“HE TRUN UP BOTE HANDS!”
One summer evening not very long ago, I saw, to my intense surprise, Mr. Richard Watson Gilder crawl cautiously through the barbed-wire fence which was long ago stretched, with his sanction, across the city at Cooper union. Once within the tabooed district, the distinguished poet and Century editor cast an apprehensive glance about him and then marched swiftly and resolutely down the Bowery. Late that night I caught another glimpse of him standing in the middle of one of the side-streets that lead to the East River, and gazing thoughtfully at the tops of the tall tenement-houses on either side of him.
[Pg 140]I could not help wondering what strange errand had brought him to that crowded quarter of the town, for not many months before one of his own trusted subordinates had blandly informed me that there was nothing in New York to write about, excepting, of course, such phases of its social life as had been portrayed, more or less truthfully and vividly, in the pages of Mr. Gilder’s own magazine.
I was still marveling at the spectacle of the poet in search of facts when I came across one of my east-side acquaintances, who had seen and recognized the Century editor, and from him I learned that he was pursuing his studies of what is known in the magazine offices as “low life,” not that he might write about it or be capable of judging the manuscript of those who did write about it, but by virtue of his office on the Tenement-house Commission.
[Pg 141]“He’s just been down Ludlow Street, an’ troo one o’ dem houses where de Jew sweaters is,” added my friend.
“And what did he say to it all?” I inquired.
“He trun up bote hands!” said the east-sider, earnestly.
I walked home that night weighed down with the import of what I had learned, and filled with solemn speculations regarding the effect which Mr. Gilder’s visit would have on American letters. I could picture to myself the hands that would be “trun up” in the Century office when the accomplished members of the editorial corps learned that their revered chief had actually ventured into the heart of a district which teems with an infinite variety of human life and lies but a scant mile to the south of the desk from which Mr. Johnson rules the literary world of this continent.
And I thought, also, of the excitement[Pg 142] that would run through the ranks of the writers should Mr. Johnson, of course after solemn and secret communion with Mr. Gilder, announce officially that at twelve o’clock, noon, on the first day of the month, the firing of a gun, followed by the destruction of the barbed-wire fence, would throw open the long-forbidden low-life territory to poets, romancers, and dialectists of every degree. What a rush of literary boomers there would be to this new Oklahoma should this old barrier be torn down! I could not help smiling as I pictured to myself the strangely gifted American story-writers groping their way through picturesque and unfamiliar scenes, and listening in vain for the good old “bad man’s” dialect that has done duty in fiction ever since Thackeray visited this country, but which was swept away long since by the great flood-tide of German and Jewish immigration which has wrought so many[Pg 143] changes in the life of the town. How many ink-stained hands would be “trun up” before the first day of exploration was done! How many celebrated delineators of New York life and character would lose themselves in their search, after dark, for “local color,” and be gathered in like lost children to be cared for by Matron Webb until rescued by their friends the next morning!
Still brooding over the enormous possibilities of the future, I stopped to rest and refresh myself in a modest and respectable little German beer-saloon, situated on the tabooed side of the barbed-wire fence—on the very border-land between low life and legitimate literary territory. It is an ordinary enough little place, with a bar and tables in front, and, in a space curtained off at the rear, a good-sized room often used for meetings and various forms of merrymaking. I never drop in for a glass of[Pg 144] beer without thinking of a supper given in that back room a few years ago at which I was a guest; and on this particular night remembrance of that feast had a new significance, for it was blended with thoughts of Mr. Gilder’s journeyings. It was an actor who gave the supper—one of the most brilliant and talented of the many foreign entertainers who have visited our shores—and nearly every one of his guests had won some sort of artistic distinction. It is not the sort of a place that suggests luxurious feasting, but the supper which the worthy German and his wife set before us was, to me, a revelation of the resources of their national cookery. The occasion lingers in my memory, however, chiefly by reason of the charm and tact and brilliancy of the woman who sat in the place of honor—a woman whose name rang through Europe more than a quarter of a century ago as that of the[Pg 145] heroine of one of the most sensational duels of modern times. Mr. Gilder has probably read about her in The Tragic Comedians, in which George Meredith has made her the principal character, and I am sure that if he—the Century editor, not Mr. Meredith—had looked in upon our little supper party that night, he would have “trun up bote hands,” in the full sense of that unique and expressive term.
Recollections of this feast brought to mind another which was given about two years ago fully half a mile to the south of the barbed-wire fence, and which is worthy of mention here because it taught me that some of the people bred in that region are vaguely conscious of a just claim that they have on the attention of story-writers and rather resent the fact that a place in our national literature has been denied them.
The feast to which I allude was given[Pg 146] on the occasion of a great wedding in a quarter of the town which plays an important part in civic and national affairs on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November—one in which the trade of politics ranks as one of the learned professions—a quarter where events date from the reigns of the different police captains.
The bride was the daughter of a famous politician, and I am sure that in point of beauty and tasteful dress she might have passed muster at Tuxedo. She was tall, graceful, and very young—not more than seventeen. One could see traces of her Hebrew lineage in her exquisitely lovely face, and I am sure she was well dressed, because she wore nothing that in any way detracted from her rare beauty or was offensive to the eye.
She had been brought up near the corner of the Bowery and Hester Street, in the very centre of one of the most vicious[Pg 147] and depraved quarters of the town; and as I talked with her that night she told me how most of her childhood had been spent playing with her little brothers and sisters in the garden which her father had built for them on the roof of the house in which they lived, and on the ground floor of which he kept the saloon which laid the foundations of his present political influence. She spoke simply and in good English, and one could easily see how carefully she had been shielded from all knowledge even of that which went on around her.
An extraordinary company had assembled to witness the ceremony and take part in the festivities which followed, and as I sat beside two brilliant, shrewd, worldly-wise Hebrews of my acquaintance we remarked that it would be a long while before we could expect to see another such gathering. The most important of the guests were those high[Pg 148] in political authority or in the police department, men whose election districts are the modern prototype of the English “pocket boroughs” of the last century; while the humblest of them all, and the merriest as well, was the deaf-and-dumb boot-black of a down-town police court, who appeared in the unwonted splendor of a suit which he had hired especially for the occasion, and to which was attached a gorgeous plated watch-chain. “Dummy” had never been to dancing-school, but he was an adept in the art of sliding across the floor, and he showed his skill between the different sets, uttering unintelligible cries of delight and smiling blandly upon his acquaintances as he glided swiftly by them.
Several of the gentlemen present had “done time” in previous years, and others—John Y. McKane for example—have since then been “sent away.” I saw one guest wink pleasantly at a police[Pg 149] captain who was standing near him and then slyly “lift” the watch from a friend’s pocket, merely to show that he had not lost his skill. A moment later he awakened a little innocent mirth by asking his unsuspecting friend what time it was.
I dare say that a great many of my readers imagine that at a festivity of this description “down on the east side” the men appear for the most part clad in the red shirts which were in vogue at the time of Thackeray’s visit to America, and which now exist only in the minds of those writers who are famous for ............