N. B. When I first came to New York, and for years afterward, it was a whim of the New York newspapers to dub that region on the West Side which lies between Thirty-sixth and Forty-first Streets and Ninth Avenue and the Hudson River as Hell’s Kitchen. There was assumed to be operative there, shooting and killing at will, a gang of young roughs that for savagery and brutality was not to be outrivaled by any of the various savage groups of the city. Disturbances, murders, riots, were assumed to be common; the residents of this area at once sullen and tempestuous. Interested by the stark pictures of a slum life so often painted, I finally went to reside there for a period. What follows is from notes or brief pictures made at the time. * * * * *
It is nine o’clock of a summer’s evening. Approaching my place at this hour, suddenly I encounter a rabble issuing out of Thirty-ninth Street into Tenth Avenue. It is noisy, tempestuous, swirling. A frowsy-headed man of about thirty-eight, whose face is badly lacerated and bleeding and whose coat is torn and covered with dust, as though he had been rolling upon the ground, leads the procession. He is walking with that reckless abandon which characterizes the movements of the angry. A slatternly woman of doughy185 complexion follows at his heels. About them sways a crowd of uncombed and stribbly-haired men and women and children. In the middle of the street, directly on a line with the man whom the crowd surrounds, but, to one side and nearer the sidewalk walks another man, undersized, thickset and energetic, who seems to take a great interest in the crowd. Though he keeps straight ahead, like the others, he keeps turning and looking, as though he expected a demonstration of some sort. No word is spoken by either the man or the woman, and as the curious company passes along under the variable glows of the store-lamps, shop-keepers and store-dealers come out and make humorous comments, but seem to think it not worth while to follow. I join the procession, since this now relates to my interests, and finally shake an impish, black-haired, ten-year-old girl by the arm until she looks up at me.
“What’s the matter?”
“Aw, he hit him with a banister.”
“Who hit him?”
“Why, that man out there in the street.”
“What did he hit him for?”
“I dunno,” she replies irritably. “He wouldn’t get out of the room. They got to fightin’ in the hall.”
She moves away from me and I ply others fruitlessly, until, turning into Thirty-seventh Street, the green lights of the police station come into view. The object of this pilgrimage becomes apparent. I fall silent, following.
Reaching the station door, the injured man and his woman attendant enter, while the thickset individual186 who walked to one side, and the curious crowd remain without.
“Well?” says the sergeant within, glaring intolerantly at the twain as they push before him. The appearance of the injured man naturally takes his attention most.
“Lookit me eye,” begins the wounded man, with that curious tone of injured dignity which the drunk and disorderly so frequently assume. “That—” and he interpolates a string of oaths descriptive of the man who has assaulted him “—hit me with a banister leg.”
“Who hit you? Where is he? What did he hit you for?” This from the sergeant in a breath. The man begins again. The woman beside him interrupts with a description of her own.
“Shut up!” yells the sergeant savagely, showing his teeth. “I’ll ram me fist down your throat if you don’t. Let him tell what’s the matter with him. You keep still.”
The woman, overawed by the threat, stops her tirade. The man resumes.
“He hit me with a banister leg.”
“What for?”
“It was this way, Captain. I went to call on this here lady and that —— came in and wanted me to get out of the room. I——”
“What relation is this man to you?” inquires the sergeant, addressing the woman.
“Nothin’,” she replies blandly.
“Isn’t the other man your husband?”
 
Hell’s Kitchen
“No, he ain’t, the blank-blank-blank-blank ——”187 and you have a sweet string of oaths. “He’s a ——,” and she begins again to ardently describe the assailant. The man assists her as best he can.
“I thought so,” exclaims the officer vigorously. “Now, you two get the hell out of here, and stay out, before I club you both. Get on out! Beat it!”
“Ain’t you goin’ to lock him up?” demands the victim.
“I lock nothing,” vouchsafes the sergeant intolerantly. “Clear out of here, both of you. If I catch you coming around here any more I’ll give you both six months.”
He calls an officer from the rear room and the two complainants, together with others who have ventured in, myself included, beat a sullen retreat, the crowd welcoming us on the outside. A buzz of conversation follows. War is promised. When the victim is safely down the steps he exclaims:
“All right! I ast him to arrest him. Now let ’em look out. I’ll go back there, I will. Yes, I will. I’ll kill the bastard, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll show him whether he’ll hit me with a banister leg, the ——,” and as he goes now, rather straight and yet rhythmically forward, his assailant, who has been opposite him all the while but in the middle of the street, keeps an equal and amusing pace.
The crowd follows and turns into Thirty-ninth Street, a half-block east of Tenth Avenue. It stops in front of an old, stale, four-story red brick tenement. Some of its windows are glowing softly in the night. On the188 third floor some one is playing a flute. Quiet and peace seem to reign, and yet this——
“I’ll show him whether he’ll hit me,” insists the injured man, entering the house. The woman follows, and then the short, thickset man from the street. One after another they disappear up the narrow stairs which begin at the back of the hall. Some of the crowd follows, myself included.
Presently, after a great deal of scuffling and hustling on the fourth floor, all return helter-skelter. They are followed by a large, comfortably-built, healthy, white-shirted Irish-American, who lives up there and who has strength and courage. Before him, pathetically small in size and strength, the others move, the mutilated and still protesting victim among them. Apparently he has been ejected from the room in which he had been before.
“I’ll show him,” he is still boasting. “I’ll see whether he’ll hit me with a banister leg, the ——.”
“That’s all right,” says the large Irishman with a brogue, pushing him gently onto the sidewalk as he does so. “Go on now.”
“I’ll get even with him yet,” insists the victim.
“That’s all right. I don’t care what you do to-morrow. Go on now.”
The victim turns and looks up at this new authority fixedly, as though he knew him well, scratches his head and then turns and solemnly walks away. The other man does likewise. You wonder why.
“It’s over now,” says the new authority to the crowd, and he smiles as blandly as if he had been taking189 part in an entertainment of some kind. The crowd begins to dissolve. The man who drew the banister leg or stick and who was to have been punished has also disappeared.
“But how is this?” I ask of some one. “How can he do that?”
“Him?” replies an Irish longshoreman who seems to wish to satisfy my curiosity. “Don’t you know who that is? It’s Patsy Finnerty. He used to be a champeen prize-fighter. He won all the fights around here ten years ago. Everybody knows him. He’s in charge over at the steamship dock now, but they won’t fight with him. If they did he wouldn’t give ’em no more work. They both work for him once in a while.”
I see it all in a blinding flash and go to my own room. How much more powerful is self-interest as typified by Patsy than the police!
* * * * *
It is raining one night and I hear a voice in the room above mine, singing. It is a good voice, sweet and clear, but a little weak and faint down here.
“Tyro-al, Tyro-al! Tyro-al, Tyro-al!
Ich hab dich veeder, O mine Tyro-al!”
I know who lives up there by now: Mr. and Mrs. Schmick and a little Schmick girl, about ten or eleven. Being courageous in this vicinity because of the simplicity of these people, the awe they have for one who holds himself rather aloof and dresses better than they, and lonely, too, I go up. In response to my knock a little fair-complexioned, heavily constructed German190 woman with gray hair and blue eyes comes to the door.
“I heard some one singing,” I say, “and I thought I would come up and ask you if I might not come in and listen. I live in the room below.”
“Certainly. Why, of course.” This with an upward lift of the voice. “Come right in.” And although flustered and red because of what to her seems an embarrassing situation, she introduces me to her black-haired, heavy-faced husband, who is sitting at the center table with a zither before him.
“Papa, here is a gentleman who wants to hear the music.”
I smile, and the old German arises, smiles and extends me a welcoming hand. He is sitting in the center of this combination sitting-room, parlor, kitchen and dining-room, his zither, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, on the table before him.
“I don’t know your name,” I say.
“Schmick,” he replies.
I apologize for intruding but they both seem rather pleased. Also the little daughter, who is sitting in one corner.
“Were you singing?” I ask her.
“No. Mamma,” she replies.
I look at the gray-haired little mother and she shows me even, white teeth in smiling at my astonishment.
“I sing but very little,” she insists, blushing red. “My woice is not so strong any more.”
“Won’t you sing what you were singing just before I came in?” I ask.
191 Without any of that diffidence which characterizes so many of all classes she rises and putting one hand on the shoulder of her heavy, solemn-looking husband, asks him to strike the appropriate chord, and then breaks forth into one of those plaintive folksongs of the Tyrol which describes the longing of the singer for his native land.
“I have such a poor woice now,” she insists when she concludes. “When I was younger it was different.”
“Poor!” I exclaim. “It’s very clear and beautiful. How old are you?”
“I will be fifty next August,” she answers.
This woman is possessed of a sympathetic and altogether lovely disposition. How can she exist in Hell’s Kitchen, amid grime and apparent hardness, and remain so sweet and sympathetic? In my youth and ignorance I wonder.
* * * * *
I............