Birds of a feather flock together,
you can tell a dog by its spots, a man is known by
the company he keeps and all that sort of
thing.
It is quite astonishing that nobody
has before been struck by what I have in my eye.
People go round all the while writing about Old Greenwich
Village, the harbour, the Ghetto, the walk uptown.
Coney Island, the Great White Way, the subway ride,
Riverside Drive, the spectacle of Fifth Avenue, the
Night Court, the “lungs” of the metropolis,
the “cliff dwellers,” “faith, hope,
and charity” on University Heights a
cathedral, a university, and a hospital, “lobster
palace society,” the “grand canons”
of lower Manhattan, and about every other part of
and thing in New York except this most entertaining
section which I am about to discuss.
Now, I never lived on Mars
You know “Sunday stories”
in the newspapers are continually bringing a gentleman
resident on Mars to marvel, with his fresh vision,
at the wonders of this world.
As I say, I never lived on Mars, but,
what amounts to the same thing in this case, perhaps,
I did live all of my New York life, up to a short
time ago, below Forty-second Street. I gathered
from reading and conversation that there were districts
of the city above this where people dwelt and went
about their daily affairs, just, I supposed, as fish
do at the bottom of the ocean, and beasts in the jungle.
But I knew that I could not breathe at the bottom
of the ocean, nor be comfortable in the jungle.
However, it’s this way.
The person to whom I am married declared that she
could not live below Forty-second Street; said that
that was not done at all, nobody “lived”
below Forty-second Street. So the matter was
settled. I moved “uptown.”
Of course, by stealth I continue to visit the neighbourhood
of Gramercy Park, as a dog, it is said, will return
to that which is not nice.
The beauties and the advantages of
the region in which I now live have been pointed out
to me. It is quite true that everything hereabout
is new and “clean.” Here the streets
are not infested by “old bums” as those
are in that dirty old downtown. Here one is just
between the beautiful Drive on the one hand and our
handsome Central Park on the other. Here there
is fresh air. Here Broadway is a boulevard, and,
further, it winds about in its course like the roads,
as they call them there, in London, and does not have
that awful straight look of everything in that checker-board
part of town. Here everybody is well dressed.
And even the grocers’ and butchers’ shops
are quite smart. All this is indisputable.
But all this is a description of the
physical aspects of this part of town. What
I purpose to do is an esoteric thing. Through
the outward aspects of this part of town, its vestments,
the features of its physiognomy, I will show, as through
a glass, the beatings of its heart. I will exhibit
the soul of it, interpret its spirit, make plain for
him that runs its inner, hidden meaning.
The part of town that I mean may be
said to begin at Seventy-second Street; it runs along
Broadway, and comprises the neighbourhood of Broadway,
to, say, a bit above One Hundred and Tenth Street.
Now we shall see what we shall see.
You remember what a celebrated irascible
character said about a circulating library in a town.
Be that as it may. As you stroll along Broadway,
up from Seventy-second Street, you observe, being a
person of highly alert mind, an astonishing number
of circulating libraries, devoted exclusively to the
latest fiction. And you note that all corner
drug stores and all stationers’ shops present
a window display of “50-cent fiction.”
Ah! refinement. Reading people are nice people;
they are not rough people. There is, you feel
at once, an air, there is taste how shall
I say? selectness, about this part of town.
It is not as other parts of town are.
You perceive, as you continue your
stroll with a brightened and a more perfumed mind,
that there are no shoe stores here. Shoo stores!!
“Booteries,” these are. Combined
with “hosieries.” Countless are the
smart hat shops for women. That is to say, the
establishments of “chapeaux importers.”
In the miniature parlours framed by the windows’
glass these chic and ravishing creations, the chapeaux,
rise in a row high upon their slim and lovely stems.
This one is the establishment of Mlle. Edythe,
that of Mme. Vigneau. Countless, too, are
the terrestrial heavens devoted to “gowns.”
Headless they stand, these symphonies in feminine
apparel, side by side here in the windows of the Maison
la Mode, there of the Maison Estelle. Frequent
are the places where the figure is cultivated with
famous corsets, the retreats of “corsetieres”;
this one before you bears the name Fayette; it is where
the model “Madame Pompadour” is sold.
And numerous are shops luxuriating in waists, “blouses,”
lingerie, and “novelties” of dress.
Conspicuous among them, the “Dolly Dimple Shop.”
The many “furriers” here all deal in
“exclusive” furs and their names all end
in “sky.”
And there are roses, roses all the
way. That is to say, “roseries,”
“violeteries,” and the like what
we call florists’ shops, you know. Spots
of gorgeous colour and intense fragrance, heaped high
with orchids, violets, roses, gardenias, or, in some
cases, “artificial flowers.”
See! the luscious wax busts in the
window. With their grandes coiffures.
And their pink and yellow bosoms resplendent with
gems. It is a hair-dresser’s, just as
in London, with a gentlemen’s parlour at the
back. “Structures” are made here
in human hair, and “marcel waving” is
done, not, however, we may suppose, for gentlemen.
Here may be had an “olive oil shampoo,”
and a “facial massage.” One could
be “manicured” in the stroll you are taking
every ten minutes or so, if one wished. And
“hair cutting” is done along this way by
artistes from various lands. There is,
for instance, the Peluquería Espanola. “Service,”
too, is offered “at residence.” Beauty
here is held in esteem as it was among the Greeks.
Upon one side of the “chemist’s”
window “toilet requisites” are announced
for sale. The “valet system” is
extensively advertised. The industry of “dry
cleansing” nourishes, and the “shoe renovator”
abounds. And hats are “renovated,”
and “blocked,” and “ironed,”
in places without number.
What a delightful tea-room is this!
With its woodwork, its panelling, and its little
window lattices, all in beautiful enamelled white.
That is not a tea-room! I’m ’sprised
at you. That is a laundry. A laundry?
Shades of Hop Loo! It is even so. There
are a variety of types of laundry in this part of
the world, but the great point of them all is their
“sanitary” character. All things
are sanitary here; the shaving brushes at the barber’s
are proclaimed sanitary; “sanitary tailoring”
is announced; and the creameries of this district,
it would seem, go beyond anything yet achieved elsewhere
in the way of sanitation. It might be imagined
from a study of window signs that a perverse person
bent upon procuring un-"pasteurized” milk in
this part of town would be frustrated of his design.
I was sent to what my understanding
conceived to be the “bakery” in our immediate
neighbourhood, on an errand. This place, I found,
was called the “Queen Elizabeth.”
I was dreadfully abashed when I got inside.
I was afraid that there might be some bit of mud on
my shoes which would soil the polished floor; and
I became keenly conscious that my trowsers were not
perfectly pressed. I should, of course, have
worn my tail-coat. There were several ladies
there receiving guests that afternoon. I had
a tete-a-tete with one of these, who gossiped pleasantly
about the cakes I was to get some cakes.
The nicest cakes at the “Queen Elizabeth,”
it seems, are of two kinds: “Maids of Court”
and “Ladies in Waiting.” Our neighbourhood
is rich in shops given to “pastry,” “sweets,”
“bon bons.” Shops of charming names!
There is the “Ambrosia Confection Shop,”
and the place of the “Patisserie et
Confiserie.”
In our neighbourhood there are, too,
a vast number of “caterers” and “fruiterers,”
and, particularly, delicatessen shops. Delicatessen
shops in our neighbourhood are described upon the windows
as places dealing in “fancy and table luxuries.”
I have heard my wife say that many people “just
live out of them.” They are certainly handsome
places. Why, you wouldn’t think there was
any food in them. Everything is so dressed up
that it doesn’t look at all as if it were to
eat, it is so attractive.
Restaurants hereabouts are commonly
named “La Parisienne,” or something
like that, or are called “rôtisseries.”
There are some just ordinary restaurants, too, and
many immaculate, light-lunch rooms. “Afternoon
Tea” is a frequent sign, and one often sees the
delicate suggestion in neat gilt, “Sandwiches.”
Grocers in this part of town, it would seem, handle
only “select,” “fancy,” and
“choice” groceries, and “hot-house
products.” There are a number of fine “markets”
in this district, very fine markets indeed.
In the season for game, deer and bears may be seen
strung up in front of them; all their chickens appear
to come from Philadelphia, their ducks are “fresh
killed Long Island ducks,” and they make considerable
of a feature of “frogs’ legs.”
These markets are usually called the “Superior
Market,” or the “Quality Market,”
or something like that. Great residential hotels
here bear the name of “halls,” as “Brummel
Hall” on the one hand and “Euripides Hall”
on the other.
You will by now have begun to perceive
the note, the flair, of my part of town. Its
care is for the graces, the things that sweeten life,
the refinements of civilisation, the embellishments
of existence. Nothing more clearly, strikingly,
bespeaks this than the proofs of its extraordinary
fondness for art I have mentioned literature.
Painting and sculpture, music, the drama, and the
art of “interior decoration,” these things
of the spirit have their homes without number along
this stretch of Broadway.
“Art” shops and art “galleries”
are on every hand. In the windows of these places
you will see: innumerable French mirrors; stacks
of empty picture frames of French eighteenth-century
design, at an amazingly cheap figure each; remarkably
inexpensive reproductions in bright colours of Sir
Joshua, Corot, Watteau, Chardin, Fragonard, some Italian
Madonnas; an assortment of hunting prints, and prints
redolent of Old English sentiment; many wall “texts,”
or “creeds”; a variety of the kind of
coloured pictures technically called, I believe, “comics”;
numerous little plaster casts of anonymous works and
busts of standard authors; frequently an ambitious
original etching by an artist unknown to you; and
an occasional print of the “September Morn”
kind of thing; together with many “art objects”
and a great deal of “bric-a-brac.”
Upon the windows you are informed that “restoring,”
“artistic framing,” “regilding,”
and “resilvering” are done within.
And, in some cases, that “miniatures”
are painted there. There are, too, a number of
“Japanese art stores” along the way, containing
vast stocks of Japanese lilies living in Japanese
pans, other exotic blossoming plants, pink and yellow
slippers from the Orient, and striking flowered garments
like a scene from a “Mikado” opera.
In this part of town photography,
too, is made one of the fine arts. You do not
here have your photograph taken; you have, it seems,
your “portrait” made. “Home
portraiture” is ingratiatingly suggested on
lettered cards, and, further, you are invited to indulge
in “art posing in photographs.”
The “studios” of the photographers display
about an equal number of portraits of children and
dogs. The people of this community take joy
not only in the savour of art, and in taking part in
its professional production, but they would themselves
produce it, as amateurs. The sign “Kodaks”
is everywhere about, and “enlarging” is
done, and “developing and printing for amateurs”
every few rods. So we come to the subject of
music.
Caruso, Melba, Paderewski, Mischa
Elman, Harry Lauder, Sousa, Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin,
Wagner, Brahms, Grieg, Moszkowsky, the “latest
song hit” from anything you please. Ask
and you will find along this thoroughfare. There
are no more prosperous looking bazaars on this street
than those consecrated to the sale of “musical
phonographs” of every make. And if the
name of these places is not exactly legion, it is
something very like that. Besides every species
of Victophone and Olagraph, the music lover may muse
upon the wonders and the variety of “mechanical
piano players.” All of de luxe “tone
quality.”
As for the drama. The brightest
word at night in this galaxy of ultra signs is the
gracious word “Photo Play House.”
Deep beyond plummet’s sound is the interest
of this part of town in the human story, as revealed
upon the “screen.” Grief and mirth,
good and evil, danger and daring, and the horizon
from Hatteras to Matapan may be scanned upon the poster
boards before the entrances of these showy temples
of the mighty film. Here one is invited to witness
“Carmen,” and also a “drama of life,”
“Tricked by a Victim,” and also “a
comedy drama full of pep” entitled “Good
Old Pop,” productions of the “Premier Picture
Corporation.” Announcements of scenes of
tornadoes, the Great War, of “Paris fashions,”
and, ah, yes! of “beauty films” line the
way.
To turn to the home. The people
of this part of town dwell, according to their shops,
entirely amid “period and art furniture.”
And it would seem, by the remarkable number of places
in this quarter where this is displayed for sale,
that they dwell amid a most amazing amount of it.
These marts of household gods are of two kinds:
ones of imposing size, with long windows stretching
far down the cross street, and dealing in shining
“reproductions,” and the tiny, quaint,
intimate, delightful kind of thing, where it is said
on a sign on a gilded chair that “artistic picture
hanging by the hour” is done.
The fascinating places are the more
alluring. Herein rich jumbles are, of tapestries,
clocks of all periods including a harvest
of those of the “grandfather” era fire-screens,
brass kettles, andirons, stained-glass, artistic lamps
in endless variety, the latest things in pillow cushions,
book racks, wall papers, wall “decorations”
and “hangings,” draperies, curtains, cretonnes.
The “decorators” deal, too, in “parquet
floors,” and flourish and increase in their kind
in response, evidently, to the volume of demand for
“upholstering” and “cabinet work.”
And the floors of this part of town must hold rich
stores of Oriental rugs, as importers of these are
frequent on our way.
The higher civilisations turn, naturally,
to refinements of religious thought. What the
Salvation Army is to Fourteenth Street, what the Rescue
Mission is to the Bowery, the Christian Science Reading
Room is to this stretch of Broadway, and there is
no trimmer place to be seen on your stroll.
Then, one of the marks of our culture to-day is the
aesthetic cultivation of the primitive. Our neighbourhood
is invited, on placards in windows, to assemble “every
Sunday evening” to enjoy the “love stories
of the Bible.”
For the rest, you would see on your
stroll, for man cannot live by taste and the spirit
alone, sundry places of business concerned with real
estate, electrical accoutrement, automobile accessories,
toys, the investment and safeguarding of treasure,
and so on, and particularly with ales, wines,
liquors, and cigars. Each and all of these, however,
are affirmed to be “places of quality.”
Now, the social customs of this part
of town, as they may be abundantly viewed on our thoroughfare,
are agreeable to observe. At night our boulevard
twinkles with lights like a fairyland. The view
of across the way through the gardens, as they should
be called, down the middle of the street, is enchanting.
All aglow our spic-and-span trolley cars all
our trolley cars are spic-and-span ride
down the way like “floats” in a nocturnal
parade. Upon the sidewalks are happy throngs,
and a hum of cheery sound. The throngs of our
neighbourhood are touched with an indescribable character
of place; they are not the throngs of anywhere else.
They are not exactly Fifth Avenue; they are not the
Great White Way. They are nice throngs, healthy
throngs, care-free throngs, modish throngs in the
modes of magazine advertisements. And all their
members are young.
You will notice as you go and come
that you pass the same laughing groups in precisely
the same spot, hour after hour. Those who compose
these groups seem to be calling upon one another.
Apparently, on pleasant evenings, it is the form
here for you to receive your guests in this way, in
the open air. And you jest, and converse, and
while the time amiably away, just as many people do
at home. “Well,” says my wife, “the
rooms in the apartments in this part of town are so
small that nobody can bring anybody into them.”