesied truly, Premsyl was found
{what he thought of the affair has never been
told) and crowned, and later his queen built
Prague on the hill called Hradcany. (So Prague
may be claimed as a petticoat creation.)
If a political party grew too powerful or too
odious in the old days, its principal members
were usually enticed into the palace chamber
in the hill under the pretext of an important
council and then suddenly thrown from a win-
dow to the moat or ditch below. This is called
defenestration — which sounds better than it is.
In the Hradcany castle on May 23, 1618, sev-
eral royal officials were pitched through the
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
window. Oddly enough they were not killed,
and their escape was pronounced a miracle by
their pious adherents.
But let us return to a pleasanter theme. I
visited the Clementinum, occupied by the Jesuit
fathers, which is rich in manuscripts and pos-
sesses a library of nearly two hundred and fifty
thousand volumes; and I visited the Rudolph-
inum, a stately structure built in 1884. It
contains two concert rooms, a conservatory of
music, and a picture-gallery, the latter hous-
ing much mediocre art, also a few excellent
examples by Rembrandt, Rubens, Terburg,
Watteau, Holbein,
Bohemians wonder why their rarely beauti-
ful city is not visited by more Americans. The
Germans overflow the town, as do the Austrians.
Arthur Symons discovered it for the English in
his exquisite epitome of travel. Cities, but Amer-
icans prefer the blandishments of Berlin, Paris,
or London,
I think I can give one reason for this avoid-
ance of a spot that is both a sacred shrine of
history and a living witness to the magic of
natural beauty. It is this: To reach Prague
you must, if you come from America, travel
via Berlin, Dresden, over Bodenbach, and the
train service, according to our latter-day de-
mands, is not up to the average. Stuffy car-
riages, whether first or second class, poor res-
taurant cars, no de luxe trains, and every one
a crawler.
215
dbyGoogle
PRAGUE
Some day I hope the German and Austrian
railway officials will realise what a Jewel they
are neglecting, and that we may go from Berlin
to Prague in five hours instead of seven, and in
new coaches with a decent dining-car attached.
But in any case Prague is worth the bother
getting there.
dbyGoogle
iir
LITTLE HOLLAND
I
ROTTERDAM
It is raining in Rotterdam. But you are not
melancholy. From a balcony at the rear of the
old hotel you view with joy a wide canal. On
it float two or three flat-bottomed boats. You
have been surfeited for days with the ocean,
with the round cupped horizon; here is water
again, but civilised and restrained by the arts
of man. Therefore the rain matters little. It
is not a heavy downpour, only a misty, per-
vasive wet that adds to the intimate quality
of the cityscape. One of the canal-boats has
Just discharged a cargo of peat-bog; not a clean
job. The bargemen have gone away; the fiery-
tempered httle dog of the man and woman who
live on board barks at canine passers-by, and
the iiat brick facades of the warehouses opposite
recall certain streets in old Philadelphia, The
architecture is the same: the dull dark brick
picked out with marble, the low stoop of stone
or marble, the air of exaggerated cleanliness,
217
dbyGoOgle
LITTLE HOLLAND
and the homelike atmosphere. You could swear
you were walking along the wharfs of the
Delaware River as they must have looked
about 1850. But the odour is different. It is
not at all Peimsylvanian. The moment the
Hook of Holland is sighted from your steamer
the specific Dutch smell begins. It is tarry,
fishy, swampy, and not without acerbity. When
you walk along some antique gracht (canal) the
odour becomes malodorous. But we shall later
return to this ever-present question. Let us
look at the boats.
The man is preparing for Sunday. While he
sluices the deck with water drawn from the
canal by bucket, his wife hangs out the family
wash to dry. It is not large. She has dipped
it into some yellow stuff and it is as white as
snow that has been trampled on. No sympathy
need be wasted upon this stout, good-natured
Dutch woman. No cohort of suffragettes could
ever convince her that a woman's duty was
aught else but to cook and wash for her husband
and to bear him children. He works eighteen
hours out of the twenty-four; why shouldn't
she? There is no woman question in Holland.
There is only the baby question. Large fam-
ilies abound, and if wages were higher and gin
dearer happiness would be universal. As it is,
the poorer class seems content. This particular
boatman and his wife had a crew of children
with them, tow-headed youngsters, boys and
girls who when ranged on deck for the midday
218
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
soup looked like a row of organ-pipes. Little
wonder the rain could not spoil the picture for
the pilgrim.
It is a pity that so many Americans entering
Holland by the Holland-American Line do not
remain longer at Rotterdam. There are many
sights, many beautiful views from the top of
the White House, and the enormous vitality of
the city life impresses one as nowhere else in
Holland, not in Amsterdam itself. Indeed, as
a port, Rotterdam has quite outdistanced the
mother capital and is causing Antwerp to look
sharply after its own business. The White
House is the tallest building in the country and
was built on the profits of American oil- Ten
stories high, its foundations are necessarily deep,
for the soil is treacherous and swallows up
wooden piles like quicksand. From the top you
may see The Hague, only a half-hour away,
Hook of Holland, Dordrecht, Gouda — where
the meadow cows still wear coverings as noted
by Carlyle in Sartor ■ Resartus — Delft, and
about half of Holland. But the most inspiring
spectacle is the river Maas winding its silvery
way to the sea, bearing every variety of craft
from a steel steamship to the tiniest fisherman's
coracle; above all, American petroleum tank
steamers. By no means as grandiose as New
York Harbour, the Rotterdam haven, with its
bridges, its network of canals, its shipping; and
the ceaseless play of light and shade on the
many-coloured objects, the vivid green of the
219
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
islets, the low-lying, lazily moving fleecy cloud
boulders, the bustle and hammering, shrieking of
steam-whistles form a distinctive picture.
As for the churches, St. Lawrence leading in
interest, the Stock Exchange (Beurs), the various
public edifices, the private residences, and the
historical monuments, these are matters best
left to Baedeker. A first visit to this fascinat-
ing country should dispose of al! such neces-
sary though fatiguing attractions. Traversing
mouldy palaces, churches, and other damp, dis-
agreeable buildings has a charm for the new-
comer. There is another Holland, however, the
Holland of glorious pictures, the Holland of by-
ways, odd corners, queer, unexpected alleys far
from the noisy centres, where a. d. 1909 sud-
denly becomes 1609, where groups of industrious
humans live and die without ever getting farther
away from home than the zoological garden.
The much-talked-of native costume you sel-
dom see in Rotterdam. The canal-boat people
dress in sombre garments, sailors are the same
the world over, and the business men are just
what you expect. Holland can boast of long-
legged men. The proverbial little Dutchman,
thick as a hogshead, is not nearly so prevalent
as you think. Tall, broad-shouldered men wear-
ing on their small heads hats too small for
harmony hurriedly pass by, swinging the inev-
itable cane. They are warmly clothed for Sep-
tember, but the late afternoon brings dampness,
the evening coolness. Every one who wishes
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
to see, or to be seen, sits at the tables in the caf6
terraces. They drink beer, excellent imported
Pilsner, Amstel, or Heineken. Vet one cannot
call the Dutch a nation of beer drinkers. The
climate does not invite the thirst of the Teuton.
Just as their existence is a long battle with the
invading sea, so the chill of the air, omnipresent
the hottest days of July, must be battled with,
and gin is the chief weapon. The Juice of the
juniper berry is popular. A Dutch American
shook his iist as we passed Schiedam on the
steamer, declaring that the city was the devil's
distillery; but gin is not such a curse as has
been asserted. The poor man who earns ten to
fifteen florins a week, or the dock labourers who
earn much more, drink their gin, too often on
an empty stomach. Nevertheless, Holland is
a fairly temperate nation. In Rotterdam we
saw one drunken man in three days, and he
was celebrating of a Saturday night. His wife,
shamefaced at the public disgrace, supported
him as he stumbled, cursed, and roared. A
great crowd followed, jeering. We asked a cafe
waiter if it was a common occurrence. He
replied in the negative, but a companion waiter
shook his head affirmatively. When doctors
disagree it is well to strike a happy balance.
Amusing, and also sad, were the antics of a
girl aged about six, who led a band of desperate
babies in petticoats in a charge upon every
stranger who sat on the cafe terrace. She
might have stepped from either a Holbein or a
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
Hals canvas. The round head, the thick neck,
ash-blond hair, cheeks loaded as if with patches
of paint, sharp little beady eyes, with a stout
body, strong hands and dirty ~ the rascal sim-
ply caught the eye and held it because of her
health, humour, and audacity. She came fairly
by her temperament, as her father had spent
nearly thirty years of his forty in jail, not for
thievery, but brutality and a too-ready knife.
Strong as a buffalo, he saw red when a policeman
passed. Gin was the mainspring. Ten myr-
midons of the law it took to subdue him a few
years ago, and he contrived against such odds
to snatch a sword from one of them and to stab
the man. This Hercules of the back alley has
a pretty wife. He beats her, of course, and she
adores him, for he is handsome and good-tem-
pered when he isn't drinking. Only he drinks
whenever he can. His daughter is promising.
She begs, insults the folk that give her pennies,
and makes faces at the diners. Her mother in-
dolently follows her, but the brat always evades
her. It is easy to predict her future.
Bumping the boompjes is a pleasing game in
Rotterdam. These docks are imposing and
picturesque, but if you ride you are shaken to
your very centre. Only Dutch spines can en-
dure without quailing these wheels without tires
which rumble around the town. For the rubber
tire you must hire a taxicab; there are plenty
and at a cheap tariff. That stony-hearted
mother. Oxford Street, so eloquently hailed by
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
De Quincey, is tenderer than the streets of
Holland, which are better suited to the hoofs
of oxen than to the heels of mankind. Belgian
blocks are as asphalt in comparison. After an
hour's ramble your head resounds hke a hollow
copper kettle; this is caused by the vibrations
of your suffering toes. Until the pneumatic
tire is adopted in the larger cities of Holland we
refuse to believe them anything but provincial.
The Sabbath is observed in Rotterdam; that
is, people go to church in the morning, walk
in the afternoon, visit the theatres and cafes
in the evening. Overwhelming gaiety there is
none, yet no sign of the moroseness we have
been taught to look for in the character of the
Dutch. They are a sober, self-contained, hard-
headed people in business, but they relax when
that business is transacted. Pious they are,
whether Roman CathoHcs, Protestants, or He-
brews. Their Sunday is by no means of the
Glasgow or London sort, and might shock Sab-
batarians, innocent as it is. The servant-girl
in all her glory hangs on the arm of her soldier,
or else sits in a Bodega drinking a little glass of
cherry brandy. The air is full of bluish tobacco
smoke; nowhere else are cigars so good or so
cheap. The Dutch colonies supply Sumatra
tobacco, and one may puff at a five-cent cigar
(Dutch money; in ours two cents) without
tasting a stogie or a German cabbage. Havana
cigars are equally low in proportion. A Bock,
a Henry Clay, an Upmann, the kind for which
223
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
you pay twenty-five to forty cents apiece in the
United States, you may enjoy at twelve, fifteen,
or twenty cents, American money. All the men
and boys smoke in Holland. Fancy a staid
father sitting at a table in the park, he with a
cigar, his boy of ten with a long clay pipe ! The
schoolboys use cigarettes as freely as the Amer-
ican boy his marbles. And the tobacco seems
to agree with the Dutch chaps as do the schnapps
and the smell of the brackish canal waters.
The Boysmans Museum is an amiable prepa-
ration for the great feast of pictures at The
Hague, Haarlem, and Amsterdam. The usual
Dutch artists figure in the catalogue. There
are no startling masterpieces, though Roger van
der Weyden's Apostle John is worth studyir^.
Three Jacob Ruysdaels, two Hobbemas, a cap-
ital Van der Neer, some Mauves and modern
landscapes, a Vermeer and Klinkenberg's view
of the pretty Vijver at The Hague, and Jong-
kind's moonlight view make up, with the Maes
and Van der Heists and Flincks and many
print and flower pieces, a pleasing if not dis-
tinguished collection. The portrait of his father
by Rembrandt is a boyish essay of historical
interest. Rembrandt's unfinished allegorical
painting (probably begun in 1648) is not par-
ticularly striking.
The Dutch are not phlegmatic. This state-
ment may be as trite as that the Dutch have
captured Holland, yet it may be a novelty to
many. Among the polders, out in the fishing
224
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
islands, and the farther you go, Friesland, Zee-
land, old Dutch characteristics may persist like
the old dress, but in the towns and cities the
modern Dutchman is far from being phlegmatic.
He is rather vivacious. He moves rapidly,
speaks rapidly, and indulges in gestures. He
bums his own smoke better than the Italians,
but he is not the morose, pipe-smoking, senten-
tious individual you read of; and the women,
who dress as modishly as they know how, they,
too, are mobile, swift in gait and speech. Go
into any of the principal caf6s of Amsterdam be-
tween five and seven o'clock in the evening, into
Krasnopolsky's or the American, you seem to
be in Berlin or Munich. At the Cafe Riche it
is more Parisian. The man of Amsterdam
works too hard; iiis hours are long and his
relaxations are few, for here commerce rules.
Nervous diseases, a Dutch speciahst told us,
are on the increase. The business man takes
his coffee or his consommation. A theatregoer,
a lover of music, he is nevertheless a great home
body. Tea drinking after dinner is the rule in
Holland. Every one who has been lucky enough
to get a glimpse of home life will tell you of the
cordiality, the hospitality, the genuine interest
with which a stranger from overseas is made
welcome. They hke the Americans. We are
in their eyes their country's grown-up children.
Pictures of the Half Moon and of New York
harbour are displayed in numerous shops. The
reciprocity is sincere.
225
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
THROUGH THE CANALS
If ever there will be such a social reconstruc-
tion as the United States of Europe, then surely
The Hague ought to be the capital. It is both
charming and cosmopolitan. It possesses the
intimacy of a Httle Holland city and in it is
sounded the note, though faintly, of a Weltstadt.
It is a garden dotted with villas, and they say
that every Hollander with means looks forward
to dying in this delectable spot almost within
sight and sound of the North Sea. It com-
mands a position between Rotterdam and Am-
sterdam, and in atmosphere is different from
both. The summer residence of the court, in
name at least — Queen Wilhelmina prefers Het
Loo palace near Apeldoorn, for years, the ac-
credited capital, if not actually so — ^The Hague,
with its parks, its forest, its stately houses on
canals seldom troubled by commerce, and its
excellent hotels, is the least Dutch city in the
country and one in which life goes upon oiled
wheels except in the noisy business district. To
summer there in one of the walled-in villas along
the old road to Scheveningen, take a daily swim
at that pretty seaside resort, and sleep under the
immemorial ehns undisturbed by anything but
the diabolical baker boy in the early morning
slamming the lid of the wooden bread box —
wooden oaths with a vengeance — is a dream of
226
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
many Americans, Dignity, order, moderation
are cardinal virtues of the Dutch. They may
be best observed in this city.
The happy disposition on the map of Holland
of The Hague makes it a pivotal point for many
excursions to such little cities as Delft, Haarlem,
Leyden, and Utrecht. The express-trains stop
at ahnost every station and move slowly; if
they went at a rapid rate they would soon run
into the sea or into Belgium, and the road-
bed will not permit high speed. We recall with
a sinking feeling a damp Sunday, September
13, 1903, when the Amsterdam-Berlin express
jumped the rails somewhere between Barneveld
and Apeldoorn, and the results thereof. Luckily
a train can't run far astray in this land of sand
and canals, and our Pullman landed in a sand-
bank; but several of the other coaches were not
so fortunate and there were casualties. This
tale has always been received with polite incre-
dulity by Dutchmen, for accidents are rare.
Nevertheless, an American enjoyed his first rail-
road accident out among the dikes and ditches
of Holland.
Leyden, when we reached it, after an easy jaunt
of thirty minutes, was sunny and comfortably
warm. The pictures of this grave and venerable
university town did not attract. We knew that
it had to be seen, and after that there was the
inviting trip on the Carsjens line of steamers
out on the narrow canals past the polders, over
the lakes, and far away; so around Leyden we
227
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
went, hobbling and analysing the odours of its
various canals, hoping to discover their differ-
ences from those of Delft, of Rotterdam, and of
The Hague; but they were plain, old-fashioned
bilge-water smells, not necessarily unhealthy,
though never pleasant. The atmosphere of the
place suggests hoary wisdom. The dogs are dig-
nified, men walk slow, and the women lower their
voices when calling the children. The miserable
four-wheelers, with cast-iron wheels (seemingly),
alone. break the Sabbath peace. Nevertheless,
Leyden is far from being a cheerless spot, and
it is picturesque. The view of the fish market
from the canal, with the steeple of the Hoog-
iandsche, or St. Pancras Church, is very striking.
The old city hall on the Galgewater boasts an
early seventeenth-century stepped gable, and in
the Lakenhall (cloth hall) there are pictures by
Lucas van Leyden, Van Goyen, Engelbrechtzen,
Rembrandt (a study of a head) , some Jan Steens,
and others, all in various stages of decay. The
Steens are the freshest. This place was the birth-
place of Rembrandt van Rhyn (they pretend to
show you out somewhere on the Old Rhine, so
called, the windmill of the painter's father), of
Lucas, Jan van Goyen, Gerritt Dou, Gabriel
Metsu, Frans van Mieris, Jan Steen — surely
honour enough for one town. At the municipal
museum there are several fine altar-pieces by
another son of Leyden, Cornells Engelbrechtzen,
and there is a chimney decoration at the town
hall by Ferdinand Bol. The university, the
228
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
buildings of which are scattered about, was
founded in 1575 and harboured many lights of
learning.
The cloth-weaving industry did not interest
us, and after a hurried visit to the Peter's Church
we returned by way of an old canal to the cattle
market (Veemarkt), more determined than ever
to avoid the National Museum of Antiquities
(Indian, Roman, Egyptian, Dutch, of the Caro-
lingian period) and to adhere to our original
programme— see Holland out-of-doors and Hol-
land painted. Like the late Dr. Syntax, we
were in search of the picturesque, not of prosaic
historical details. We even forgot to visit the
grave of Spinoza at The Hague.
The Carsjens excursion is the most charming
in Holland. If it were not for fear of abusing
that overworked word intimate, we should apply
it definitively to this steam around the country,
Amsterdam affords various trips, but they do
not seem to be in the heart of little Holland.
The Zuyder Zee is large, the North Sea is not
far away, the canals are broader than in the
territory where move the Carsjens. At noon
the boat leaves — a small, comfortable craft
with an enclosed saloon through the windows of
which you may study the country if the wind is
too raw on deck. Through a canal we move
as far as the Old Rhine, sadly shrunk from its
noble proportions in Germany. Farmhouses,
always in the shade of trees ; brick and tile yards ;
meadows with cows, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens,
229
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
windmills, whose wings look like razorblades; a
low, serene sky-line, water everywhere; clouds
that roll together and separate as sharp shafts
of sunshine emerge and touch the earth. Van
Goyen, Cuyp, Hobbema, Ruysdael painted these
views many times. It all seems so familiar, so
homelike, with the church spire emerging from
a clump of trees and the kitchen windows of a
brick house wide open as we pass. We can
smell what is cooking. The dogs bark at our
one sailor, and the stewards throw bread-crumbs
to the myriad ducks that haunt these waters.
Their outcry recalls the scream of the gulls as
the ocean steamship enters Rotterdam ^ or
Hamburg, Plymouth, Cherbourg, or New York,
You grow hungry yourseK. The air is delicately
inviting in its coolness. "Steward!" A brief
consultation. Not so bad as you e3cpected.
Omelet, beefsteak, compote. Wine or beer.
The price is sixty cents, American money. But
hang the cost ! As you eat you stare across
a flat, beautiful land and recall Sir Seymour
Haden's remark that some French landscapes
are immoral. If this is so, then the Dutch land-
scape is eminently moral. The lines are formal;
there is no suggestion of the exotic. Every
meadow has been a battle-field where man
fought the water by miles. Every dike is a
lesson. Holland is not lyric, as is Venice; hers
is a sober prose; coloured, yet never lush. The
only lush thing is the walking in the country.
What fat glebeland ! What black loam ! Is it
230
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
any wonder that the salads are so green, the
vegetables so abundant, the flowers so bloom-
ing, the cattle so beefy, the sheep so muttony,
the women so fat, and the men so tall?
The Rembrandt windmill is passed; passed,
too, the miller's bridge; and then the steamer
has reached the Heimanswetering. Woubru^e,
with its tiny brick houses on either side of the
wake, is in view. A few children regard with
lazy eyes our noble ship. Grown-up folk give
us no attention. As we stop nowhere there is
nothing to be gained by looking at us. The
Dutch are time-saving, and we are a thrice-told
tale signifying no profit. The stream widens
and we have the sensation of going out to sea.
It is the Brassemeer, broad and calm, with
plenty of pleasure and fishing boats on its placid
bosom. Steam-yachts are no novelty. The
channel then narrows as we enter the Old
Wetering; we arrive at the circular canal around
the Haarlemer raeerpolder, one of the great
polders of Holland. The old Haarlem Lake is
larger than the Brassemeer, having an area of
one hundred and ninety-three square kilometers.
Farms, tilled land, roads, storehouses, and
pumping-stations may be seen. The windmill
is more ornamental nowadays, steam superseding
it in the serious task of keeping the plains from
flooding. You easily understand, after looking
at this polder, the history of the brave people
who were capable of cutting away the dikes when
invaded by the enemy.
231
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
Presently the Kaager Lake is attained; the
village of Kaag is in the middle distance, then
the Zeil, and soon Leyden looms before you. It
is 4:30, and you feel as if your voyage of dis-
covery had just begun. Only the hymn-singing
of a pack of geese who came on board in native
costume marred an almost perfect excursion —
certainly more characteristic than the Marken,
Volendam, and Zaandam trips. Best of all,
you never leave the boat; you are not persecuted
by guides or children crying "Penny, lady!
Penny, gentleman!" yet you are so near land
that you can step ashore, and there are no an-
noying, time-wasting locks.
But in the end, so feeble and infirm of purpose
is man, you tire of the eternal flatland; tire of
innumerable views of somewhere, by God knows
whom; become excited at the sight of the dis-
tant dunes, which seem like hills on the sky-line.
At the mere thought of the Palisades a vision of
Himalayas is evoked. The softness of the
atmosphere is marked, the light is pervasive;
just as set forth by any HoUand master. The
modem men have been particularly happy in
rendering this atmosphere. Jakob Maris, Wil-
lem Maris, Mesdag, Weissenbruch, De Bock
give in their canvases the effect of mist, of flat
perspectives, of churches that stand out from
their foundation-stones to their spire with star-
tling clearness, yet are miles distant.
Auguste Rodin loves Holland for its slowness.
It is in his sense a "slow" country. The land-
232
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
scapes are slow, to an andante tempo; slow, but
thorough. Outside of Rotterdam and Amster-
dam no one is in a hurry. A land of long nights,
big, deep beds, heavy feeding, heavy drinking,
every movement calculated, every penny ac-
counted for — and remember that the Dutch
two-and-a- halfpenny piece is worth our Amer-
ican cent; they think here in cents and florins.
The florin contains one hundred pennies. It is
the Dutchman's dollar,
in
HOLLAND EN FETE
(1813-1913)
When Henry James visited his native land a
few years ago he was invited to a meeting of the
publishers, or was it book agents? He sat
through a long dinner punctuated by much talk,
and when some rising young author, Bill Liver-
pool or Mat Manchester, I've forgotten which,
asked the father of What Masie Knew whether
he didn't think the affair altogether an interest-
ing one, he ironically answered:
"Abysmally so."
And abysmally interesting for me were the
formal proceedings which opened the Palace of
Peace at The Hague, in September, 1913. It
was a great day for Mr. Andrew Carnegie and
the hopeful persons who believe war is to be
abolished by sentiment, but it was severe for
233
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
those who had to sit still while official wheels
went round slowly in the newly opened building
out on the old road to Scheveningen (I dare you
to pronounce this as the Dutch do). No doubt
it was a thrilling sight for the chief actors, but I
thought of Mr. James and his fatal phrase. De
profundis ! I said to my neighbour more than
once, for Dutch pomp and ceremony go on
leaden feet. The tempo, as they say in music,
was andante throughout this lovely land of slow
landscapes and lazy silhouettes.
Royalty was gracious, Mr. Carnegie smiling,
and solemn gentlemen sonorously rumbled. The
verbiage was interminable. But there is no gain-
saying the magnificence of the palace. When
its utter futihty is finally demonstrated I think
it will make one of the handsomest restaurants
and cafes in all Europe. As such it will be use-
ful and provocative of peace.
The Paris Figaro achieved the feat, without
paiEillel as far as I know, of printing the story
of a special correspondent in which the name of
Carnegie did not occur; nor was this done with
malice prepense, for the cost of the palace is
given, and the fact is mentioned that because of
the huge outlay a small admission is charged.
But of Mr. Carnegie's benefaction not a word.
I relate this well-nigh incredible anecdote simply
to throw into high relief the almost universal
knowledge of the Carnegie idea in Europe. In
every city and hamlet of Holland his portrait
is shown. American flags decorated the streets
234
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
of The Hague and adorned in company with the
Dutch colours every motor-car. I saw them at
Groningen, Friesland, and at Arnhem, in the vil-
lage of Zeist, and at Amsterdam. There is a
distinct wave of popular sympathy for America
and the Americans. And this is very pleas-
ant.
In a certain sense Eill large cities bear a strong
family resemblance; it is in the small towns
that the curious traveller finds innumerable dif-
ferences. Delft has its own physiognomy, so
Utrecht. Zandvoort as a bathing resort is dis-
tinctly different from Scheveningen, as Ostend
is different from Blankenberghe, At Haarlem
you see Trans Halses, or wander in the famous
Haarlem wood. At Leyden, after you have ex-
hausted the learned town, you go off on one of
the Carsjens boats through the canals, patrol
the flat Harlemmer-meer, see the polders, or at
Amsterdam you will visit the island of Marken,
not failing to notice the picturesque humbug-
gery of the peasants in full costume for the benefit
of the tourists who believe in that sort of theat-
rical nonsense.
But I confess that the conventional Holland
of the painters and holiday seekers is beginning
to pall. Canals and dikes, spotless villages like
Broek, the low horizons and miles of melancholy
dunes no longer interest me as do the people, the
flowers, the magnificent woods, and the life of
the little cities— the Holland not known to the
average visitor, because he hasn't the time.
235
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
The magic of sails 'mysteriously gliding through
walls of green trees is, however, ever fresh.
At The Hague, cosmopoHtan as Paris and
London are not, the Maurttshuis is the chief
magnet. There the Vermeers are wonderful,
more wonderful than tlie Rembrandts, though
the multitude prefer that wooden-legged bull
of Paul Potter. In 1909 I saw the two new ad-
ditions, the Diana and the aUegory of the New
Testament, but the view of Delft is for me more
fascinating than either. I have written else-
where at length on the art of Holland. I need
hardly add that the international exhibition of
sporting requisites at The Hague did not long
detain me. Far more attractive was the ship
exhibition (E. N. T. 0. S.) at Amsterdam, This
was weU worth a visit. The development of
ships from the Middle Ages down to the newest
achievements in battle criysers and ocean steam
palaces were to be seen, A comprehensive show.
On either side of a c^nal was a historical re-
construction of old Amsterdam houses. There
was a Luna Park, modelled after Coney Island,
with shooting the chutes and many other fa-
miliar diversions for the delectation of grown-up
children. At night the electric display was gay.
Amsterdam, more than any other Dutch city,
has ill-smelling canals, because the water is stag-
nant; and it has more than its share of nui-
sances. A special chapter could be written on the
noises of Holland. Certain of them are indige-
nous to the soil. At 6 a. m. you are awakened
236
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
by the banging of bakers' and butchers' wagons;
they slam the lids of these little carts after they
have delivered their orders. It is like the con-
tinual popping of rifles; then the dogs begin
to bark. Their name is legion. All sympathy
is due them for their arduous toil — they are
strapped under the various vehicles both for
draught and protection purposes. They growl
at every passer-by, probably from a sense of
duty, and they get the nervous visitor out of
bed an hour earlier than is his custom.
Worse remains, the beating of rugs and car-
pets in the streets and open squares. Holland
is the cleanest country in the world — ■ though
Berhn West is cleaner than Amsterdam — that
no one will deny, nevertheless not the most
hygienic country; otherwise this intolerable
stirring up of dust would not be permitted. It
is the custom of centuries, and when you com-
plain a surprised look is the usual answer. I
asked a distinguished scientific man why Am-
sterdam, with its numerous hospitals, sanita-
riums, and the like, could endure not only the
noise, which is distracting, day and night (the
long roll of artillery is the nearest approach to
this appalling racket made by vigorous blue-
eyed, blond-haired maids), but the clouds of
dust which fill your nostrils and eyes if you
venture abroad. He shrugged his shoulders.
Carpet-cleaning establishments and vacuum
cleaners were suggested as being less destructive
and healthier. I saw that I was talking in vain.
237
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
Hoilanders possess nerves of iron, and ages after
mankind has definitely conquered the air the
good people of Holland will maltreat their rugs
with rattan paddles, and likewise the ears of
their visitors.
But say these things and you say all that
is disagreeable in this miniature land. Sober,
serious, industrious, the people relax in a natural
maimer, enjoying themselves heartily on Sun-
days and holidays from Dordrecht to Leeu-
warden. Except on state occasions, such as
historic pageants, the national costume in all
its variety is seldom seen. More's the pity, for
it is very becoming to the robust girls, who look,
somehow, queer in modern attire.
The artistic life is satisfying, and also the in-
tellectual. With such a world-renowned genius
as Hugo de Vries at Amsterdam, and such a
brilliant neurologist as Dr. C. XJ. Ariens Kap-
pers of the Central Institute of Brain Research
(Amsterdam), or Dubois, who discovered in
Java the so-called missing link (Pithecanthropus
Erectus) at Amsterdam, to mention but three
names with which I am famihar, Holland is far
from singing small at any international congress
of scientists. Advanced ideas in sociology are
the rule.
Among the younger painters I found gratify-
ing evidences of individual talent. The younger
Israels will never make us forget his great father
Jozef (whose masterpiece is in the Rijks Gal-
lerv), but he is an ambitious artist. There are
d by Google
LITTLE HOLLAND
many men who pattern after the Maris palettes,
Jakob and Willem, without compassing the rich
colour effects of either. Yet you feel that Hol-
land will not lose her reputation as a colourist'in
their hands. My favourite etcher among the
younger artists is Marius Bauer. Naturally,
Vincent van Gogh is the master of the new
school, the greatest Dutchman of them all.
How regrettable is his premature taking-off you
feel when you see his self-portrait at the Royal
Museum in Amsterdam. For other modem
artists one must go to the Municipal Museum.
As for music, I've seldom listened to a better
band than the Concert Gebouw, conducted by
the fiery and versatile Mengelberg {not dead).
The Amsterdam choir, mixed voices, is a ster-
ling body principally devoted to Bach. Other-
wise, despite the sporadic visits of German
operatic organisations, and the presence all sum-
mer at Scheveningen of either the BerUn Phil-
harmonic or the Lamoureux Orchestra of Paris,
Holland is more than fond of Sousa marches
(a Dutchman by the way) and Yankee ragtime.
Recently I heard nothing but one tune, a famous
Tenderloin tune, whistled by the urchins, howled
at night by the populace, and hummed by
women. Its title I don't know, but it's simply
entrancing I Thus does America repay Holland
for its imported "old masters" (manufactured
yesterday), which are spread over America since
the new art tariff went into effect,
De Vrouw was the name of the exhibition
239
dbyGoOgle
LITTLE HOLLAND
devoted to woman's achievement through the
ages. To say it was pitiful would be beside the
mark — the show robs the achievement — and
the buildings erected by mere man were equally
flimsy. The pictures were amateurish, the
sculpture not much better. One of America's
women art exhibitions would be ashamed to
put out such work as representative. You
long for Cecilia Beaux or Mary Cassatt. In
the book section Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Ber-
nard Shaw were the principal "feminine" au-
thors in evidence. Next to the exhibition was
the big Amsterdam ballast works. Was this
intentional irony?
More satisfying was the concert given under
Willem Mengelberg, in which such women com-
posers as Cornelie van Oosterzee, Anna Lasu-
brechts Vos, and Elizabeth Kuypers were heard.
The cleverness, learning, and natural talents
of this trio were admirable. Van Oosterzee's
symphony will make its way. It is the most
"important" musical composition from the pen
of a woman that I have thus far heard, and I
don't believe the composer has ever set a torch
to a hen-house, slapped a cabinet minister, or
blown up a church.
The Dutch tongue is comparatively easy to
one acquainted with German and English, but
it is far from melodious. When spoken by the
veteran actor Louis Bouwmeester, in parts like
Shylock or Julius Cfesar, it has a certain har-
mony. Herman Heijermans, whose Good Hope
240
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
is known to English playgoers, is now the man-
ager of two Amsterdam theatres. I enjoyed
under his direction AUerzielen (All Souls) and
Ghetto. I also heard a Dutch version of Clyde
Fitch's The Woman in the Case (De Vrouw in
't Spel). Shaw's Doctor's Dilemma was an-
nounced for production. Leonard van Noppen,
Professor of the chair of Dutch Literature, Co-
lumbia University, has done much to make the
English-reading world familiar with the great
epic of Von Vondel, Luzifer (with which Milton
was evidently familiar when he wrote Paradise
Lost), and the prose of Douwes Dekker (better
known as MultatuH).
The younger Dutchmen are unavowedly in-
fluenced by the newer French writers; also by
WUde and Shaw. For the latter they cherish an
affection, but when a body of Leyden students
wrote him inviting him to visit their venerable
university and lecture he tartly answered that
never would he go to a country that plundered
him of his plays, or words to that effect. Since
then the eminent altruist gets his regular
royalties, as there is now a copyright law in
operation,
A word could be added about this polyglot
speech of the Hollanders, whose English is
excellent. After the Russians they are possibly,
because of the difficulty of their own language,
the most accomplished linguists in Europe.
Everywhere you will find men and women who
answer your questions in idiomatic English.
241
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
The Dutch cuisine is richer and more full-
flavoured than the German. Never go to Hol-
land to "reduce." The wines imported from
France, a few hours away, are cheap and sound.
The race itself runs to tall men and women.
The girls are "daughters of the gods, divinely
fair," strapping Alices in Wonderland, though
the promise of good looks in youth is seldom ful-
filled in maturity. Corpulence is not a common
characteristic. Active, seldom phlegmatic, the
men are more vivacious than the Teuton. And
while much "schnapps" is drunk by a certain
class of workmen, wine, not beer, is the national
beverage. Living, especially house rentals, is
much cheaper than in America. Everywhere
the residences are of brick or stone. The bath-
room is yet to become universal, but for comfort
and economy the little cities of Holland are
without equal. The moral climate of The
Hague and Amsterdam is less torrid and friv-
olous than that of Paris or Berlin.
From Amsterdam to Haarlem is only a half-
hour by railway; to Zandvoort on the North
Sea fifteen minutes more. There is more fun,
natural and undisguised, at Zandvoort than at
the mundane Scheveningen. The "plain peo-
ple " go out on the beach and dance to the ac-
companiment of a genuine Hoboken brass band
(yellow-dog clarinets and all) , and drink under
a tent on the dunes. Approaching this resort,
you fancy yourself in a sort of Holland Switzer-
land; the sand-hills are sometimes one hundred
242
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
and fifty feet high. The bathing is beyond
criticism, the beach shelving, with firm sand and
quite safe.
In Haarlem Louis Robert continues to give
his biweekly organ recitals in the Cathedral of
Sint Bavorek, playing upon the mellow-toned
instrument with skill and sympathy. I heard
one programme of Bach, Mendelssohn; and
Guilmant. Nothing will convince me that mov-
ing the Frans Hals portraits from the old Town
Hall has improved them. I visited a half dozen
times the new museum, and an appropriately
built house it is, yet the lighting is not as direct
as at the former quarters. Consequently the
Regent groups do not come out so brilliantly.
The new Frans Hals statue is placed in a pretty
park.
After Haarlem, Utrecht. There all was peace
(barring the inevitable rug-hammering), and if
there were few pictures, and no music-making
(excepting the eternal whistling, a trait of Hol-
landers, young and old), there was a little city of
exceeding charm quite its own. The antiquarian
will find in the twelfth- century cathedral and
the numerous additions a perfect compendium of
Gothic art, and for the student of science there
are several seats of learning. For the flaneur,
the writer, the scholar, the world forgetting by
the world forgot, there is a tranquil existence
beyond compare, and if he has the lust of the
eye for the things pictorial then he can gratify
it at his very elbow. The old canal, with its
243
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
houses underneath; the new canal and its rows
of dignified dwellings; the walk under broad
avenues of foliage; the Malieban; Wilhelmina
Park and its umbrageous attractions, not to
speak of the suburbs; green is everywhere,
flowers everywhere, and at every turn a vista
that makes you envious of such municipal gov-
ernment that has transformed a town into a park.
There is only one modern hotel, the Pays-Bas.
Utrecht is not, for some reason, included in
the ordinary itinerary of the tourist, though only
thirty-five minutes from Amsterdam. If you
wish to go farther afield, there are Zeist and
Baarn, both leafy paradises and only thirty min-
utes away by train or tram. At Baarn are a
number of villas, owned by wealthy people,
which seem ideal. No mosquitoes or grachten
(canals) smells annoy you at Utrecht. Your
nerves soon qidet down. You sleep the sleep
of the unjust {the soundest of all) and wonder
as you doze off why people visiting Holland rave
over windmills and canals instead of the magnif-
icent woods and flower-beds. Ah, the proces-
sional forests of Holland !
I attended a cricket-match (almost as sopo-
rific a game as golf — true sport for somnambu-
lists), and I saw young, handsome, well-set-up
chaps pulling in single shells with sliding seats
up the Katharina Singel (a broad canal). Foot-
ball, too — they call it voetbal — is a pastime
much admired. Bicycles are omnipresent, the
roads for motoring almost faultless,
244
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
The festal event of the season at Utrecht was
the exhibition of North Netherland art previous
to 1575. It was a profoundly significant gath-
ering. Such masters as Lucas van Leyden (in
black and white as well as in colour), Jan van
Scorel, Engelbrechtzen, Jacob Cornelisz, and a
flock of unknown painters, beginning with the
master of the Death of Mary, were represented.
Archaic in technique, these ancient panels and
canvases contained a wealth of sentiment, relig-
ious feeling, and sincerity in the delineation of
nature. You see, not without wonder, how the
new men of yesterday and to-day, the Neo-
Impressionists and Cubists, have boldly pilfered
the technical procedure of these old fellows and
have vainly endeavoured to trap the emotion
and recover their "innocence of the eye." So
many Scorels I never saw assembled. I have
long since registered my admiration for this
painter's Mary Magdalen, which formerly hung
in the Town Hall, Haarlem, but is now in the
Rijks Museum.
A note made reminds me that Jan van Scorel
was bom at Schoorel, near Alkmaar, in the year
1493. He studied under Jacob Cornelisz at
Amsterdam and with Jean de Maubeuge at
Utrecht. He died in that place, 1562. He vis-
ited Albrecht Diirer at Nuremberg and resided
for a time in Italy. His portraits are undoubt-
edly Italianate in expression, and the portrait
of Bishop George van Egmont in the Utrecht
Gallery is no exception. It is a panel picture
245
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
and cracked, but otherwise In fair condition.
The Lucas van Leydens were the glory of the
exhibition.
I forgot to say that the clangorous chimes of
the cathedral in Utrecht are so out of tune that
they remind me of castor-oil in buttermilk.
No great composer has yet emerged from Hol-
land, but her instrumentalists are celebrated.
As befits the grave diapason of national feeling,
the violoncello is sedulously studied. We need
only recall the elemental power of Fritz Giese
and the astounding virtuosity of Anton Hek-
king (is it necessary to mention the sonorous
Josef Hollman?); Dutch 'cellists in the modern
orchestra are as indispensable as Belgian wood-
wind players.
A word might not be amiss about the high
average of culture; the Dutch are omnivorous
readers in a half dozen languages, and, thanks
to their proximity to Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and
London, not to mention their newspapers, are
a well-informed people in matters contemporary.
It was a warm September Saturday morning
when in company with Dr. Kappers I met that
truly great scientist and most modest man, Hugo
de Vries, and in his own "experimental gar-
den " at the Amsterdam Botanic Garden {Hortus
Siccus, is the legend over the gates). Professor
de Vries — he is professor at the University of
Amsterdam ^ looked very well after his long
visit to America, where in New York he was
invited by President Butler to join the teaching
246
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
faculty of Columbia College. He wisely de-
clined the honour, notwithstanding the horti-
cultural temptations of Bronx Park. But,
being a canny Dutchman, he hammered this
offer into the heads of the Dutch authorities
and was given a new and more commodious
building in which to work out his now-famous
doctrine of the mutation of plant and flower
life. He admires Luther Burbank and thus
sums up the difference in their respective ex-
periments: "Burbank crosses species, I seek to
create new ones." He does create new species,
does this benevolent-looking Klingsor with the
flowers in his magic garden. But it is white,
not black, magic. He lets nature follow her
capricious way, giving her from time to time a
gentle hint; a sort of floral eugenics, I saw
eight-leaved clovers and was told that many
more leaves may bud, as the clover was origi-
nally a stalk full of leaves. For the supersti-
tiously inclined there are three, four, five, six,
and seven leaved varieties. The evening prim-
rose (.(Eonthera lamarckiana) is at present the
object of Professor de Vries's experiments. Cer-
tainly this yellow flower means more to him
than it did to Wordsworth's Peter. He ties up
its petals in tiny bags and, protected from ma-
rauding birds and bees, and no doubt being
bored by its solitude (though pistil and stamen
remain), it begins to put fortii a new species.
With my own eyes I witnessed the miracle of a
half dozen flowers in the world that were not
247
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
in existence a year ago. That is creating life,
indeed, and even Sir Oliver Lodge must give his
assent to the statement. The new flower is a
"constant," it goes on reproducing itself, but
at times the back of a leaf shows a struggle to
revert to its old pupillaceous state. Darwin
taught that evolution is orderly, progressive,
slow, without jumps — nature never leaps;
there are no sudden miracles. De Vries proves
the reverse ^ the miracle had taken place over-
night in his experiments; nature strikes out
swiftly, blindly, apparently without selection.
The age of miracles is not past. I saw what he
calied a rosette, a green plant-like production,
and was told that it was a new birth of the com-
monplace primrose — in Alabama he gathered
his parent flowers. Really you think of the "Dr.
Moreau" of H. G. Wells (his most arresting
book), and wonder if such things could be pos-
sible in the human order. De Vries is the most
significant figure in the history of science since
Darwin.
He has just published a big volume concern-
ing his travels and experiments while in Amer-
ica. His great work on Mutation was trans-
lated long ago, but it is principally for stu-
dents. I can recommend, however, a pamphlet
of thirty-seven pages, entitled Afstammings en
Mutatis — Leer (published in the Levensvragen
series at Baarn, near Utrecht, Holland), as con-
taining in crystallised form the doctrine of mu-
tation, set forth by its author with a wealth of
248
dbyGoogle
LITTLE HOLLAND
argument and in his usual clarity of style. Pro-
fessor de Vries speaks and writes English fluently
and idiomatically, but he is too immersed in his
work to translate his prose into our language.
I was loath to leave the presence of this man
who, in the Indian summer of his life, looks like
a bard and philosopher, summoning strange
and beautiful flowers from the vasty deep of
nature. He is an exalted member of the most
honourable profession in the world, a gentle
gardener of genius.
dbyGoOgle
IV
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
BRUSSELS
The man who first called Brussels le petit
Paris must have been imbibing many bottles
of the fiery Burgundy for which the city is re-
nowned. Brussels is only a mock-turtle Paris.
The cookery is more savoury, less sophisticated
and oilier than in Paris. Naturally we allude
to the Flemish cuisine, not to the imitation
Parisian restaurants that flourish in all the lead-
ing hotels. Stews, hotchpotches, meats smoth-
ered in onions, soups so thick that a spoon will
stand upright in them, sauerkraut, hot sal-
ads, sea food cooked with plenty of butter are
Brussels specialties. Birds abound in season
and out, and as to the quality of the wine there
is no doubt. Clarets and Burgundies of au-
thentic vintage are to be had at moderate
prices in certain tavemes and restaurants, but
not at the hotels or in resorts frequented by
tourists. The difference between Holland and
Belgium, if one were cynical, would be to note
250
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
that in the latter country they never serve fish
after the meat. That is a Dutch custom which is
still a mystery to us. But the Belgian kitchen is
richer than the HoUandish, and the wines bet-
ter and cheaper. On the other hand, the caf^s
are not as comfortable. Those long reading-
tables with student-lamps, which so humanise
a caf6, are ail through Holland; in Brussels the
cafe is rather cheerless. The majority of hotels
are old palaces and mansions altered into very
uncomfortable rooms, where a bathroom is bur-
ied in a wall as if bathing were some forbidden
luxury. What these houses are like in the
bleak, rainy winter one may imagine. The hor-
rors of hotel life must be experienced here to the
full. And that "M. the director," who seems
to eat, drink, and sleep in his frock coat and
beard — has his bland smile a parallel on the
Continent?
The fact is Brussels caters largely to English
people. It always has been a favourite city.
And as the English are stubborn in their ad-
herence to antiquated customs, Brussels hotel
keepers consider themselves very a la mode be-
cause the majority of their guests are from Great
Britain. Americans come here in throngs, but
they are birds of passage, their season is brief,
while the English matron with her daughters
winters at the pensions and hotels, for the price
of living is cheap. The English are better
liked, better understood; they don't grumble
as do the Americans over the cruel dampness
251
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
and the unsanitary conditions of the hotels and
pensions. They know. They come from Eng-
land and they have eaten its soggy cookery.
But Brussels is gay. Narrow and provincial
and noisy as it is, it enjoys itself, whether in the
lower town crowded with caf^s or in the upper
with its broad avenues, tree-lined, vast squares,
palaces, and museums. The cafSs are the social
barometers of the place. At seven o'clock it is
difficult to get a seat for your consommation,
and in the restaurants there is a waiting list.
Again we may remark that the food is capital.
A glutton of renown once drew up an itinerary
for a week — a grub route which, while it makes
the mouth water, would be apt to produce a
formidable indigestion. For some reason, pre-
sumably climatic, one is hungrier than in New
York. Two hours after a heavy dinner you will
see people swallowing sandwiches. Perhaps the
wine and beer aid the metabolic processes.
Chicken, so much cheaper in Holland, is very
good in Belgium. Fresh mushrooms are m
vogue, but Brussels sprouts we did not see ex-
cept the comical httle ones on the chins of pale
young men — all smoking the deadly Belgian
tobacco.
The Brussels woman runs to waist. Good
cheer and the admiration of the men for ladies
of generous proportions have much to do with
their size and weight. They dress a shade more
exaggerated than in Paris. If Paris wears big
hats, Brussels sports cart-wheels. At the pres-
252
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
ent time the edict as to the suppression of the
monster head-gear has evidently not reached the
ears of Brussels dames and daughters. They
are all hat and feathers and shoulders. The
Rubens woman rules. The very men you rub
shoulders with might have stepped from a
Jacob Jordaens canvas. Women's rights here?
Why, every woman has the right of way in the
street, in the cafes, and in conversation. A
pleasing sight it is to see the portly mother, the
undersized husband (meek but thirsty), the
flock of children, the family friend enter a res-
taurant of a Sunday night. The function begins
with due solemnity. The waiter is summoned
and submits to a cross-fire of questions. Sunday
only comes once a week and there must be no
hitches on the programme. Soup, fish, meat,
vegetables, salad, dessert, and wines are con-
sidered as if a national crisis were impending.
Then the overture sounds, the curtain rises, and
the play begins. It is a jolly comedy. Good
humour, laughter, hearty appetites rule. A
dyspeptic American is filled with dismay or
consumed with envy. They go to their homes,
these worthy people, and sleep the sleep of the
overfed.
The children are without exaggeration very
pretty, curly, blond, stout, with cheeks blazmg
with colour. They play in the streets, roll in
front of honking automobiles, dodge tram-cars,
splash in the fountains, and make more noise
than the rug beaters of Rotterdam. (Rugs are
253
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
not abused ia Belgium, nor are there many
bicycles, the motor-car is sovereign.) Brussels
is not clean; that is, not as clean as Holland, nor
are the inhabitants as spruce as the Dutch,
They are in a civic sense conceited. Too many
tourists have spoiled the broth of their polite-
ness. They are anxious to do you a service for
a slight remuneration. Beggars are more plen-
tiful than in Holland; unquestionably there is
more poverty. The shops are small, but cheap
is shopping, so womankind says. Gloves, per-
fume, millinery are sought after by strangers.
When a big fire automobile whizzed by con-
taining something that looked like a douche,
an honest gentleman asked us with ill-stifled
pride if New York could show any such miracle.
For answer we went to the fire, a piffling cigarette
affair, and witnessed the Flemish temperament
working at top speed. The spectacle was im-
pressive. Not apparently as excitable as the
Gallic race, the Brussels men and women chanted
at fullest lung power a sort of mixed choral, with
crazy Flemish counterpart for one thousand
voices da capo. The vocal sounds were the out-
pouring of admiration from overheated hearts
for the pompiers. When the Spritze — we can
think of no better title — sent forth a garden-
hose stream, joy was unconfined. There was
more enthusiasm than on a wet Sunday in
Versailles when the fountains begin to spurt and
the band to play. Unappeased, our Belgian
acquaintance asked for further information.
254
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
The New York Fire Department was evidently
a myth manufactured at the moment, the popu-
lation figures pure lying. Good old soul, within
his bosom beat true patriotism. They stand
in the streets here in deep water watching the
cinematograph advertisements as did their
fathers the Punch-and-Judy shows.
The bells are not so insistent as those of Ant-
werp and Bruges, But they may be heard.
One church rings the hours on the half and re-
peats the number when the regular hour is
reached. Why? Aren't we galloping to eter-
nity fast enough ? Why should eight-thirty
sound nine, and nine be sounded over again at
the real hour? Sunday is the best day to see
the people in gala. There is dancing in the open
in some quarters of the town during the Ker-
messe — as is the case at Antwerp. In the
Grande Place opposite the magnificent H6tel
de Ville — one of the greatest squares in Europe
— on Sunday mornings there is a bird-and-
flower market until midday. From narrow
side streets comes the atrocious singing of the
caf^ chantants. Hobnailed shoes clatter over
the stones, parrots scream, women chaffer, and
across the way is the noble fagade of the old
building. At the Thga,tre de la Monnaie we
heard a mediocre performance of Massenet's
Manon. Second-rate singers and an excellent
orchestra.
The parks are pleasant and the view from the
upper town inspuring, while the first glimpse of
255
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
the Palace of Justice evokes erratic architec-
ture. It is one of the largest and most imposing
buildings in the worid. The Cathedral, Sts.
Michel and Gudule, is a fine thirteenth-century
Gothic structure. It is not a bad plan to stop
at Malines on the way down from Antwerp.
The old schedule of fifty minutes has been re-
duced to thirty-six minutes by the trein-block.
Malines or Mechlin is not far from Brussels, and
the paintings of Rubens in the churches of St.
Jean and Notre Dame make the trip a notable
one, setting aside the picturesqueness of the
town and its famous lace-making industry.
Flowers are plentiful and there is no danger
of conversation perishing. As a fine art here
we cannot pretend to judge. We believe that
the American woman's speaking voice has been
too much criticised, not only by Henry James
but also by genuine Americans. The Flemish
and Walloon voice is loud, is often raised to
screaming with the women, and noisy in the
case of men. As for the dogs, poor overworked
animals (the Belgians are not so kind to ani-
mals as the Dutch), dogs here haul heavy
burdens; we often wished their recurrent nerve
could be severed, so as to still their continual
barking.
The general aspect of the street is animated.
Life does not run at slow tempo in Brussels. It
is gay and it is not a little Paris. But the large
army of domino-playing shopkeepers and bour-
geois give it a philistine aspect on holidays.
256
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
As one American remarked on a hot Sunday:
"Come now, doesn't all Europe remind one of
East Grand Street on a Saturday night?"
LITTLE CITIES AND THE BEACHES
The staid old Flemish town of Malines, bet-
ter known to Americans as Mechlin, where they
make the lace, has been pluming itself on an
exposition which opened in August and lasted
months. The affair bears the following title:
Exposition des anciens metiers d'art Ma-
Hnois, d'art religieux de la province d'Anvers
et de folklore local. It is exactly what it pre-
tends to be, an exhibition devoted to old pic-
tures, sculpture, tapestry, embroidery, jewellery,
pewter ware, iron ware, bronze, brass, clocks,
bells, gilded leather, lace, ecclesiastical vest-
ments, sacred vessels, manuscripts, apothecary's
mortars and what-not. A more fascinating col-
lection we never viewed, not even at the Bruges
exposition of 1900. This exposition at Mahnes
is under royal patronage; also churchly, his
Eminence Cardinal Archbishop Mercier repre-
senting the latter. There are about forty-five
old paintings, some on panels, though none of
magisterial importance. Brabant once occupied
an important position in the history of the fine
arts, beginning with Jean de Woluwe in the
fourteenth century. There are Bruges, Ghent,
257 "
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
and Toumai with the Van Eycks and Robert
Campin, called the Master of Fl^malle; Brus-
sels with Bernard van Orley and Roger van der
Weyden (De la Pasture) ; Louvain with Thierry
Bouts; Antwerp with Quentin Matsys — not to
mention Rubens or Van Dyck — ■ and Malines
with Master Vrancke van Lint and the Van
Battele.
There is a panel in the Malines show attrib-
uted to Robert Campin and a Descent from the
Cross given to Van der Weyden. Also a strik-
ing triptych, The Legend of St. Anne, of the
Antwerp school, sixteenth century. Michel
Coxcie is here, also a J. Patinir, the latter with
his characteristic blues. A Bernard van Orley
(?) represents Man Under the Reigns of Law and
Grace. There are several Francks. Velvet
Breughel is present, and a Virgin with the In-
fant, by Giovanni Bellini. This Italian panel
is, to say the least, rather questionable. The
sculpture is for the most part in wood and is
marvellous. There are rooms arranged as at
the Metropolitan Museum so as to show the
precise manner of living at the period. There
is no mistaking the Flemish kitchen or the din-
ing-room, with their massive tables capable of
holding barons of beef and the huge tankards
o'f the mighty drinkers. The finest tapestry
on a large scale is sixteenth-century Brussels
make, depicting episodes in the life of St. Eliza-
beth of Hungary.
Just off the lace room we saw an old woman
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
sitting near a window making lace. She must
have been one hundred years old, though her
eyes were youthful and her hands, instead of
skinny claws, were plump and looked like those
of a piano virtuoso. She was very industrious
with her bobbins, her fingers working with
nervous agility; in a doorway a painter had
planted his easel and was painting her. You
fancied yourself in the Middle Ages, with die
Meistersinger around the corner serenading mine
host of De Goude Kroone. But if you walked
away and then happened to enter the low-ceil-
inged room from another side you would find,
as we did, the gay old lady with her venerable
hands in her lap and conversing with the painter,
who was quite idle. A bit of a disappointment,
yet not without its compensation from the pic-
turesque view-point. The carefully prepared
mise en sc^ne is one of the features of the show.
Malines has become hopelessly commercial,
therefore thriving. But apart from the fine
Van Dyck, the altar-piece at St. Rombold's, it
is no longer as interesting as it was. Bruges
beats it to a standstill when it comes to a ques-
tion of atmosphere. There are canals enough,
forsooth, though they are prosaic and muddy.
When we reached the train that took us back
to Antwerp, a matter of twenty minutes, the
official thermometer registered ninety-two de-
grees. No wonder the waiter of a near-by cafe
slept calmly in the boskage. No wonder the
beer was hot and placid. No wonder we were
259
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
glad to escape. The fields in Belgium are
burned up by the too-fervent sun of last sum-
mer. The trees are grey and dusty looking;
no silver gleams from the network of canals.
As for Antwerp, it was with genuine dismay that
the pilgrims from America found a weltering
heat and, horrible to relate, mosquitoes of the
true-blue New Jersey breed. They sang and
stung with an avid earnestness that betrayed
their origin. No doubt they came over on the
steamships from New York. All Europe is
suffering from them and another superstition
is vanished, that there are no mosquitoes in
Europe. The Europeans now know the lux-
uries of an American August. At Antwerp they
say the pests came from Asia; but they prob-
ably breed out in the mud-flats of the Scheldt
and thence overspread the country Hke a new
plague from Egypt.
There is no denying the fact that Antwerp is
a noisy city, with its cathedral chimes at first
an attraction and after twenty-four hours a
nuisance. Bells that ring every seven minutes
soon become intolerable to modem ears. Be-
sides, these chimes play secular music, arranged
for them by two well-known Belgian composers,
Jan Blockx and Peter Benoit, not exactly good
material. We recall one maddening sequence,
a run in double chromatic sixths, not one bell
in tune with another, a nightmare when heard
in the small hours. Bruges suffers from the
same dire noises. In the old times bells not
260
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
only summoned the faithful to worship but
warded off tempests, exorcised demons and
succubi, and announced to the fugitive that
sanctuary was nigh. But in this century their
tintinnabulation gets on the nerves. The na-
tives have no nerves; neither have the hardy
Britons, who prowl the curved streets of Bruges
or peep and botanise in the churchyards. It
is the semineurasthenic American who is the
sufferer, and after being aurally bombarded by
the monsters of the Bruges belfry he cannot help
remembering that the Chinese torture political
prisoners by placing them bound under a big
bell and literally tolling them to death. If
Edgar Poe had lived in Bruges he would have
added this line to his jingling Bells; O the
hinging and the banging of the hellsbells of
Bruges.
We heard the celebrated Tony Nauwelaerts,
champion bell player of Belgium, play the
chimes at Bruges. As music it was horrible for
sensitive ears, but as an exhibition of athletic
skillit was excellent, Mendelssohn's Spring Song
taken at a funereal tempo was one piece and
later came the inevitable Chimes of Normandy.
It was odd to hear a tune from Traviata and a
few bars of what seemed intended for Put Down
One and Carry Two from Victor Herbert's
operetta Babes in Toyland at Bruges. You
can endure the solemn tolling of the hours be-
tween now and eternity, but latter-day tunes
are a synchronism.
261
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
We saw a little Kermesse one hot Sunday
afternoon at Hoboken, a suburb of Antwerp.
The joyous creaking carousel, the hokey-pokey
ice-cream man, a small army of children yelling
and dancing evoked a picture of Coney Island,
a few thousand miles away. Some men in
velveteens overcome by slumber and gin lay in
the middle of the road; the dogs sniffed them
and went their way; the tram engineers merely
smiled. Yet drunkenness is by no means as
prevalent in Belgium as it was ten years ago.
A determined effort on the part of the church
has, comparatively speaking, driven out the
schnapps or gin drinkers. Sunday is a day of
piety, followed by harmless recreation. People
flock to the churchyards, for the cult of the
dead is sfedulously practised, or to the New
Park in Antwerp, a vast tract of uncultivated
meadows and trees. The summer proved dis-
astrous to the foliage, and the walks are thick
with dust. The most attractive spot in all Ant-
werp for an afternoon's outing is unquestionably
the zoological gardens, behind the Central Sta-
tion. The actual territory is small in com-
parison with the Bronx zoo, but it is agreeably
laid out, and much is made of scanty resources.
A new aquarium adds to the interest, although
it cannot f>e compared with the one on the
Marina at Naples. The band plays; people
walk or sit sipping coffee; the air is cooler as
dusk approaches, and you feel at peace with the
world despite the mosquitoes.
263
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
The working man, the street labourer, for ex-
ample, earns about a dollar a day. We watched
a group from our window on the Place Verte
lay down some rails for the tram-cars, and the
amount of time consumed in proportion to the
work performed was masterly. Here in prac-
tice was to be seen the prime concept of socialism,
half a day's work for a whole day's wages. You
won't find this set down so baldly in Marx or
in the pamphlets of his followers, but that is
what sociahsm, with its protean forms, amounts
to; a sort of temporal sabotage, in which one
man aids the other in wasting the minutes of
his employers. They idly swept the tracks or
laid down at an interval of ten minutes a Bel-
gian block. It was positively exhilarating to see
these blond giants stare at the neat, fresh-col-
oured servant-girls and pretend to labour. Oc-
casionally one stole away and returned wiping
his Ups. Beer, sweet brown beer, is very cheap
in Belgium, The country is honeycombed with
socialism, and its results are far from assuring.
Perhaps there is also a woman question; but
we doubt it, as the women are the whole shoot-
ing-match here — the women and the dogs.
Little wonder the men have gracefully resigned
all cares of business into the hands of the
women, who are marvels at petty swindling the
green tourist on shopping bent, and also a great
aid to the dogs in pushing or puUing wagons.
The poor dogs suffer for want of water, other-
wise are lusty and always barking,
263
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
We were held up on the railroad between
Ghent and Bruges the other evening for three
and a half hours. Usually the trip takes only-
forty minutes by the express. We had visited
the Cathedral of St. Bavon in Ghent, had seen
where as a boy Maurice Maeterlinck played
pussy-cat with the late Georges Rodenbach;
had seen the magnificent Adoration of the Pas-
cal Lamb by the Van Eycks, and only regretted
that old Mottez had died and that his once-cel-
ebrated restaurant on the Place d'Armes had
disappeared; nevertheless we felt that the day
had not been wasted, when the annoyance of
spending several hours on the rails outside of
Bruges came as a reminder that accidents will
happen in the best regulated of systems. A
passenger express from Ostend had overturned
three freight cars of the usual match-wood va-
riety common to these parts in the Bruges station.
The excitement was terrific. An accident had
never before occurred in this town; that is, in
the memory of the oldest inhabitant. The sta-
tion force was demoralised. Not a thing was
done for half an hour. An eye-witness relates
that for at least that length of time the head
man and his assistants ran about like decap-
itated chickens, waving ineffectual wings, or
arms, and exclaiming mightily. Then it oc-
curred to some bright person that trains were
being held up, fast trains from and to Brussels
and Antwerp and Paris, from Ostend. If a few
soldiers had been sent for from the city garrison
264
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
the rails would have been clear in an hour.
About nine o'clock, five hours after the mishap,
the ways were free. About two hundred and
fifty trains a day pass through the cramped sta-
tion. Luckily they are building a larger one
outside the town. We wished to get out of our
train and walk in from Oostcamp, but the con-
ductor said no; such a procedure, simple as it
seemed, would have upset the entire system
from Brussels to Bruges. Did we not have to
surrender our tickets to an official at the latter
place? There is red tape for you. At last
twenty-five trains were halted within sight of the
lights of Bruges, and not a human escaped.
The old town is as charming as ever, with its
walks under the immemorial trees of the ram-
parts fringed by sombre canals, the scum on
whose surface is a pistachio green. There is
more noise than formerly and the city sadly
suffers for the want of a first-rate hotel. There
are several glorified boarding-houses with more
or less indifferent imitations of a French cuisine;
whereas the real Flemish cooking is preferable
with its rich soups and sauces, its hochepot
gantois — a sort of celestial hotchpot — and
the still richer Burgundies. But you get none
of these things at the hotels. The average vis-
itors prefer tepid flavours and are correspond-
ingly catered to; in the local restaurants you
secure what you want, though the note of ele-
gance is missing. The death of the venerable
Van den Berghe, once a cook of unrivalled skill,
265
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
is a great loss. The only two hotels that count
ate active rivals. Does the one set up an auto-
mobile, the other announces a lift, although
there are but two low stories to the building;
then the first puts a big flower vase electrically
illuminated in its courtyard; you assist nightly
at the incantation scene from Faust, without
music; that operatic coup starts the second
hotel into the extravagance of a private coach
with a monogram, not to speak of a haughty
coachman got up in the English mode. And
so it goes. If only there were less bell-ringing
and more native cookery Bruges would be still
more desirable than it is — and we find it the
most desirable spot in Europe for a summer or
fall vacation. And with the exceptions of
Prague, Toledo, Venice, it has no rival in pic-
turesqueness. Every turn of an alley or water-
way is a pure ravishment for the eye. We pur-
posely refrain from again dilating upon the art
of Memling, Van Eyck, and Gherard David,
who may be studied here in all their efflores-
cence. If since Johann Sebastian Bach nothing
new has been created in music, then no original
painting has appeared since the magnificent
work of Jan Van Eyck. His is indeed a lost art.
Another attraction in Bruges is its position as
a summer city. In twenty minutes by express
you may reach Ostend, Blankenberghe, Heyst
(Heist), or Knocke, where the beaches, the vast
stone piers, the huge hotels, and the high prices
— that is at Ostend — fill the visitor with awe
266
dbyGoOgle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
and admiration. Blankenberghe is rather too
noisy, Knocke is cheap, Heyst is pretty and not
too dear. At Ostend we paid sixty cents for
two cups of poor coffee. At Duinberg, near
Heyst, they play tennis behind dunes as big as
cathedrals, play with a stretched tape instead
of a net. They think it is very Enghsh. The
sea is as wet and tumbling as at our beaches,
and people enjoy themselves even as we do.
There is much of a muchness even at these
pretty Belgian bathing resorts. If you don't
wish to go to Heyst or Knocke by the regular
trains, steam tram-cars that start from the Bruges
station and snort ferociously will carry you
through a lovely region of meadows intersected
by canals; by alleys of processional poplars you
dream of Hobbema and his Mittelharnais alley
or of Ruysdael as you pass a sudden silvery
waterfall. Even the sunOght seems of silver as
it glances through the white clouds, and the
sight of a windmill revolving at a lenten pace
reminds one that over here the rhythm of Ufe
if not exciting is at least conducive to content,
wliich is the true equivalent of happiness.
You can't blame the Brugeois, who is a
veritable burgher, for not becoming excited over
Georges Rodenbach's Bruges la morte. The
dead poet dehcately scarified the gossiping in-
habitants, mocked at their superstitions and
called attention to their inquisitiveness, as
evidenced by their telltale mirrors attached to
so many windows. But they were right accord-
dbyGoogle
BELGIAN ETCHINGS
ing to their lights. Bruges is a rattling, wide-
awake, sparkling little city, not a dead one.
If you want the poetic, albeit morbid, Bruges
come over here in November when the mist
hangs white scarfs of nebulosity on the Min-
newater, where the black swans move like
phantoms over the phlegmatic surface. Then
Bruges la morte is to be seen, and after you have
caught a nice cold you go to your inn through
the dense fog to the accompaniment of the me-
tallic clangour of the bells, bells, bells, and the
next day you escape to Brussels. We prefer
Bruges, the cheerful.
dbyGoogle
V
MADRID
Spain is not always sunny. Spain is not
lyrically charming, as is Italy. Italy is a beau-
tiful, coquettish woman; Spain is epical and
sternly masculine. The barbers in Seville are
not Figaros, and nowadays they dip their razors
in antiseptic fluid. There are no bandits; the
only bandits are the beggars. Spain is rapidly
becoming modernised. Hotels of excellent qual-
ity may be found, railroad trains are seldom
more than two hours behindhand, and the peo-
ple do not dress like toreadors or gipsies; that
is, on the streets. No romance left? Plenty
of it; but not of the operatic sort. The Spain
of the Cid, of Th6ophile Gautier and of Prosper
MSrimfe has vanished; it is now the Spain of
Emilia Pardo Bazan, Blasco Ibanez, of Zuloaga;
and, let it be added, it is as fascinating a Spain
as in the days of Cervantes.
Nevertheless Spain is only partially civilised;
she is still semibarbaric. For which fact trav-
ellers with a spoonful of imagination ought to
be grateful. Spain is a laggard in the proces-
sion of the nations; yet she is still in the proces-
dbyGoogle
MADRID
sion. And she is not decadent. The Moors
left their impress on Spanish culture, but per-
haps their importance has been exaggerated.
Moorish architecture with its lace-like fioritura
in ornamentation is marveUous to behold. The
Alhambra is an Arabian Nights dream, though
its fantastic beauty is outweighed by Spanish
Gothic J the cathedral at Seville is infinitely
more inspiring. It has been the good luck or
the misfortune of Spain that her arts came to
her from the outside : Flemings, Italians, French,
and Moors. Even El Greco, who is more Span-
ish than Velasquez, was not a Spaniard. Ribera,
despite his powerful personality, derived from
Caravaggio; while Velasquez, half Portuguese,
is the glory of Spain, the glory of the world.
The best Spanish dancing is not to be found
in Spain to-day. You must go to Paris for
Otero and Carmencita. Nor is the most char-
acteristic cookery in Spain; at least, not in
Madrid. The greatest Spanish opera was com-
posed by the Frenchman Bizet, Merimee has
given the world veracious Spanish types. What
does it matter if they are operatic? Carmpn
could not have been a gipsy, and Senora Bazan
has proved that the cigarette girls of Seville are
moral and hard-working; but the Carmen legend
persists, it will always persist. Madrid is not
the city to spear beloved and familiar Spanish
character. Nor is Seville, for that matter; Se-
ville out of season. During Easter week, when
the city is masquerading, your taste for the
270
dbyGoogle
MADRID
footlights is gratified. Seville is then more
Spanish than Spain. It is Toledo, only a few
hours from Madrid, or, indeed, any of the small
fpwns oS the main travelled highways, that
gives you a taste of real Spain. Granada is
now a commonplace commercial community.
Its charm has vanished. It needs summer
moonlight to recreate the magic of the AJhambra.
To tear one's self away from beloved Paris
wh.en on the threshold of the season 'is a painful
experience, for in the Louvre is the art of all
lands — ■ even if the Velasquezes have been
reduced to that solitary and superb portrait of
the Infanta Margarita. But a sure way to
accelerate your departure is to go to the Op6ra
and hear a performance of Die Walkiire. This
we did, and longed for Spain — or New York.
Dear old Delm^ as a goatlike Wotan, Mother
Grandjean as Ertonhilde (it is a toss-up who is
shriller of lung, Breval or Grandjean) and Jour-
net as Hunding ! The busy little director, Mes-
sager, conducted as if he had to catch a train
for the suburbs. (He had.) Poor Wagner !
One missed the millionaire Chauchard, who
usually occupied that stage-box planted at the
side of Hunding's hut. And one also missed
Wagnerian atmosphere. Like the foolish father
in Charpenrier's Louise, you shake your fist at
the opera-house, exclaiming "Oh, Paris!"
It was without regret, then, that we took our
allotted seats in the southern express, bound for
Madrid via Hendaye-Irun. It is the swiftest
271
dbyGoogle
MADRID
way to reach Spain; also the most expensive.
You leave the Orl6ans station at 12:17 o'clock
and ought to be in the Spanish capital twenty-
six hours later. A noticeable slowing down
after Irun and a slackness in the service remind
you that you are on Spanish soil. But you miss
a lot on this night trip. Bordeaux is viewed by
daylight, Bayonne is not. Getting to Madrid
in such short order has its renunciations. On
the other hand, it is exhilarating to go to sleep
at Irun — where you change cars, and see that
your trunks accompany you — and awaken in
staring sunshine and read the name of some
station in the wildest region of rock and desert
and mountain. Torquemada ! You shiver and
dream of the Inquisition, though Lea has par-
tially dissipated its legend. But there it is —
Torquemada. There are goats, too, and men a
world too large for the donkeys they so lazily
bestride. The scenery is volcanic; no trees,
no water, no green. The sun blazes over these
bumt-up stretches of stone and sand. How
can hfe be supported in such a sterile land?
Presently you are reminded of Mexico. Adobe
huts, the same sort of humans, earrings, wide
trousers, conical hats, and the inevitable don-
key or mule. The few women are frowsy rather
than picturesque. The stations are miserable
affairs. It may be admitted that the first peep
at Spain is not reassuring. What a different
impression when one enters by way of Gib-
raltar-Algedras. Southern Spain is entrancing.
272
dbyGoogle
MADRID
The climate is mild and soothing to travel-worn
nerves.
Madrid, a middle-class provincial city, is one
that proved an agreeable disappointment. You
hear so much of its duiness, its dirtiness, its
high prices, its indifference toward strangers,
and its lack of charm that when you have gone
about for a few hours you exclaim against such
slanders. High priced are the hotels on the
Puerta dei Sol and noisy. But .no one who
knows the ropes goes to them. As board and
lodging are, as a rule, engaged at once, you may
be asked one hundred pesetas or francs a day
at a so-called fashionable house. Go, however,
to a retired and admirable caravansary and a
chamber with board for two will cost only fifty
francs. Of course, almost every hotel has its
drawbacks in Madrid, We looked out from the
balcony (a national institution) on the noisy
Calle del Principe and can vouch for the state-
ment that many Spaniards never go to bed in the
night-time. Such gabbling. Such smoking —
the tobacco in Spain is strong, cheap, and of
good flavour — such quarrelling and laughter.
And from neighbouring balconies voices would
join in the discussion. A mandolin was plucked
and a voice hummed passionately and out of
tune. The material for romance was close at
hand, but we were too sleepy to appreciate it.
The Ferrer affair was agitating all Spain that
week — he was shot on October 13 — and the
Puerta del Sol was jammed by sullen crowds.
273
dbyGoogle
MADRID
We saw no overt acts of violence, but one could
note that the temper of the populace was ugly.
Perhaps it was because so much conversational
steam was let off during the night that the
Barcelona violence was not repeated at Madrid.
We wisely held our peace on the subject; while
the Spaniard is the politest person in the world,
his politics must be respected. Quite as many
approved of Ferrer's execution as execrated it;
that is, in Madrid.
We said that the Spaniard is polite. It is
true. He is sincere, in a grave, virile manner.
His treatment of the Americans proves it. The
bitterness still rankles, yet he talks frankly and
tells you that Spain is well rid of Cuba and the
Philippines. It is impossible to doubt him.
Madrid is second-rate, no doubt, but it is a
homehke town, where you are not stared to
death, where no one is in a hurry, for the
motto is still manana; where the men are better
looting than the women; one looks in vain for
the slender Goya majas, with the saddleback,
the dusky green eyes, the comb, mantilla, and
fan; instead are mediocre imitations of Paris;
numerous fat ladies, as many brown haired as
black, rice powder on sallow skins, feminine
moustaches, lace scarfs, fans, of course, no eyes
of midnight hue, and no beauties. The cafes are
comfortable, the beer is fair — a Spanish Pilsner
— slightly sweet, brewed by the ubiquitous
German. The beggars are a terrible nuisance,
they are everywhere. And such cripples ! Vic-
274
dbyGoogle
MADRID
tor Hugo could have found new patterns for his
Cour des Miracles in Madrid. Repulsive half-
men jerk your coat tail, asking alms in the name
of Christ. Goya-like hags and children afflicted
with sores that revolt your senses supplicate.
You sit at a caf6 table. At once a blind family
appears and a concert begins. Each member
plays an instrument (the humble ocarina is in
vogue here) ; or an orchestra of blind men makes
hideous the afternoon. Not once do you hear
a strain of Spanish music from these perambulat-
ing noise makers. But you give them something.
Every one does. The temper of the Spanish is
lenient toward its beggars.
In vain we sought the so-called Flamenca
dancers; the dreariest dancing is in Madrid.
Later, in Seville, we saw the genuine dances
and were very much surprised. There is little
excitement, beauty, character, in this caper-
ing of a half dozen sallow alleged gipsies who,
when smiling, displayed a half inch of pink
gums. Zuloaga has trapped the type to per-
fection, and in Spain, with its cruel, diffused
light, you understand the patchwork of his
colour, his use of primary tints. You meet his
old women beggars and gipsies all over Spain.
The Madrilenian eschews the national danc-
ing; he seems ashamed of it. The bull-fighting
is going the same way, though it may not die
out for a century. Our first bull-fight was a
fizzle. We prefer an abattoir. To be frank,
the sport is sillier than football, though not as
275
dbyGoogle
MADRID
cruel. The meanest feature is not the slaughter
of mild old cattle but the occasional disembow-
elment of a horse. The toreadors, matadors,
picadors are operatic creatures, more spoiled
than Italian tenors and thrice as useless; other-
wise the massed impression is gay and worth the
trouble of gaining. As it is with the dancing so
with the eating. Real Spanish cookery is only
to be had in some humble restaurant. The
noble garlic (ajo), so happy an ingredient in
salad, is absent at hotel tables. Peppery dishes
are missing; too much deference is paid to for-
eign palates. It is the same with sauerkraut in
Germany, with macaroni in Italy, with frogs'
legs in France. So much fun has been poked
at national dishes that Seiior Gomez told us the
Spanish have become sensitive on the subject
of garlic. But we had tortilla con jamon
(omelet with ham), renones k la brochette
(kidneys), pescado frito and puchero (pot au
feu), with its garbanzos (white beans). Ga-
spacho we did not taste, nor the famous olla
podrida.
Here is an average menu for luncheon: En-
tremeses: (olives, radishes, butter); ostras (small
oysters, metalUc in flavour) ; tortilla a la Fran-
cesca (omelet); entrecot a la bordelesa; denton
salsa verde (a good fish); fiambres k I'aspic;
pasteles variados (pastry); quesos y frutas
(fruit), washed down with either a fiery Valde-
penas, a fiery Spanish Burgundy, or a smooth
Rio Romay. This at the regular hotel table
276
dbyGoogle
MADRID
d'h6te at the Inglese. Nevertheless there is a
little Spanish restaurant on the Rue du Helder,
Paris, where the food. is more national.
The street cries, never ending, are interesting.
We heard one old woman with a voice like
Scalchi's, when that singer had a quartet in her
larynx. We confess, however, that the most
Spanish looking woman we ever saw was not in
Spain, but on the boards of the Metropolitan
C^era House. Her name is Lilli Lehmann, and
she sang the part of Donna Anna in Don Gio-
vanni. Tall, grave, raven of hair, with eyes
like stars, she was the Spanish aristocrat. She
revealed race and character. Certainly none
of the prognathic jawed Hapsburgs look so
Spanish or so noble; which illustrates what
Henry James once wrote in his tale The Real
Thing. In this case truth was inferior to fiction.
The secular charm of Madrid is in its wide
avenues, such as the Calle de AIcalA, its park,
the walk through the Prado, its royal palace, a
few churches, a few public buildings. The
Prado is simply a boon on a hot day — and it's
a fierce sun that beats on the city, treacherous
as is its night air. Across the way a new hotel
has been erected by the Ritz-Carlton Company.
The prices are sufficiently exalted to make the
hotel men on the Puerta del Sol open their
ingenuous eyes in astonishment.
In conclusion, we warn the timid tourist that
he is quite as apt to lose his baggage in Italy as
in Spain; that travel is by no means a hardship,
277
dbyGoogle
MADRID
though there ought to be more corridor cars;
that the railway restaurants are better than
any of the same class in America; that the
Spanish are kind-hearted, considerate, unfail-
ingly courteous, ever optimistic, and anxious
that the golden shower of foreign money be
diverted from France and Italy to their own
tremendously romantic land.
378
dbyGoogle
VI
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
After all, blood is thicker than water; in
Ireland it is even thicker than whisky. I for-
got the joys of Vienna, the trim existence of
them that reside in Berlin on the River Spree,
when, after a ride through the Happy Valley,
Wales, I found myself on the Irish Sea, then on
Irish soil at Kingstown. The reason I speak of
blood is because I'm half Irish by descent and
was brought up in the good old-fashioned beliefs:
Ireland, the Isle of Saints; Ireland, oppressed by
the Sassenach; Ireland, the land of the bravest
men and best women; Ireland, the most beau-
tiful country on God's footstool.
I had read and believed in the Ireland of
Samuel Lover and Charles Lever, of Carlton
and Dion Boucicault's Colleen Bawn, of Tom
Moore, and Father Burke. The New Ireland,
the Celtic Awakening, the new-fangled fairies
of Yeats, the mystic music of A. E. (George
Russell), the exquisite carolling of a younger
choir, the bitter-sweet pathos and humour and
dramatic power of John Synge — all these were
279
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
not in existence when I was a lad; nor were
Lady Gregory's gods and fighting men and the
epical Cuchaiain and Deirdre. Instead, I was
fed upon splendid legends of Fenianism. My
grandfather, James Gibbons, had been vice-
president of the American organisation.
You may imagine what a different Ireland
was unfolded when I read T. W. Rolleston's
Anthology of Celtic Poetry, The " natural
magic" of Matthew Arnold is not missing in
the new men and women; the ancient and
fascinating poetic potion of smiles, tears, and
tenderness is as cunningly concocted as ever,
for as long as there is a Celt on the rind of our
planet there you will find sentiment and ro-
mance. All the busy professors of criticism
cannot kill romance with their little metallic
essays. Romance is out of fashion? Go to
Ireland and see if it is.
"An' I wisht I was in Ireland the livelong
day . . . Och! Corrymeela an' the blue sky
over it." Well, I got there last June, and,
while I didn't find Moira O'Neill's Corrymeela,
I discovered Dublin; also discovered that the
Irish of Ireland don't come over from Liverpool
on cattle boats, as Bernard Shaw ingenuously
suggested; nevertheless, the race is much more
hke the men and women of Synge, Yeats, Lady
Gregory, Martyn, George Moore, Birmingham,
Dr. Hyde, and Shaw than the stage Irishman
of a past generation. (I even discovered that
the Celtic Casanova and the Irish Ibsen were
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
familiarly called Jarge Moore and Bamey
Shaw.) The modem Irishman is rather melan-
choly, a pessimist born, and his womenkind
are the reverse: robust, hopeful, hard-working.
I've reached Kingstown. The trip across
was ideal. The British fleet is in the harbour.
Everywhere bunting, gaiety, and patriotic
demonstrations. The Irishman at liome is
very English, In the general excitement I for-
got to sphygmograph my feelings, and presently,
after a brief, bumpy railway ride, found myself
in a hotel on Sackville Street. The view either
way was impressive. But if mighty London ap-
pears down at the heel after a sojourn in Berlin,
then in a figurative sense Dublin is simply bare-
footed.
It is very dirty. There are too many beggars;
beggary in Ireland is raised to the dignity of a
sport. Buxom women with nursing children
implore you for a penny, and if you refuse, smile
at you so forgivingly that you double in your
tracks to make speedy reparation. The Irish
are good-humoured, and it must be their trans-
plantation that makes them less so in America.
That they are as humorous as witty I am not
so sure, John Quinn contends that they are
not, but he imderwenttherigoursof IrishPlayers'
ructions in New York and Philadelphia, and the
enormous imbecility of that affair was enough
to make any one a sceptic on the subject.
I couldn't help thinking that the public build-
ings would be less mouldy after a house cleaning.
281
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
Ireland, like all Europe, is more in need of bath-
tubs than armaments. Cleanliness there would
be greater than godliness. A first-class hotel
there is not in the place, though the national
cookery is better than in London. The best
roast beef in the British Isles is to be found in
Dublin, but that fact is a thrice-told tale, like
the excellence of the porter. There are few
restaurants; one dines at his hotel, though
there is an excellent French cafe and one spot
at least where Pilsner is kept by a man with a
Celtic name all wool and a yard wide.
As for home rule, Ulster's wooden oaths and
wooden rifles, the revival of the spirit of Eoyne
Water, "Croppies He down," and Ulsteria, I
found few traces. Throughout the south there
is but little enthusiasm for home rule, though
no actual hostility. "What is home rule?" one
Dublinite asked of me. "How can any one say
what it will be Uke?" he continued. He was a
good Catholic, but he had his misgivings about
increasing the power of the Church in the land,
and that is what is feared. George Moore is
not the only Irish writer who sees through the
hole in the millstone. The old faith is strong in
the Ould Dart, but there is a growing scepti-
cism as to the value of a poUtical clergy; further-
more, there are too many able-bodied lads and
lassies taking orders and filling convents when
they ought to be better employed in fathering
and mothering families. There are several ways
of race suicide. Ireland is practically short of
282
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
people, for, if the emigration has fallen off, so
has the birth-rate, and a country peopled by
saints would not be a country worth living in.
Gerald (Jeremiah is the real name) O'Donovan's
novel, Father Ralph, is conceded to contain
wholesome truths. And it is by no means an
indictment of religion, only of the creaking ma-
chinery of a certain Irish clericalism.
You see, I've reached Dublin, but I haven't
left the hotel. Roast beef, Guinness's stouts,
and politics kept me indoors, and, with no
Baedeker to help, I was forced to be my own
guide. (Herr Baedeker hasn't thus far conde-
scended to include Ireland in his invaluable list
of travel books, and, oddly enough, Dublin con-
tains little literature on the subject.)
II
Thus spake the ancient Stanihurst:
"The seat of the citie is of all sides pleasant,
comfortable, and wholesome. If you would
traverse hills, they are not far off. If Cham-
paign land, it lieth of all parts. If you would be
delited with fresh water, the famous river called
the Liffie, named of Ptolome Lybnium, runneth
fast by. If you will take the view of the sea, it
is at hand."
This chronicler did not exaggerate. The air
in Dublin is charged with salt odours. You sniif
the sea fish. My hereditary enthusiasms re-
vived when I found myself in front of Trinity
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
College and the Bank of Ireland, and how charm-
ing the lake in Stephen's Green and the winding
walks of this park! A more impressive building
than that of the Law Courts is seldom seen, and
to match it there is the Custom House. As for
churches, there is no lack. St. Patrick's Cathe-
dral is a noble pile, so is Christ Church Cathe-
dral. The believer in the old faith must be
saddened at the service in St. Patrick's — the
Church of England and St. Patrick! — but for
all that it is a noble place of preaching duly
arresting.
I went over to the procathedral to an early-
mass and was touched by the fervid piety of the
congregation and appalled by the abundant
evidences of poverty. Outside of Spain no such
poverty is to be found, and in many parts of the
island it is worse, and with intemperance as an
accompaniment. Why? Is it altogether the
fault of the Sassenach, the hated but much-
courted Saxon? Admiring the time-battered
— scarred by the revengeful hands of patriots
— statue of King William by Grinling Gibbons
on the college green, I passed within the his-
torical precincts of Trinity, passed the statues
of Burke and Goldsmith, and, mindful of Bishop
Berkeley, Dean Swift, Robert Emmet, Thomas
Moore, the learned Ussher, Edmund Burke, not
forgetting my friend, the late Professor Edward
Dowden, I reached the trees in the park opposite
the Kildare Club, at the corner of Nassau Street,
and smoked the pipe of peace under a soft blue
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
sky, through which wmd-propelled white cloud-
hummocks lazily passed.
This, I said to myself, is the real Ireland, not
the too busy, commercial Belfast or the prosper-
ous "far-down" of Donegal. I felt at home, as
I never felt at home in Budapest. The two and
three story houses across the park recalled my
native city of Philadelphia; even the accent of
the Dublin people was like music in my ears —
streaked, as it was, with an insinuating brogue,
but infinitely purer English than the grotesque
cockney accent of London. To be sure, I had
dined on wonderful mutton, washed it down
with appropriate fluids, and was smoking good
tobacco; therefore cheerfully disposed. In my
hand I held a blackthorn. Afar came the sound
of the tram-car on Nassau Street. I thought of
the times when James van Gogh Gregg, better
known as El Greggo, raised his mellifluous voice
in the stadium, or when Dean Swift coined epi-
grams striking dismay in the heart of Delany
of Delville; of Henry Grattan and Wolfe Tone;
of Daniel O'Connell, and the night that Larry
was stretched — "Oh, the hemp will be soon
around my throttle and choke my poor windpipe
to death!" — of Handel and his Messiah, sung
in the old Music Hall centuries ago; of Samuel
Lover and his famous grandson, Victor Herbert;
of Harry Lorrequer; of unhappy Oscar O'Flah-
erty Wilde — a more unreal figure to-day than
either Harry Lorrequer or Charles O'Mailey —
and of cabbages and kings.
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
Then the omnipresent guide begged me to
visit the interior of the college, but for that day,
at least, I refused. I dislike relics, muddy por-
traits; above all, I dislike inhuman documents.
Day dreams and soothing tobacco were more in
the Celtic key than futile rummaging in the
coprolitic mud of antiquity. However, the
guide was too decent a chap to insist — only
Irish-Americans, so-called, are insistent — and
he sat him down hard by and smoked his pipe.
Then he fell to conversing.
"Why does that President of yours call him-
self an Irishman?" he asked. (My speech be-
trayed my nationality.) I was startled. Had
Dr. Wilson been discovered ? I put this to the
guide. He in his turn was puzzled.
"Wilson," he retorted, "I don't know any
President named Wilson in the States. I mean
a man who calls himself Bryan, the real Presi-
dent, I take it, and not an Irishman, by the
same token, for no Irishman would drop the
'0' from his name; no Irishman would drink
grape juice; above all, no true Irishman would
change his faith." And with that he left me
to my thoughts.
An Irishman, I reflected, is either fiddling in
the zenith with the archangels or he is wrang-
hng in the nethermost hell with Satan and his
spit and spawn. The Irish and the Poles are
chips off the same temperamental block.
Naturally, I visited the Castle and a dozen
buildings of historic interest, veritable treasure-
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
troves for antiquarians; but I was held in the
spell of the streets and the look in the faces of
passers-by, or by the fair lawns of Phcenix Park,
I know I should have been overcome by the
prospect of Sackville Street, the Nelson Pillar,
and the stately Post-Office, but I preferred
the small and altogether attractive Zoological
Garden, where the peacocks, cranes, and ducks
troop after you crying for crackers and the
lions roar like Irish sucking doves. It is not a
large collection, this, but within its limits it is
complete; the lions are numerous and the
primates true natives. Far more real to me
was Chapelizod, where Isod or Isolde of Malory's
romance walked and talked in company with
Brangaene. Nothing but a memory, not even a
handful of stone marks the spot. In Dublin
City there was at one time Izod's Tower on the
waOs, but for a sight of the living Isolde you
must go to Gotham, when Ohve Fremstad sings
and Arturo Toscanini conducts. The Metro-
politan Opera House is now the only Chapelizod.
You will hke Grafton Street, and if you are
a mere man, Duke near Grafton Street. (This
is a secret like the pattern in the carpet of Henry
James; but I don't mind telling you that Pil-
sner from Pilsen is very real at that spot.)
What boots it to struggle in chill prose with
descriptions of Bray Head, of Dalkey, or Killi-
ney Bay, and Sorrento ? Yes, an Irish Sorrento,
with its cup of blue liquid and its shore an
emerald green curve of trees. You remember
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
Walter Pater's slighting criticism of Alpine lakes
as "pots of blue paint"? "The pots" are here,
marvellously cerulean, as a background the
Wicklow Mountains. No wonder you think
of Sorrento, the Bay of Naples, even of Vesuvius,
for here towers the peak of Sugarloaf. Beyond
the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains is truly a
sainted land, holy with beauty, Glendalough,
the Vale of Ovoca, " the meeting of the waters,"
Powerscourt, and gardens that haunt the mem-
ory. You forget the blood-drenched history of
the countryside, forget Donnybrook Fair, the
Blarney Stone, and the jaunting-cars, and only
enjoy this beauty; and soon the chords of pa-
triotism sound and you feel proud to call your-
self Irish, or even half Irish. The very soil is
sacred with its bones of the martyred dead. I
became so overwrought that to restore the bal-
ance I motored back to Dublin to see the Hon-
ourable Richard Croker of Crokersville, and a
grand place Himself has, a show-place for every
one that visits Dublin.
The little streets and dirty alleys are not to
be missed. There, as in Naples, you come to
grips with the population. Never once did I
hear a solitary soul whistle The Valley Lay
Smiling Before Me (to the tune of Pretty Girl
Milking the Cow), or The Harp That Once
Thro' Tara's Halls, or The Wearing of the Green ;
instead, ragtime and vulgar London music-hall
ditties were sung or piped. In an ugly, crowded
street full of Sunday-morning drunkards and
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
leading to St. Patrick's Cathedral I saw a poster
■advertising breakfast food. A militant suffra-
gette is depicted behind the bars in jail. She is
emaciated from self-imposed starvation, but
when shown the food by the keeper, what all the
king's horses and all the king's men couldn't
accomphsh with this petticoated Humpty-
Dumpty, the appetising food is supposed to do.
She clamours for it, and the moral is irresistibly
conveyed: even the most stubborn suffragette
must eat our patent food ! Great are the uses
of advertisement.
My second visit to Dublin was not as pleasant
as the first. I went over from Holland and
landed in the very heat and disorder of the
strike. Now, the striking Irishman is not a
pleasant companion in New York; in Dublin
he is far worse. Not for me to discuss the eco-
nomical cause of the strike, but they tell a pretty
story of starvation wages and exhausting labour
hours. The employers have their side of the
question. I never wish to see again the panic
which occurred during the funeral of the unlucky
James Nolan, whose skull had been battered in
during a shindy with the pohce. It was ter-
rifying, as much so to me in my hotel window
facing on Sackville Street, near the Pillar, as
to the mob that was "rushed" by the constabu-
lary. If such treatment were accorded the pub-
lic at one of our gatherings in the streets, ven-
geance would be swift. I quite agree with those
who think the police were too brutal with their
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
own people; not that the rioting Irishman is a
pleasmg spectacle, but in this case it was the
women and children who were the sufferers.
I heard, too, that Nolan was not the "I'm blue
mouldy for want of a batin' " type of man, Mr.
H. J. Howard in his book on Dublin quotes
Giraldus Cambrensis: "Perchance it is the chas-
tisement of God, whereby these lands are suf-
fered to struggle continually one with the other,
so that neither is England ever wholly victo-
rious, nor Ireland thoroughly subdued." I sup-
pose a thousand years hence there will still be
an Irish question.
Ill
During his last pilgrimage to New England
Henry James tells of the "emotion of recogni-
tion" he experienced when coming face to face
with some specimens of Monet and other French
impressionists in a most unexpected place.
Evidently, for him Massachusetts and Monet did
not effectively modulate. The anecdote threw
much light on the artisric bias of the James
temperament. I enjoyed the same sort of a
thrill when I first visited the Municipal Gallery
on Harcourt Street, although the primary rea-
son of my presence in Dubhn was the prospect
of studying the collection of modern art gath-
ered there through the efforts of Sir Hugh Lane.
I was not disappointed. It is the finest assem-
blage of certain artists outside of the Luxem-
290
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
bourg Gallery, Paris, and the Mesdag Gallery
at The Hague. Not London, not New York can
boast a better Edouard Manet than the large
canvas, Eva Gonzalez, or the indescribably col-
oured Concert in the Tuileries Garden (with its
dimly descried portrait of Charles Baudelaire).
There are several Claude Monets of various
periods, all masterpieces. Renoir's Umbrellas
is striking, while the names of J. E, Blanche,
Pissarro, Vuillard, Degas, Le Sidaner, Mancini
(too many to be effective), Corot, Barye (his
oils), Troyon, Fantin-Latour, Fromentin, Cour-
bet, Harpignies, Diaz, Gerome, Bonvin, Rous-
seau, and a splendid study by Puvis de Cha-
vannes, Boldini, Monticelli are not missing, nor
is Daumier (a noble version of his Don Quixote
and Sancho Panza); also Cottet, James Maris,
Mauve, Alfred Stevens, Legros, Mesdag, and
others may be seen. In the British section
there are to be found the names of Brangwyn,
Charles Conder, whose fame since his death has
justly grown by leaps and bounds, also his
posthumous prices, Gerald Festus Kelly (a
discreet-toned portrait of a lovable Irish gentle-
woman), Simeon Solomon, Watts, D. Y. Cam-
eron, Wilson Steer, Charles Ricketts, John
Constable, Sickert, Albert Moore, Whistler,
Rothenstein, George Clausen, and C, H. Shan-
non (The brilliant Lady with the Green Fan).
The Irish section is well to the fore, as it
should be. Nathaniel Hone, with his simple,
; landscapes and marines; John Lavery,
291
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
as ever, distinguished; George Russell, John
Butler Yeats, Mark Fisher, J. J. Shannon, Os-
borne, Roche, Duffy, William Orpen, O'Meara,
Roderick O'Conor. There are several rooms
devoted to original drawings, the Millets com-
ing out strong. The gallery of portraits is par-
ticularly interesting. Among the sculptures
you will note the Age of Bronze, the Man with
the Broken Nose, the Honourable George Wynd-
ham, Bernard Shaw, Le Pretre, Frere et Soeur,
by Auguste Rodin, of which the Age of Bronze
is the most important. The Shaw portrait bust
is too "slicked up" for either Rodin or St.
Bernard. Himself is neither so handsome nor so
vapid looking. Rodin must have executed this
marble in one of his perverse moods, possibly
saying to himself: "Go to ! I'll show the world
that this Puck-like Irishman is in reality a
conventional citizen." Certainly he has suc-
Barye's bronzes there are, and works by Furse,
Lanteri, John Hughes, Paul Bartlett (New York),
V. Riviere, Dalou, and the gifted Jacob Epstein
(New York). I must not forget the names of
John Sargent, Jongkind, Augustus John, a mural
decoration, or a portrait of Daumier by Daubigny
— an unusual combination. The Beheading
of John the Baptist, by Puvis, is a large canvas.
I prefer the reduced variation of the same theme
by Puvis in the gallery of John Quinn, Esq.,
New York, as being richer in colour quality and
more intense in conception. An amazing col-
292
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
lection. An amazing experience, indeed, to find
such art near the ba^ks of the drab River Lifiey.
And what a tribute to the taste and generosity
of the donor, Sir Hugh Lane. I hope some day
to see the pictures housed in more commodious
quarters. My abiding impressions of the va-
rious visits I made to Harcourt Street are the
two Manets, especially the Concert.
A second artistic surprise was to find in the
little iinown (that is in America) National Gal-
lery of Ireland (of which Sir Hugh Lane is
now the director) an array of canvases of prime
quality, such as examples by Mantegna, Titian
— the Disciples at Emmaus, otherwise known
as the Tablecloth (not the original, but a varia-
tion?) — a beautiful Moroni, a fine Rembrandt,
Jondarus, a hvely httle virgin and child by
Adrian Ysenbrandt, a Van der Heist, a Frans
Hals, a version of his Beach Boy at Antwerp,
Botticelli's moving portrait of a violinist, Ruys-
dael, Ribera, Antonio da Solari, two Bonafazios,
Carpaccio, Watteau, Reynolds, Jan Steen, Goya,
Wilson, Cuyp, Raeburn, Thomas Lawrence (por-
trait of John Philpot Curran), Wouter Knyff,
Gainsborough, Chardin, Coello, and in the Na-
tional Portrait Gallery section characteristic
heads of Jonathan Swift and several of Samuel
Lover, one by Harwood, the other self-painted.
A handsome old gentleman he must have been,
and a versatile. He is Victor Herbert's grand-
father — a title that alone gives him celebrity.
Verily, you exclaim as you go out upon aristo-
293
dbyGoogle
DEAR OLD DUBLIN
cratic Merrion Square, recalling in appearance
both Washington Square and Rittenhouse Square
(Philadelphia), verily, Dublin is the great unex-
plored for the majority of travellers.
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
Naturally, you must be fat, else a trip to
northwestern Bohemia, where lies the charming
little town of Marienbad, may result in the ac-
quisition of avoirdupois, for, oh, brethren! Pilsen
is only a few hours away — Pilsen, where the
amber brew is beautifully brewed. Eating, too,
is one of the seven arts. And once in Pilsen,
farewell to shapes of slimness, farewell normal
necks and wrists and waists. Jules Laforgue,
that brilliant young Frenchman who was psy-
chologist before poet, remarked upon the pe-
culiar arrogance and imperturbability that large
majestic women exhibit. His explanation of
their attitude toward life proves his keen vision.
"Cet avant de notre personne," he declares,
surely breeds a feeling of superiority, leads to a
pompous gait and a condescending manner.
Wasn't it Dickens who compared women of cer-
tain weight to a ship of battle with all sails set?
When you have achieved the eminence from
which you gaze across your own bulk at your fel-
low beings, then it is time for a reduction cure
at Marienbad. I had, some time ago, reached
that interesting period when my friends didn't
295
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
hesitate to poke me in the ribs — or where the
ribs should have been — and advised me to join
the fat men's club, any member of which must
not weigh less than two hundred pounds, else be
expelled from that paradise of clambakes and
beefsteak dinners. So I went to Marienbad,
and, incredible as it may sound, stopped at
Pilsen only long enough to drink a glass of water.
The water was not cold, though the heat was
tropical, and it cost one penny for the glass.
But I paid it. I had taken the first step in the
steep path that leads up the mount of martyr-
dom.
Marienbad is not difficult of access. Five
hours from Berlin on the fast express {there are
slow ones in Germany), a day from Paris, and,
if you happen to be at Karlsbad, you can go over
in less than two hours. It may be that I am
not a fanatic on the subject of fighting fat.
Every train-load winding through the valleys
and over the hills of Bohemia carries sceptics.
Your reasonable objections are pooh-poohed out
of court, and the fabulous tales are related of
friends losing ten pounds a day for thirty days
and then gaining thirty pounds in thirty hours
— or some such rigmarole. The number of
Germans I met after my arrival on the Kaiser-
strasse, the main street, convinced me that the
Lord loves a good liar, n& matter his nationality.
Two conspicuous things smote my consciousness
when I had been ten minutes in Marienbad.
One was the number of fat, healthy men and
296
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
the other was the unusual display of
food, whether in delicatessen shops, confection-
ery stores, bakeries; food — ■ and drink — is the
staple of the place. It took some time before
I conjoined these two signs and the closeness of
cause and effect. After a tour of the restau-
rants and cafes it burst upon me that the "cure"
was only an incentive to hunger and thirst, that
even if your particular hell was paved with good
intentions, the temptations to gorge and guzzle
were manifold. Where, this side of the fabled
city in which roasted larks fall from the skies,
can you find such a bewitching array of good
things to eat as at Marienbad? The windows
are stuffed to overflowing with fowl, game, fruit,
and the toothsome cakes called oblaten. At
dusk when you return from a thirteen-mile
walk, footsore, thirsty, starving — you, being an
obedient patient, have had cold ham, and, later,
weak tea for dinner — the artful shopmen flaunt
before your eyes a stupendous array of food and
drink. You stand agape at the Tantalus vision,
and then, if you are strong, you pass sadly on
to more cold ham, more weak tea. I modified
this first judgment later, for, in a collection of
many thousand people, there are a few who are
consistent, who adhere to the rules laid down by
the doctors. However, the authorities shouldn't
allow the weak-minded to be tempted. The
shop-windows should be closed after dark, and
the restaurants forced to hide their dmers be-
hind screens. An ascetic fresh from his Thebaid
297
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
would shiver at the sight of all these well-fed
persons stuffing meat — yes, and potatoes, too
— and pouring down Pilsner from jugs fit for
the throat of a giraffe. And further inviting
the advances of old Uncle Uric (add), as Acton
Davies affectionately calls him.
Infinitely discouraged, then, during my first
evening, because of these pagan-like evidences of
revolt, I could not help thinking of ,/Esop and his
choice fable, wherein the members rise up in rebel-
lion against the stomach and are speedily quelled
by that organ. The doctors, I reflected, may
prescribe the strictest regimen; the waters may
be religiously drunk every morning, but at eight
o'clock in the evening that primal old rebel, that
Lucifer among the bodily organs — the stomach
— ■ will exact due toll and homage for the hard-
ships imposed upon it during the daytime.
Wondering why I did not stop over at Pilsen,
I fell asleep and dreamed of a brewery in which
the waiters and guests were awful-appearing
skeletons. The next day I sought a physician.
Both an individual and a type, he regarded me
with cynical, roguish eyes. "You Americans,"
he observed, "expect to bolt your meals, take no
exercise except in express elevators, then come
to Marienbad and lose five pounds a day with-
out feeling nervous. I don't believe in taking
off fat too fast." Slap number two was this,
and straight between the eyes. A doctor in full
practice at Marienbad who didn't beheve in
rapid reduction ! He explained. I listened.
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
Then I became humble and determined to give
the "cure" a working chance.
At six o'clock the next morning I was
awakened by the solemn measures of a Bach
choral played by the local orchestra, and as I
dressed I listened to some excellent, old-fashioned
overtures, seldom heard nowadays, from half-
forgotten operas by Auber, Rossini, and Meyer-
beer, They proved good company for the
grey thoughts of the neophyte. Out upon the
esplanade I fancied myself in fairy-land; it was
the kind of operatic landscape one sees on the
stage. The huge promenade was bustling with
humans; men in silk hats and jackets; women
in bath-robes, wearing diamonds; Galician Jews,
with oily side-curls, their eyes bent on the earth,
muttering prayers as they paraded; fat people
and lean; fatter people than I ever saw before
at a given point — and every one carrying grad-
uated glasses, suggestively pharmaceutical —
sipping, staring, chattering; above all, staring.
Then there was a mad rush to a certain point;
even the long line of those who patiently awaited
their turn at the spring was broken. Somebody
of eminence approached. Looking very much
like a prosperous Hebraic Wall Street banker,
the King of England went fay with a remarkably
spry gait for a man of his years. He was ac-
companied by ids friend Captain Fitz Ponsonby
and Sir Stanley Clark.
We looked after him with the rest, and, as we
were very curious, joined the thronging crowd
299
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
that doged his movements. King Edward VII
was very popular. The poor Pohsh Jews fairly
worshipped him, for he was sympattietic. As
if the earth contained no bomb-throwing as-
sassins, the King of Great Britain and Emperor
of the Indies came down every morning of his
two weeks' sojourn at seven o'clock precisely.
His valet handed him a glass, a glass tube,
and a red napkin. He drank, walked, talked,
and if the day were fine, laughed. Such a
hearty, unaffected laugh you do not hear often
from the lungs of a young man. Everything
amused him. He had forgotten affairs of state,
forgotten, too, tedious ceremonial. He wore a
loose-fitting flannel or tweed and sported an
Alpine stalker upon his imperial brow. When he
stopped, several thousand people stopped; when
he paused to pay a pretty shop-girl in the Colon-
nade a compliment, a gratified murmur was heard
in the vast mob. He had done a popular thing
and that girl is marked for life. She will tell
her grandchildren of the royal blue eyes and
the perfect royal German accent. A few secret-
service men kept close to the exalted visitor, but,
as one old Bohemian said: "The King of Eng-
land can do what the King of Austria cannot,
even in his own realm ! "
The day the King of Greece appeared and with
Sir Arthur Goschen stood and gossiped with
Edward VII, excitement ran so high that the next
day the Burgomaster plastered the town with
the announcement that such enthusiasm must be
300
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
gently discouraged. Karlsbad, boiling over with
envy, was in the seventh heaven. "Mobbed the
King of England" was the head-line in the local
newspapers. But when the King went over
one afternoon to Karlsbad in a motor-car, he
was literally forced to go indoors so persistent
was the sightseeing crowd of that place.
However, kings and dukes, princesses and
dames of high degree are so many bubbles on
the surface of the tranquil Marienbad waters.
We go there to be cured — or to get a new appe-
tite, or bath; and while it is mildly exhilarating
to rub shoulders with the mighty ones of the
earth, it is far more important to secure a seat
for breakfast.
Your water drunk, you go for your breakfast at
Utscheg's. After many futile wanderings, chmb-
ing to Cafe Panorama or CafS Egerlander for
the first meal, I came to the conclusion that man
may dispense with landscapes at dawn, if his
coffee be near at hand. So to a modest chalet
I repaired at eight o'clock, resolved to drink
weak tea and eat but one soft-boiled egg. Alas !
I always drank coffee and took two eggs. My
doctor had said: "Do not starve yourself " ^ —
as he did not favour swift flesh reduction. After
breakfast arose the important question of the
day: which walk should one take? If you are
not lucky enough to secure permission from your
doctor to bathe at the Turkish or mud-baths
there is nothing left for you but trotting. The
walks of Marienbad ! It is a proud municipal
301
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
boast that not in Bohemia is there such a variety
of shaded, romantic, and toilsome walks. This
seems to be true. The hills are not so high as at
Karlsbad; they are prettier, and the sweep of
country you catch at the top of the Cafe Pano-
rama or Caf^ Rubezahl is most inspiring. The
Bavarian mountains in the dim distance and the
dense Bohemian forests; a country that rolls
with green reverberations in the golden sunshine,
a naturally romantic landscape trained by ar-
tistic gardeners; a mass of marble and granite
structures, imposing in size, graceful in archi-
tectural Hne; all these framed by pine-trees and
a melting southern sky ~ you feel as you fill
your lungs with the pure, sweet-sraelling air,
that there are few such spots as Marienbad on
our globe.
And the everlasting twistings and turnings
of the forest paths; the mystic twilight of the
wooded avenues; the sheer ascent to some re-
mote peak where coffee and conversation crown
your tired feet for a small fee ! Then in some
sudden secret glade which seems all your own,
as you dream of St. Wenceslaus, the patron saint
of Bohemia, of brave John Huss, or of the rus-
tling melodies of Antonin Dvorak — you enjoy
better in his native land his music — ■ suddenly
a ponderous figure bars your path. Mayhap
you have heard it before you have seen it, an
elephant crushing through the underbrake. It
weighs at least three hundred, and smihngly
attempts to pass. When fat meets fat then
302
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
comes the tug of tact. Two hats are lifted as
the weaker — the thinner — goes to the wall, or
sits down, or cowers against the hillside. Thus
is your dream disturbed a dozen times a day.
As the monster puffs noisily from view you ten-
tatively remark to your companion: "I hope
I'm not as big as that animal," while the answer,
though not consoling, is invariably the same:
"No, but you soon will be if you don't obey the
doctor," Yes, mild as are the injunctions of
the doctor, he is not always obeyed. The spirit
is willing but the flesh is ever athirst and ahun-
gered. There are rainy days (and how it can
rain in the land of the Czechs !), when the whole
scheme of creation needs readjustment, not to
mention this miserable Uttle Marienbad. There
are hot days when the thought of an ice-cream
soda drives one almost delirious. There are
sombre evenings, when, to see fat men drinking
cool Pilsner ■ — oh, why continue ? These things
happen to every one. They are not serious de-
terrents to the good cause. There are brave
days when you walk fifteen miles, live on tea
without milk or sugar, and spinach (doleful,
gritty spinach), and the eternal ham; neverthe-
less, the scales tell you agreeable news, and your
head feels as cool, as empty as a gourd in a cellar. .
You pityingly sneer at the fattest man ~ he
weighs over four hundred, wears a red necktie,
and is always eating candy or ices — and you
know that life is worth while. The unhappy chap
told me that formerly he was a chef at the royal
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
palace, Potsdam, but champagne had been his
ruin. The following season I was informed he
died. One comical sight was the small peasant
boy who followed him with a chair — he had to
sit down every few minutes. He assured me
that he had lost over one hundred pounds dur-
ing the season.
On fine days you occupy, if so inclined, the
rustic spot where Goethe rested — he was a
visitor in 1821— or else gaze upon the house
where lived, in 1845, Richard Wagner. Chopin,
too, was there in 1836. Then, after these
sentimental pilgrimages, you become prosaic
and have yourself weighed. You retire exult-
ingly to a caf6, for you have lost ten pounds
in ten days. How did it come about? Your
doctor looks wise and tells you that the waters -—
Yes, the waters; rather not the waters, that is,
no water at meals. The secret of Marienbad
is yours when you have mastered this point.
The waters are mild, almost tasteless; two or
three glasses a day is all you are asked to con-
sume. Glauber salts is the chief ingredient. At
the Rudolfsquelle the relief from gouty pains
is rapid. But are the waters everything at
Marienbad? The answer is a decided negative.
Remember that thousands are cured annually
of various ills. Can it be done elsewhere ? Yes.
In twenty-two days I lost twenty-two pounds.
Walking, dieting, early in bed, early rising, in-
comparably fresh air — all these make for
health, for fat-destroying, for muscle-building,
304
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
blood-purifying. Yet I affirm with all the
solemnity of a man who won back his adipose
tissue six months after his return to New York,
that the secret of reduction is so simple that it
usually escapes the attention of the patients
who travel so many miles to find it. It is this:
Don't drink with your meals — tea, coffee,
water, wine, beer, vinegar, or poison — not a
drop two hours before or after eating! All
the mountain air, scenery, carbonic-acid waters
avail not if you absorb liquids while you eat.
This is the famous Schweniger cure that Bis-
marck found so beneficial. If you plumply put
the question to your doctor — there are hun-
dreds of medical men camped in and about
Marienbad — he is apt to answer you enig-
matically. The full force of the discovery
dawns on you after you leave the town. In
Centra] Park you can take the waters at the
pavilion, walk from Fifty-ninth to One Hundred
and Tenth Streets and back, go home, eat break-
fast, avoid liquids at meals, and four weeks later
you will have pulled off from ten to twenty
pounds, I know this from experience. But
there is the sea trip; there is the fair land of
Bohemia; there is Marienbad, a white city of
miniature palaces and castellated heights —
during moonlight the Cafe Riibezahl is like a
frozen fairy-tale — with its air, its freedom from
the fashionable crowds of hill-hemmed Karlsbad,
its romantic surroundings, its moderate tariff,
and its perpetual eating and drinking (such
305
dbyGoogle
FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD
cookery!), and its weighing machines. When
you are tired of the music you get yourself
weighed. When you are weary of walking you
listen to the band- There are less interesting
watering-places on the map than Marienbad —
and there is always Pilsen forty miles away. So,
if you would fight your fat pleasantly and dis-
tribute your Yankee dollars — go to Marienbad,
and don't forget to close your eyes when you
pass the confectionery shops or the cafes. That
way fat lies.
dbyGoogle
PART III
SAND AND SENTIMENT
d by Google
d by Google
I
ATLANTIC CITY
When in the course of human events it be-
comes necessary for a man to study his own
people, let him select the excellent old summer-
time for such a purpose; let him go down to the
sea in Pullmans or naphtha launches; let him,
with observant and kindly eye, note the pecu-
liarities of the nation in which he is an unimpor-
tant factor, and he may see things — many
things undreamed of in his little European-
saturated philosophy.
Let us pose a possible case. A traveller, rest-
less because he has seen or fancied he has seen
all Europe, resolves to stay on his native soil
for one summer. From much globe-trotting he
has not become blase, he still emulates Dr. Syn-
tax in his pursuit of the picturesque; but his
conscience begins to ring accusatory alarm-bells.
You know Sorrento, but do you know Cape
May? You have patrolled the beach at Scheve-
ningen, but do you know the delights of Atlantic
City's Boardwalk ? Can you offhand say whether
Bailey's Beach has as good surf as Seabright?
Newport vs. New Jersey. Do they sell you
worse imitation Havanas at Southampton or at
309
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
Richfield Springs? Where is the most pessi-
mistic beer served on the Atlantic coast? Can
you answer one of these profoundly interesting
questions ?
Why? Because you don't know your own
country. Because you don't know how it
chooses to amuse itself during the heated term.
Because you do know that it always rains in
Salzburg; that it is always hot and high-priced
in Paris; that you sit up too late in Berlin and
retire too early in London. My possible case
is not a representative American, though he is
by no means a myth. You know him. I know
him. And the sign whereby he may be recog-
nised is tliis: his superior airs and his manner
of calling a coloured waiter gargon or Kellner.
Otherwise he couldn't tell the difference between
a Da Vinci and a Carlo Dolci, a Bach fugue and
a Nuremberg sausage. The gilt of his too rapidly
acquired culture is apt to become blurred by
ocean's rude breezes.
Consider me for the moment as one of those
self-expatriated compatriots, but one of humble
spirit, one wilUng to learn, and one to whom the
great idea made a visit and a proposition. Sup-
pose, said the tempter, you made the acquain-
tance of the Americans at play ! Suppose you
try to forget noisy New York for a day, a week,
a month, and range boldly up and down seeking
forth prey for your pen, recording daily what you
see, imagining nothing but divining much. Sup-
pose, in a word, you take a peep at the real world,
310
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
not at a few hundred luxurious people, and en-
deavour to escape the obsession of those you
fancy to be the elect in art and life and litera-
ture. What a "bath of multitude" you will
give your convention-weary soul; how you will
refresh your eyes, too long accustomed to Broad-
way and its brass bands!
I confess I listened to the voice of the tempter,
and here am I, in Atlantic City, quite oblivious
to Budapest or Copenhagen and positively ab-
sorbed in the novelty of the situation. For you
it would be a thrice-told tale, signifying a sum-
mer outing. For me it is as if I had fallen asleep
in Peru and awakened in Philadelphia — with
a difference. Consider me, then, as consulting
time-tables, as discussing various routes to the
sea. It was terra-nova for me. I saw with
the eye of the newly bom — at least, I hope I
did. I confused the man in the office by asking
for a first-class ticket for Atlantic City. He
jeered. Then I remembered I was in the land
of equality, where a man could make himself
superior to his fellow beings and also uncom-
fortable by paying for seats in a parlor coach.
The psychology of Atlantic City ! It is a bold
man who will attempt its elucidation. It has
no moral landscape, though it boasts the finest
of seascapes. If there were already invented,
as there will be some day, a psychical cinemato-
graph, then, perhaps, a complete picture could
be presented of this fascinating and vulgar re-
sort — for vulgar in the sense of popularity it is,
3"
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
monumentally vulgar, epically vulgar — epical
■ — that is the word. There is a sweep of colour,
a breeziness of space, a riot of sound, and a
chaos of movement that appal by their ampli-
tude. All creation seems out-of-doors. You
Jostle elbows with the man from Hindustan, the
man from Newark, the man from London, and
the man from California. Black, white, yellow,
red, and brown races mingle on the Boardwalk
in that never-ending promenade from the Inlet
to the new pier. Between the Pickle pier and
the Marlborough-Blenheim the course of hu-
manity takes its way. In that section it is
thickest- You use the short-arm jolt at every
other step, and you wonder, if it is so bad at
the beginning of the season, what it will be next
week. In fifteen minutes you long for the com-
parative ease of the rush hour on the Brooklyn
Bridge.
But how to "decompose" this swirling ka-
leidoscope into the semblance of a picture?
You may have come over from idyllic Cape May,
where the locust clicks at noon and the cricket
twitches a duet with the booming frogs after
sundown. You may have come from Ocean
City by boat to Longport, thence by trolley to
your hotel. Confused by the change, looking
vainly for old landmarks, a prey to various ap-
prehensions — hotel prices, the rapacity of
porters and hackmen, the insolence of waiters
— you fall into the nearest house and wish you
hadn't five minutes later. However, you are
312
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
on the beach, and as you remove your dripping
linen you sigh for New York. But that is be-
cause Atlantic City has not begun to work its
deadly spell. As a rule, the first ten minutes in
a strange place is a period of disenchantment.
To orient one's self takes at least an hour. The
barber and a cooling cup of tea (I said "tea"!)
are great aids to the shy spirit of man. If you
have not to formulate your impressions on paper,
then, lucky one, fear nothing except the occa-
sional mosquito. After the paucity of ideas
aroused by such a simple spot as Cape May,
the visions, complex, multitudinous, that pour
in upon your sensorium at Atlantic City are
very disturbing. Where to begin ! Where to
end ! Doubtless the best way would be to de-
scribe the Boardwalk by day and by night, then
trot about the hotels, make a short dash to the
Inlet, another to Longport, and — home. But
you would not have compassed even the super-
ficies of the island. There is a different Atlantic
City every hour. To register accurately its
shifting moods of the moment would need the
combined pens of Gautier, Zola, and Mark
Twain.
When our gifted gang of young fiction miners
are quite through imitating Bret Harte and
Buffalo Bill in the depiction of a Wild West that
never existed, when they have finished currying
the national mane, let them turn to Atlantic
City as a more fruitful theme. It's broad ave-
nue of wood by the sea wiU be supplanted by
i^3
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
concrete in time. The medley of life, the roar-
ing of megaphones instead of newspapers, the
frantic rush and indescribable gabble of a
Babel-Uke chorus, the dazzhng single hue of
booths, stores, divans, holes-in-the-wall hotels,
cafis, carousels, soda-fountains, shows; the
buzzing of children, the shouting newsboys, the
appeals of fakers, the quick glance of her eye,
the scowl of beach hawks and the innocent mien
of bucolics — a Walt Whitman catalogue would
not exhaust this new metropolis by the sea, this
paradise of "powerful, uneducated persons,"
patricians, millionaires, and mendicants. In
the foreground a brilUant sea with its "husky
haughty lips"; as a background against a limpid
western sky-line is set a row of hotels, some
palaces, some breath-catching, many common-
place. And the piers — the Steel pier, the
Auditorium, Young's, Heinz's, and the new
mi IHon- dollar steel-and- concrete pier of John
Young, completed some time; another city, a
second Atlantic City, on steel and iron stilts
extending a half-mile into the water, containing
a half-hundred diversions — what shall we say
to these piers? They may recall the evolution
from the lake-dwellers of central Europe, whose
lacustrine deposits we marvel over, just as huge
structures, reared in the air, the modern hotels
are the highly developed habitat of the cliff-
dwellers. Doubtless five thousand years hence
ardent geologists will rummage into the de-
posits of Atlantic City and erect systems on the
314
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
strange shapes discovered, the combs, corsets,
shovels, hairpins, flasks, and other "kitchen
midden" of our days that will have been buried.
Atlantic City is a queer cosmopolis, and a
cosmopolis that may perish easily in a giant
inundation, so closely does it crowd the rim of
the sea. I called it vulgar. It is, and ugly,
too, with that absorbing ugliness of modem life;
but it is also many other things. Not Ostend,
not Dieppe, not Brighton (England), not Trou-
viOe, not Scheveningen, not Boulogne, nor
Etretat, Abbazia, nor Cuxhaven, Naples, nor
the Riviera rival its infinite variety. Vet if you
wish to loaf and invite your soul. Cape May is
preferable. Atlantic City is not a retreat for
the introspective; it is all on the surface; it is
hard, glittering, unspeakably cacophonous, and
it never sleeps at all. Three days and you
crave the comparative solitude of Broadway
and Thirty-fourth Street; a week and you may
die of insomnia.
There is in reality no type of American girl-
hood. When you hear of the summer girl you
may be sure that the phrase was invented by
the same lazy-minded male who created the
matinee girl. Both exist only on paper, A
stroll along the Boardwalk will prove this.
Every variety of girl passes you. She is dark
haired and red, blond, and brunette. Her nose
is long and thin, thick, Grecian, or upturned like
the petal of a rose. But she is pretty in her
undistinguished way. Pretty girls are really
315
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
as thick as politicians. The interesting girl is
rare. They all dress with admirable taste,
possibly not without an overaccentuation of
colour — a tropical profuseness, one might add.
However, it is hot weather, and — one thing
we forget — America is the tropics during July
and August. In the genuine tropics they dress
accordingly; we do not. We wear abominable
linen and leather and woolen; therefore a little
latitude in the cut and hue of women's dress is
pardonable. I never saw such a forest of bare
arms before, arms held slightly in rear of the
body, not in bathing costume, but street dress.
And such shapely arms ! A Mahometan would
turn his head the other way if he spied them.
This display of Sesh and muscle, coupled with
the towering head-dress a la Pompadour, gave
me an impression of the barbaric. And when
I saw a brace of dusky belles with their frizzly
locks puffed up in the same extravagant fash-
ion, the illusion was still more complete. These
descendants of Lybian queens are nearer the
soil than their white sisters, but the "pull"
of their sex made them all row in the same
boat. Such costly dressing, such huge bow-
knots on their low sleeves, such palimpsests
of veils — the more you peel off the farther you
are from the face, like those trick boxes of con-
jurers ! I am free to confess that the American
girls I saw were more imposing than their male
escorts. They did, indeed, lack a certain dis-
tinction, and the English you heard fall from
316
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
their mouths was often dreadful — not dread-
ful alone because of its slang but because the
intonation, pronunciation, and enunciation were
so careless, so slipshod, so deadly common.
These are sins overheard in most cities. In
Atlantic City they salute you with painful em-
phasis. But what a carriage, what light-footed
elegance, what perpetual chewing of gum, what
a mixture of twangs !
The young men resolve themselves more
easily into a type because they persist in dressing
alike. The peg-top trousers, the flaring cut of
the sack coat, the flat felt hat, the gaudy shirts
and ties seem from the same shops. You notice
with grateful eyes that the tinted waist sash has
disappeared and that hosiery is less voluptuous
in design. The man who wears naughty socks
is a man lost to a higher purpose. His is an
essentially trivial mind; for him Emerson hath
no charm; a yeUow primrose is an ever-yellow
primrose in his clockwork-haunted eyes. The
notion the stranger gleans of these young fellows
is that they are a well-meaning, sturdy, and
slightly hard-featured lot. They shave clean.
The square jaw, blue-grey eyes, and short nose
betray Celtic or Germanic traces. Their fore-
bears were Irish or Teuton, and the whole mass
is leavened by a generous infusion of the Eastern;
you see, too, the olive skin, the deep-cupped
eyes, crisp locks, and brilliant colouring of the
Oriental. Among the women the Semitic is
often encountered, and invariably the ensemble
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
is harmonious, the figure in paxticular attract-
ing attention by its richer and more generous
curves. Of the purely exotic one never fails
in Atlantic City; Syrians, Turks, Indians, Gip-
sies, Armenians, Russians, Chinese, Siamese,
Japanese — the beach swarms with all manner
and conditions of outlanders. The costumes
are correspondingly picturesque.
If our native girls seem to copy in carriage
and general style a combination of Ethel Barry-
more and Maude Adams, the young men affect
the rich and careless collegian attitude. They
would have us believe that they have just es-
caped the university. It is when the inevitable
African brother appears that comparisons are
ludicrous; the same pancake grey felt, the same
baggy trousers, the same belt and tie, the same
stride and "stolid demeanour." It is a time for
discreet smiles. Imitation is not always the
most agreeable form of flattery.
Away from the ceaseless patter of feet and the
humming of many tongues you escape to the
beach. It is the hour of the most sacred func-
tion of Atlantic City — the hour of the bath.
Apart from the absence of the little bathing-
houses so familiar in Europe, from which you
descend solo into the water, there is not a
marked difference nowadays between the cus-
toms and costumes here and on the Continent.
A decade ago American bathing suits were de-
nounced by Europeans as wholly wicked. At
Trouville to-day it is the American who will be
31S
d by Google
ATLANTIC CITY
shocked. To be sure, our mermaids are begin-
ning to discard stockings; the effect of the
glancing sunshine is rather disquieting. After
all, Atlantic City is devoted to the ocean for
itself; there are many beach-combers — the
girls who let their hair down to dry while they
make living sculpture on the sand and beam
on their favoured young man browning himself
at their feet; but the main business of these folk
is to get wet and enjoy themselves in the break-
ers; also to fight out in a pleasant spot the
never-ending duel of the sexes. There she
goes, tall, alert, plunging in recklessly, riding
the curling waves, a Galatea in silk.
The beach is a noble one for swimming, though
not so perfect as the strand at Cape May. No
table d'hdte salutes you as you breast the water
— the coast is free from sewage. It is a pity
that Atlantic City has become such a big town.
There is no trolley on the beach; instead it runs
from the Inlet through Atlantic Avenue, which
is very businesslike, as far as Albany Avenue
before the ocean is seen, but after that there is
a superb vista until you reach Longport, not
missing the elephant on the way. Nine miles
and more is the distance you may travel on this
trolley-line. The great number of hotels and
cottages have robbed the place of all its old
rustic al fresco charm. Even Brigantine Beach
has succumbed to the superior magnetism of the
larger city and to-day is moribund. There are
railroads, hotels, steamboat service on this once-
319
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
famous resort across the Inlet, but, notwith-
standing the large sums of money expended, it
has gone into a decadence, let us hope a tempo-
rary one. Too thickly populated in summer-
time, Atlantic City, when a land breeze blows,
is as hot as any inland town — I was about to
say hotter. The sun beats down upon your
head with brassy splendour. There is no shade
excepting the piers and piazzas. The hotels
are stuffy, and at the end of the piers the ther-
mometers range high. In the water is the only
comfort to be had. Luckily such heat is infre-
quent and does not long endure.
Music assails your ears every few feet. From
the howling of some hideous talking-machine
to the loud, confident blaring of the orchestra of
the wooden horses and wooden rabbits in the
carouse] you can't escape noise. Curiously
enough, Wagner is the favourite composer. At
Longport, where you drink cherry-bounce, I
heard an orchestrion play the prelude to Die
Meistersinger, and the carousel amazed me with
its shrill performance of the Valkyrie's Ride.
Lohengrin, poor, peerless knight, is hacked at
by mechanical pianos and steam-organs. Va-
rious bands, brass and wood-wind predominating,
attack Wagner in piecemeal. To hear an Ital-
ian orchestra playing the andante from the Fifth
Symphony of Beethoven on the pier is to hear a
wonderful misplacement of accents and expres-
sion. Never mind; it's better than ragtime.
People whistle Wagner. He will end by becom-
320
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
ing the most popular composer in the world — - a
horrible fate for a great man. To add to this
overwhelming sjTnphonic olla podrida the auto-
mobiles and their tritone whistles bring dismay
to your ears with melancholy, biood-curdUng
wails hke those of a banshee on the night when
Larry was stretched.
You can fish in the Inlet, sail in the open. I
had the Bluebird out for a memorable morning.
Rockfish, I was informed by a facetious person,
are caught daily and of great size at the Inlet.
It proved to be my merry friend's witticism over
the efforts of enthusiastic, misguided men, whose
hooks became entangled in the rocks, when,
thinking they had a bite, they attempted to up-
root the bottom of the bay. To vary the
monotony of a hot afternoon I attended a game
of baseball at the Inlet. It was my first. I do
not understand the game, but I understand the
instinct that has survived from the bloody spec-
tacle of the antique circus and is reincarnated
in the national game. Is it not a refined form
of cruelty to force full-grown men to rush about
in the fiercest sun's rays after a contemptibly
small ball, tumbling in their eagerness to please
their tyrants in the grand-stand and on the
bleachers? What is it all about? I saw a fat
man wearing a fife-preserver on Ms chest, a wire
mask on his face and shouting signals while
dodging the wooden club with which the ball is
attacked — that is, when it isn't missed. Men
sprawl in the gravel, men scream angry oaths,
321
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
men are abused with vast vodferousness by the
spectators. All this in the open air, with the
heat furnace-like, and for the sake of a pitiable
ball. Childhood's game of tag seems more sen-
sible; golf is positively intellectual by compar-
ison. And the cruelty of it ! I only know one
other form of diversion more cruel, and that is a
piano recital wherein a pianist plays a list of
twenty compositions from Bach to Tschai-
kowsky. I must confess, however, that this
particular game had its humorous compensa-
tions. It was waged between the Philadelphia
Giants, a coloured organisation, and the Cuban
Stars, real natives of the Pearl of the Antilles.
As the score was three to one at the close, I pre-
sume the Giants walloped the Cubans. A
husky giant, black as a solar eclipse and on third
base, kept us cool by chanting at intervals the
sad story of Hs bet on a horse named Hydrant,
a horse which is still running. This Solomon
lent to the afternoon an air of distinction. But
I was as thirsty as a rainbow before the affair
was concluded, and you know a rainbow is
double-ended-
At a hotel I saw a dozen women, their fingers
covered with opals, emeralds, and sapphires,
eating green com on the cob. How this sight
would have pleased the tempestuous fancy of
M. Paul Adam, who has written a book about
America ! The dozen mouths opened simul-
taneously, pink and pearly traps; there was a
snapping of dentals, a gnashing of com. The
322
dbyGoOgle
ATLANTIC CITY
diamonds flashed, the emeralds blazed with
their sinister green, and the troubled miiky fire
of the opals matched at times the colour of the
slaughtered vegetables. Surely no other could
enjoy such a scintillating death at the teeth
of a dozen pretty overdressed matrons and
maids.
I have seen old men, whose teeth were worn
away by many years of frozen punch, call for
three kinds of dessert — the summer hotel din-
ner is a terrific thing. There is too much to
choose from, and one eats far more than is good
for him. You don't have to swallow everything,
but the average sensual man when he pays five
dollars a day usually tries to get even with the
landlord. And the prices are on the upward
move. For a room with bath you pay every-
where five dollars and extra for board. Nor am
I disposed to wax patriotic over American hotels.
Europe is no longer the place where comfort-
able, well-lighted rooms with bath are a rarity.
You may grumble at paying twenty marks a
day for your room at the Hotel Bristol, Berfin,
but you are given a big marble bath sunk in the
floor and a reception as well as a bed room. And
this at the most expensive hotel in Prussia.
Compare this with the rooms you are shown
throughout America for the same price. I
have done so throughout this little pilgrimage
of mine and have been astonished by the infe-
riority of first-class hotels in the provinces to
first-class establishments in Europe. The ser-
323
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
vice and the cooking are on a much lower scale,
for the native American doesn't care for the
nuance in his food, in his art, in his Uterature.
He hkes them all flavourless. He gobbles every-
thing in a hurry, and quantity is more telhng
than quahty. This also applies to the manner
in which he accumulates money; but there he
has the better of the European.
Are pianos ever tuned at summer hotels?
Better the mechanical eloquence of the mechan-
ical piano than the cracked tintinnabulations of
Chopin played by a young woman with a lawn-
tennis touch. And we are as crude musically
as in other things. The length of the land
wretched music reigns- You may miss it in the
city, but you are a helpless victim when vaca-
tion days find you on the countryside. A na-
tion is no better than the music it makes; its
music is its touchstone. Let us mitigate the
rigour of this statement, else should we stand
shamefaced before the world, so vile, so vulgar,
so clatteringly empty is our popular music-mak-
ing -— with a few honourable exceptions. Don't
fancy I yearn for the classics or Wagner during
the dog-days. Better are the old so-called
"darky" tunes of Stephen Foster as compared
to the shrill insolence of the degrading ragtime,
the snorting marches, and back-alley two-steps
that fill the spaces of our hotels with their im-
pertinent, shallow sonorities. How can a coun-
try aspire to artistic grandeur that tolerates such
musical monstrosities ! Better a toneless land
3H
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
than such parodies. No wonder we grow Corn-
stocks instead of Mozarts !
Ah! If America would only stick to Amer-
ican cookery we should not be a nation of dys-
peptics. There is better, because plainer, cook-
ing in many farmhouses than at our hotels.
The curse of imitation hangs over the menu —
imitating the names of French dishes, it seldom
comes nearer than the name. Why should we
be poisoned by these wretched attempts at the
Gallic. Everywhere the order of the French
dinner — rather say the Parisian — is attempted.
But we get watery soups, fish with mediocre
sauce, the roast seldom rare and neither Eng-
lish nor French, the entries ridiculous and
chilled, while the unhappy vegetables are mar-
shalled in hke a fleet of porcelain scows sur-
rounding the flag-ship — a plate of overdone beef
floating in thin gravy. We have the best ma-
terial in the world — meats, fowl, vegetables,
fruits — and in America the cooking is the worst
In the world. Why? Simply because we pat-
tern at a deplorable distance after a foreign
model. The real American home cooking sets
your memory jubilating.
But Atlantic City at night! It is a picture
for such different painters as Whistler or Tou-
louse-Lautrec, and it is a sight not duphcated
on earth. Miles of glittermg electric lamps
light the Boardwalk, Even the dark spaces
above the Pickle pier are now festooned with
lace-like fire. It is a carnival of flame. You
325
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
may start from the spot where in letters of fire
you read, "Will you marry me?" near the Heinz
pier, and with a book slowly walk for miles,
perusing it all the while until you have passed
the lower end of the walk, which recalls Coney
Island, and finally touch the last wooden rail.
Or, if you prefer riding, take one of those com-
fortable sedan-chairs and be wheeled by a dark
lad for a small sum. The enormous amount of
electricity consumed seems to make the air
vital. Through these garlands of light moves
a mob of well-behaved humans. The women
are more mysterious than in the daytime.
Everywhere you encounter the glances of count-
less eyes if you are still youthful. Evening
toilets of the most dazzling kind assault your
nerves. Wealth fairly envelops you. There is
apparently no such thmg as poverty or sickness
in existence; the optimistic exuberance of the
American woman and man is seen here at its
ripest. There is a suggestion of the overblown,
of the snobbish, in this display, but I was not
looking for the fly in the ointment, and so I en-
joyed the picture as I should have enjoyed some
gorgeous tableau in Aida or Salammbd, It was
as real. The love-birds kept up their whirring
as from the lighthouse to the new pier the pro-
cession bubbled and boiled. No wonder Sarah
Bernhardt exclaimed in her effusive manner
that Atlantic City is unique. And she saw it
in the winter-time.
On the Steel pier they were giving a children's
ball, I had wearied of vaudeville, of the roller-
326
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
skating, of the thousand and two shows to be
viewed, scattered over the various piers. A
child's ball would be a genuine novelty. Chil-
dren rule at this city. I saw so few at Cape
May that babies appear to rain from the skies
here. They roll about the sand like little ani-
mals, and when they should be in bed, dreaming
of candy angels, they are togged in festal rai-
ment and allowed to dance their tender legs
off till midnight. The huge dancing-hall of the
pier was filled with happy and proud parents.
A band played with \'icious precision a march
as a half-mile of children and tots of three or
four slowly paced the slippery floor. A master
of ceremonies with a cool head solemnly guided
the manceuvres of this Juvenile army. Two by
two, boy and girl, they moved to the music with
shining, evening faces, all vainly dressed, all
eager and Joyous. They were each given a
prize. The effect was indescribable. Nearly
half a thousand children, preparing for the great,
good game of life, some of them with matured
faces, the majority wearing that wonderful ex-
pression of expectancy, as if the curtain were
about to be lifted and the glorious secret of life
revealed to their ravished gaze, I could not help
recalling Thackeray and his moist spectacles
when he heard the charity children sing at St.
Paul's. I tried to weep, but the music was too
excruciaUng, and a child slipped on the polished
parquet and — drat that youngster ! she dropped
sand in my shoe when I was getting my hand-
kerchief ready !
327
dbyGoogle
ATLANTIC CITY
They have a hyphenated hotel on the beach.
The architecture of one section is so extraor-
dinary that I gasped when I saw it. I haven't
the remotest notion of the architect's name, nor
did I go into the hotel, fearing the usual per-
fection of modern appliances and all the rest of
the useful things that are driving romance away
from our age. It was the exterior that glued
my feet to the Boardwalk. If Coleridge, in
Kubla Khan, or Poe, in The Domain of Amheim,
had described such a fantastic structure we
should have understood, for they were men of
imagination. But in the chilly, aesthetic air
of our country, where utility leads beauty by
the nose, to see a man giving rein to his fancy
as has the man who conceived this exotic pile
is deli^tfully refreshing. William Beckford,
the author of Vathek, would have wished for
nothing richer. The architecture might be
Byzantine. It suggests St. Marco's at Venice,
St. Sophia at Constantinople, or a Hindu palace,
with its crouching dome, its operatic fajade,
and its two dominating monoliths with blunt
tops. Built of concrete, the exterior decoration
is a luxurious exfoliation in hues, turquoise and
fawn. I did not venture near the building for
fear some Atlantic City Flip would cry out:
"Wake up! You are at Winslow Junction!"
If ever I go to the place again it will be to see
this dream architecture, with its strange evoca-
tions of Asiatic colour and music.
328
dbyGoogle
II
NEWPORT
At Newport I tasted sour grapes. In the
heart of Newport I became a snob. Newport
saw me fall from grace, social, not sinful. Worse
remains — ■ at Newport I took my maiden voy-
age in a motor-car. I am still giddy from the
swiftly shifting experiences of the week spent
at the Queen of Summer Resorts — as the real-
estate agents call this httle Rhode Island town,
I had reached Boston, only to miss the one com-
fortable afternoon train to Newport. And the
night of horror I spent in that congeries of
crooked streets I endured as a penance for my
frequent complaints against New York. We are
noisy, but Boston caps us at the game. Their
elevated railroad sounds like the thunderous ap-
proach of a tornado; to sleep within a mile of
it is out of the question, particularly as they
close the drug stores at eleven o'clock. What
man said that he would rather be a policeman in
Harlem than a poet in Boston ? Although I do
not know his name, I wave him a friendly salute.
Naturally I arrived at Newport the next day
in a bad humour. The weather did not improve
my temper. It was muggy. It weighed upon
329
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
one like the folds of a deflated balloon. You
felt heavier, older, more serious. This, then, I
thought, is the nerve-soothing climate I have
read so much about ! Give me Saratoga. Give
me the Berkshires. In a depressing mood I
sauntered through the town, which was lively
enough, preparations for the carnival being in
progress. But I found it dull, not quaintly dull,
as did Henry James, but provincially so. The
old court-house, Touro Park, Morton Park, the
Hebrew cemetery, the queer little streets with
queer little houses on them, the narrow side-
walks — all these, with their historical memories,
did not ehcit from me the mental spark we call
interest. My historic sense failed me when most
I needed it. I did not feel the thrill patriotic
when I saw Uncle Sam's sailors rolling about the
place loaded to the gunwales with fire-water.
Nor did I go out of my way to look at the Perry
Monument or Fort Adams. In a word, I was
a disgruntled human, suffering from the hu-
midity, annoyed by the proximity of much
inutile bustle, and selfishly absorbed in himself.
Perhaps I was suffering from that minor malady
peculiar to sociaJists called "sour grapes." I
had asked several policemen to point me out an
aristocrat, a miUionaire; but my request had
in all cases been received with suspicious glances.
I had seen French and English aristocrats and
had been greatly impressed by their disengage-
ment from the quotidian things of life. They
had sauntered, they had lolled, they had looked
33°
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
bored. Would the American aristo saunter, loll,
and look bored ? Finally a man who was read-
ing Thoreau near the Old Mill advised me to
hire a carriage and see the ocean driveway.
As soon as we entered Bellevue Avenue, what
I had been searching for commenced to make its
presence apprehended; the thrice-distilled, the
predous atmosphere of Newport gently smote
my dejected consciousness. I sat up and began
to take notice. The driver was an old resident,
a bluff person, middle-aged, shrewd, and not
given to mincing his language. He called a
millionaire a millionaire. Before I had reached
the Spouting Rock I had made the acquain-
tance of the largest and most select closet of
family skeletons outside of an anatomical mu-
seum. How they dangled before my eyes !
How they beckoned with bony beckonings ! How
they leered from their empty eye sockets ! How
they wagged their shining skulls ! It was a
Danse Macabre this coachman set moving for
my benefit. And what a catalogue of misery,
sin, unhappiness, sordid vulgarity, even crime,
was unrolled ! Suicide, embezzlement, dishon-
oured homes, disgrace, and all manner of follies
had happened within the sacred precincts of
this billion-dollar paradise. Anecdote piled on
anecdote; scandal trailed after scandal; no one
was spared. In despair I asked this dealer in
fractured decalogues if he took me for a news-
paper man. He replied, without an appearance
of surprise, that he knew I was a clergyman.
331
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
"Then drive to the nearest church," I sternly
admonished him, "or else stop talking!" He
swallowed the hint and we drove on. But I
still suffered. What ! this angehc retreat con-
cealed such vile and pitiful histories? Of what
value is great wealth if it cannot smooth away
all the rough places, heal all the sores? This
modern philosopher's stone for which we all
struggle, this magic medium which occupies the
foreground of our waking and dreaming thoughts
our lives long — is it not the real solvent of evil?
May it be in reality evil itseK?
"Over yonder," said the driver, breaking my
profound meditations, "is The Breakers." The
mist encircled it and it looked Hke a mediaeval
fortress, full of torture chambers.
Many other wonderful houses I saw, veritable
palaces, surrounded by magnificent gardens, em-
bowered densely in flowers, beautiful beyond the
dream of poets, and framed by rich vegetation
and trees of heroic growth. All that has been
said in praise of Newport you may safely set
down as an understatement. It is more formal
than you may expect — I mean in the rectitude
of its wide avenues on the Hill and in the con-
trolled efflorescence of its horticulture. Design,
taste, even fantasy, are everywhere visible.
There are explosions of hydrangeas of almost
every hue, in company with the looming and
floral flight of tall hollyhocks. I saw some gar-
dens that recalled England, others that trans-
ported me to Italy — but Italy in the spring-
332
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
tide, before the lustre of summer has robbed the
hills of their delicate contours, the flowers of
their virginal pose. If Newport should ever
change its commonplace name it could be re-
christened Hydrangea without doing violence
either to fact or imagination.
The Cliff Walk is three miles and a half of
the pure picturesque. From Easton's Beach to
Land's End there is a series of surprises; not
alone in the villas, but in the coy turns of the
waUi, the unexpected change of marine physiog-
nomy, and then the sheer romance of the entire
coast. Unlike Mr. James, I came to Newport
unburdened by memories. It was my first visit.
I saw it with eyes not haunted by ghosts of dead
youth; nor did I fetch with me prejudices.
If society folk can't always catch the glint of
gold on a canvas of Monticelli, or the harmonies
in a Ballade by Chopin, or the ethereal tones of
Shelley, or the marmoreal splendours of Milton,
or the tortured music of a Rodin group, why, it
is their loss. As compensation they may dine
and wine — not things to be despised — dress
and gamble, waste or win; above all, feel to their
finger-tips a sense of power. And the last may
be best. Things balance in this universe, not-
withstanding our cry against the injustice of the
cosmos. I should probably be a very unhappy
man were I wealthy; yet I understand the
pleasures wealth confers. So do not let us de-
spise the multimilhonaire. Often has his wealth
been thrust upon him. Often it irks its owner,
333
dbyGoOgle
NEWPORT
who seeks to get rid of the burden fay opening
his windows and throwing his money into the
streets. We speak of such as dissipated; in
reality it is nature striving to attain its accus-
tomed mediocrity. Let us applaud spend-
thrifts and them that go down to the market-
place, there to fribble away their inheritance.
And let us also put an end to this useless moral-
ising and continue our talc.
I had viewed all Newport from the outside. I
had been to the Casino playground looking for
my American aristocrat, instead seeing a nice
set of young chaps with brawny, sun-spotted
arms all playing tennis; I had lunched at Ber-
ger's, walked through Love Lane — alas ! — ■
alone; had glanced at General Prescott's head-
quarters in 1776, at the home of William Ellery,
a signer of the Declaration of Independence; at
the old Trinity Church, the Charming House,
built in 1720; the New York Yacht Club, the
Windmill, even had I gone to Lawton's Valley;
I knew the Parade by heart, and I disliked the
brittle noise of Thames Street, disliked its
crowds, its ugly shops. At Mile End I found
solitude; and I viewed Gooseberry Island —
its seclusion — that tiny islet where poker is
played to the swash of the waves, where jack-pots
of fabulous sums are opened by the sporting old
bucks who go over in launches and return often
with empty pockets. When I passed Rocham-
beau's headquarters during the Revolution I
tried to conjure up a thrill, but a baby playing
334
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
on the door-step with a kitten was better to my
eyes than all the musty, dusty memories. I
saw Bailey's Beach, where the swells bathe in
perfumed salt water; Easton's Beach, where the
water is common salt for the plain people.
This same drive was under a slaty grey sky.
The ocean was leaden in hue, and across the
bay the clouds hung like those " white elephants "
Henry James saw on the Cliff Walk. The world
was drab for me, I met a few people driving.
Otherwise Newport seemed unpeopled. The Ad-
dicks mansion, the "gas house," looked dreary
on its dreary perch. And then something hap-
pened, A voice I well knew called out:
"You plumber, you ! What comet shook you
from its tail into Newport?" It was Clarence,
the only son and graceless heir of a chewing-
gmn emperor, in his sixty-horse-power car puff-
ing and blowing on the narrows and I sitting in
a hired vehicle watching him with amazed eyes.
My driver had also astonished eyes. He ap-
peared downcast. He was evidently pondering
his list of skeletons !
"You chump, get out of that trap and come
into my boiler-shop. I call this machine of mine
mangeur de poulets, it eats up the chickens so
beautifully." I stretched my cramped legs and
responded to Clarence's invitation slowly. For
one thing, I didn't like the look of his piratical
craft. I hated to admit it — I had never been
in an automobile before. Clarence laughed,
"Don't let that worry you — you won't con-
335
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
tract seasickness; and please call it a motor-car.
They say ' automobiles ' in New York. This is
Newport." I grinned. Then I asked my man
what I owed him. He calculated audibly.
"You're not keeping to your contract," he
blandly observed, "and so it will cost you a dol-
lar extra."
"But, you old undertaker of live reputations,"
I hotly answered, "I'm saving you a farther
ride." "I'm here and I've got to take the team
home," he doggedly maintained. And so I paid
him, greatly wondering at Rhode Island arith-
metic.
"Serves you right," added Clarence, "for not
letting me know you were here. Jump in.
Hold on to your teeth. Let her go !" We flew
homeward. We flew heavenward. I saw sky
rush down to sea and meet in rough embrace.
Houses looked like trees and trees like tooth-
picks. I remembered my past and I saw my
future; the present was merely a humming
bridge between. Clarence, still smiling, tooted
masterfully. From Bailey's Beach to Easton's
we ran in thirty-three seconds — at least that
is what he said. Later I discovered that he had
been boasting.
But the ride had other results. A psychical
transformation was going on within me. My
subliminal self was slowly pushing into the map
of my consciousness a new Me. Suddenly I be-
came a snob. A full-fledged snob sat in the
place occupied before by a modest, middle-
3J6
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
aged, stout person, full of the vapours. What
had happened? Alas, I was become a snob I
I meanly admired mean things. I admired my-
self. I admired the auto — the motor-car. I
admired Clarence, Above all, I looked down on
the world afoot. What black magic had ema-
nated from the petrol of this fugacious machine
that so changed a man into a snob ! Mark the
consequences.
"Clarence," I said, endeavouring to appear
haughty, "Clarence, what are those creatures
in the surf?" Clarence, still wearing that
damnable smile of his, responded :
"Those are the common people bathing."
"Ah, you mean hoi poUoi." I chuckled at my
wit.
"Odi profanum vulgus," he quickly retorted.
When bad Greek meets worse Latin, then comes
the tug of tongues ! Our chauffeur — I say
"our"- — ^who sat in the garage, or the pan-
neau, or some part of the locomotive, was a New
Zealander disguised as a man from Brittany.
He was versed in all the moves of the social
checker-board. As we turned toward the town
he blew a whistle.
"I made him do that," remarked Clarence
languidly, "to remind me of my engagements."
The idea tickled my fancy.
"Why not employ flappers, as they did in
Swift's Laputa?"
"Howdye do, Reggie?" called out Clarence to
a young fellow in a red-wheeled bucking bronco.
337
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
The name sounded familiar. Reggie and New-
port ! Ay, ay, of course, said I to myself, remem-
bering my blue book.
"Howdye do, Harry?" I sat up, displaying
pardonable curiosity.
"The Harry?"
"Of course," replied Clarence pettishly,
"And, old man, please don't wear your ignorance
on your sleeve, I'll post you later, I'm ashamed
if Armance, my chaufTeur, hears you. Remem-
ber — not a word about chewing-gum down
here. They won't stand for it. I'm the son
of a sugar sultan, not, as you so stupidly call
it, a chewing-gum potentate. And please don't
make so much fun of the girls who chew gum in
America. My father has already asked me to
cross you off my visiting list. All American girls
chew gum. Also — in the house of the hangman
no one speaks of the rope!"
"And in Newport?" I hazarded. He pulled
up his machine.
" Newport is not America — put that in your
social pipe and smoke it. Newport is an island
surrounded by Americans, AH the smart Amer-
icans are working twenty-five hours a day to get
here; their wives are driving them to tt. And if
work won't get them here they rob banks, plun-
der insurance companies, water railroad stock,
milk the public generally so as to land here."
He paused.
"And what do they do when they do get
here?" I said, as if in a dream. I was still a
338
d by Google
NEWPORT
snob. I still saw myself hugely silhouetted
against the social horizon, with my friends at
my boot heels. Oh, automobile ~ I mean,
motor-car — what sins may be laid to thy ac-
count! Thou art the modern Mephisto who
tempts the poor httle Fausts that earn a handful
of dollars every week !
"Do?" replied Clarence, calmly handing a
cigarette to the hairy Armance, "why, work like
the rest of the social convicts on this island of
golden castaways." I roared, Clarence could
be witty. But he regarded me sourly.
"Don't be a bromide !" he tartly commanded.
Ever since he had met Gelett Burgess at a dolls'
dance Clarence fancied himself a sulphite. But
he wasn't. I knew it. I laughed again, loudly
and, I fear, vacantly.
"There you go," he exclaimed. "You are
like the rest of the rank outsiders. You come
down here and go to the Casino or to the club,
and because you see some people lounging you
talk about the idle rich. But there are no idle
rich at Newport. They are the busy rich. They
work harder than a motorman. They are nearly
all motormen. Mechanics, jockeys, athletes,
gourmands — if they can't work their muscles
they can their teeth — pedestrians, gymnasts,
swimmers, sailors, butlers, dancers, polo play-
ers, bar mixers, lawn-tennis virtuosi, aeronauts,
locomotive drivers, horse trainers, bilUardists —
why, the list might be stretched from here to
the harbour. Idle ? These people ? They work
339
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
harder than draught horses from morning to
midnight. They toil as toils no sailor doing his
daily stint. And they put their soul into their
work. And the women are quite as devoted in
this self-abnegation. Just watch Willie Dubbs
— you know, the son of old Dubbs, who was
painted by Sargent. Don't you remember that
picture at the society's exhibition, No. 23, Por-
trait of a Gentlemanly Ass ? Well, watch
Willie mix a cocktail. No artist at the Waldorf
can touch him. No, my poor old chap, you
don't know this crowd as I do. Their money
is not like that of Midas, Everything they
touch turns them to work. If they can't work
they die — die of indigestion or of ennui. And
a healthier, handsomer set of men and women
you won't see in all America. They all look as
if Gibson and Dick Davis designed them- Go
any Thursday night to Freebody Park, where
they give a vaudeville show. Well, you'll find
the boxes crowded with the best set. There is
little difference, after all, between the poor
American man and the American aristocrat.
Both have the same tastes. Both eat, drink,
smoke, and slang as much as they can. Both
work hard, both enjoy vaudeville shows, both
like pretty women, both" — I interrupted
him.
"And how about poetry, art, music? How
about the old-fashioned leisure and dignity?"
"Rot! Nowadays we haven't time to be
poUte. We're hustlers."
340
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
"Bravo, monsieur!" It was the voice of
Armance. Clarence was touched.
"But as to Harry? What does he work?" I
persisted.
"Oh, Harry! He makes epigrams. Here.
Armance, take the wheel. Watch the compass.
Keep her headed N. by N, E. We go to Reg-
gie's festival." I was appalled. I wore plain
clothes. My tie was Bromidian, even though
my soul was snobbish. But Clarence would
take no refusal. He pulled a note-book from his
buff velvet jacket and began reading from it at
the top of his lungs.
"Here is a batch of the cleverest things Harry
got off at the Wormwoods' dance last Friday, I
thought the Missus would die of smiles. Listen
— and don't give me away: 'The first to holler
is the first to collar.' Great, isn't it? 'Bridge
is hell!' 'Faint nerve never won a full hand.'
'Who said iizz?' They always shriek at that
one, 'Apres moi — le poisson.' 'There's as
good fish in the sea as ever came out of the
Stuyvesant pond.' 'A live monkey is better
than a dead leader.' 'What's the difference be-
tween Newport and the Pier?'" Clarence im-
patiently awaited my answer. I regarded him
blankly. "Well?" "Isn't it because Brander
Matthews stops at the Pier?"
"You're the limit," he coarsely said. "No,
it's because at Narragansett the bathing is bet-
ter." I moaned. Then I stretched my arms
skyward,
341
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
"Oh, Clyde ritch, where are you that I may
make my apologies for havmg attacked your
stage pictures of this hfe? You didn't make it
half strong enough — ■ no, not by a half."
"Stop your critical yapping; these are really
mine, not Harry's. Here we are." We dis-
mounted. There were about five thousand peo-
ple, rich, poor, shabby relatives, parasites, social
molluscs, and farmers, all trying to get in at
once. It was a few miles from Newport. The
affair was for a laudable benefit — I forget now
just which one. I think few present knew.
How the snobbery of these people sickened me !
Not one-tenth of them knew their hosts by sight,
yet they chatted of them like old friends. So
did I to Clarence. I said "Reggie" a dozen
times; and how they stared at the prettily
garbed and beautiful society women serving ice-
cream and lemonade ! So did I. But I fancy
I did it less rudely. Oh, snobs, snobs, snobs!
And I among them all, admiring the display of
wealth, the wonderful training-ring, the wonder-
ful horses, the marvellous women. I saw all the
fashionable people whose names were printed
next morning in the papers. The trouble was
that they didn't see me. I expressed this idea
to Clarence, but he was busily engaged talking
to a girl with turquoise-coloured eyes who spoke
slang with a heavenly intonation. Oh, snobs,
snobs, snobs :
I was about to address Mrs. Arthur Pompa-
dour, when Clarence, holding me by the elbow,
342
dbyGoogle
NEWPORT
led me to his chicken-slaying chariot. Once
ensconced therein he huskily asked: "Where?"
"Armance, home for this social aspirant."
Away we bowled. I was in the swim. So was
Clarence. But Clarence was rich and I was
poor. At last I dozed off, only to be overtaken
by a nightmare, in which I found myself sweat-
ing as I tunnelled my way into the safe of the
Chemical Bank. I must have money, money
for Newport. Help ! Help I I awoke. It was
day. Es war ein traum. Alas, poor snob!
That afternoon we cut the dust on the way to
Narragansett Pier. We took one of the ferries
to Jamestown, crossed the island at a clip, rolled
on another boat and, once ashore, rushed our
gait until we stood puffing and clanking before
the Casino, After some of Sherry's cooking
we went about and I saw the place once
beloved of Edgar Saltus and celebrated in his
brilliant prose. Sherry's chef pleased me as
much as anything I encountered at the Pier,
even the ocean walk. There is a look of faded
splendour about the place despite its wealth and
its air of fashion. I have been told by Clarence
that I am all wrong, that only now is the Pier
taking on new hfe.
"Consider, reflect if you can," he proceeded.
"You lunch at Berger's, over in Newport, and
then you leave early and by hard steaming you
may get over here and lunch at the Casino, Yet
you say our set doesn't do a day's work,"
The carnival week, with its glitter, colour,
343
Hosted byGoOgle
NEWPORT
bustle, gaiety, its crowds, yachts, and war-ships,
soldiers, sailors, and numberless girls, left on me
a brighter impression of the brave old town.
Lovely, auriferous Newport, who shall pluck out
the heart of thy melancholy mystery? Under
what sinister sand-bank have the jealous gods
hidden the proofs of thy family skeletons. If
in New York money makes the mare go, in New-
port it is wheeb that turn the brain. My brain
did not regain its average gait until I passed
over the gang-plank of the Priscilla, which swam
in that harbour that looks so EngUsh; and before
we reached New York I had shed my snobskin
completely.
Newport, thou pactolian city by the sea, be-
fore whom so many women of America immolate
themselves, Newport, I adore thee, but I shall
never look upon thy fair face again — that is,
unless Clarence invites me to Villa Confiture.
Then by train or balloon I shall storm thy ada-
mantine social wall. Do not leave me, an
adipose Peri, at the gates of thy paradise. At
Newport I tasted sour grapes. Oh, snobs, snobs,
snobs !
dbyGoogle
BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER
THE PATHOS
»/
DISTANCE
A Book of a Thousand and One
Moments
PROMENADES
of an
IMPRESSIONIST
iat«rpreter, and here his Tcmg eiperieni
^T^i
EGOISTS
A BOOK OF SUPERMEN
STENDHAL, BAUDELURE, FLAUBERT, ANATOLE
FRANCE, HUYSMANS, BARRtS, HELLO,
BLAKE, NIETZSCHE, IBSEN.
3 MAX STIRNER
Wilh P,
1 a>vl Foc-
Rip<siua
— RovAi COKHssoi, in the Hew
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK
dbyGoogle
BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER
ICONOCLASTS:
A Book of Dramatists
ismo. Si. 50 oet
CONTEwra: Henrik Ibsen— August Strindherg— HEury Becquf
~ ■ - um— Paul Hervieu— Tfe Quinles
orky'5 Nachtaayl— ■■ " '
Princess Malhilde's Fla^Duse and
ris^e Adam — Maurice Maeterlmck.
"His styk is a liElLe jerky, but it is one □(
OVERTONES:
A Book of Temperaments
i2mo. Si. 50 net
DNTENTs: Ridi&rd Stra.u!s— Par^aJ: A MystiraJ Melodrama—
LilerBiy Men who loved Music (Balzac, Tutgenietf, Daudet,
ctc.V-fhe Eternal F*minine— The Beethovrn of French Prose
— Nietzsche the EUiapscxlist — Anarchs ol Art — After Wagner,
Whatf-Verii and Boito.
L" — Academy, London.
d by Google
BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER
MEZZOTINTS IN
MODERN MUSIC
i2mo. S1.50 net
"Mr. Hvmcker is, in Ihe best sense, a critic: he listens to tbe
aa possibie , or be sketches the composers in fine, bread, sweeping
strokes with a ma^ificent di^regud for unimportant details. And
as Mr. Hunekct is, as I have said, a piwerfui personaiity, a man of
uabie
MELOMANIACS
$1,50 net
5; The Lord's Prayer in
-A Chop
It Gutter— The Piper of Dreams— An Emotional AcroEaf
—Isolde's Mother— The Rim of Finer Issues— An Ibsen Girl—
Tannbauser's Chcact— The Red-Headed Piaao Player— Bryn-
hild's Immolation— The Quest of tiie Elusive— An tivoiuntarv
In.™rgent— Hunding's WBt^Tbe Corridor of Time— Avatar
—The WegstafFes give a Musicale— Tbe Iron VirEu]— Dust
of the GodsF-SiegJried's Death— Intermeiio— A Spinner of
Silence— The Disenchanted Symjiony— Music tbe Conqueror.
it would be diS
er did s book, ii
. 'Melom
obscurity. It is iaexpiical^y uneven, as if the writer were perjKtU'
aUy playing on the boundary line that divides sanity of thought iroir
intellectual chaos. There is method in the madness, but it is a
method of intangible ideas. Nevertbeless, there is genius wiittei
over a large portion of it, and to a musician the -wealth of musical
-Harold E. Gorst, in Lsndiiti Satutiay Ra/ias (Dec. 8. i w>6).
d by Google
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11