On Saturday afternoons Titania and I always have an adventure. On
Sundays we stay at home and dutifully read manuscripts (I am the obscure
creature known as a "publisher's reader") but Saturday post meridiem is
a golden tract of time wherein we wander as we list.
The 35th Street entrance to McQueery's has long been hallowed as our
_stell-dich-ein_. We meet there at one o'clock. That is to say, I arrive
at 12:59 and spend fifteen minutes in most animated reflection. There is
plenty to think about. One may stand between the outer and inner lines
of glass doors and watch the queer little creatures that come tumbling
out of the cloak and suit factory across the street. Or one may stand
inside the store, on a kind of terrace, beneath pineapple shaped arc
lights, looking down upon the bustle of women on the main floor. Best of
all, one may stroll along the ornate gallery to one side where all sorts
and conditions of ladies wait for other ladies who have promised to meet
them at one o'clock. They divide their time between examining the
mahogany victrolae and deciding what kind of sundae they will have for
lunch. A very genteel old gentleman with white hair and a long morning
coat and an air of perpetual irritation is in charge of this social
gallery. He wears the queer, soft, flat-soled boots that are suggestive
of corns. There is an information bureau there, where one may learn
everything except the time one may expect one's wife to arrive. But I
have learned a valuable subterfuge. If I am waiting for Titania, and
beginning to despair of her arrival, I have only to go to a telephone to
call her up. As soon as I have put the nickel in, she is sure to appear.
Nowadays I save the nickel by going into a booth and _pretending_ to
telephone. Sure enough, at 1:14, Ingersoll time, in she trots.
We have a jargon of our own.
"Eye-polishers?" say I.
"Yes," says Titania, "but there was a block at 42nd Street. I'm _so_
sorry, Grump."
"Eye-polishers" is our term for the Fifth Avenue busses, because riding
on them makes Titania's eyes so bright. More widely, the word connotes
anything that produces that desirable result, such as bunches of
violets, lavender peddlers, tea at Mary Elizabeth's, spring millinery,
or finding sixpence in her shoe. This last is a rite suggested by the
old song:
And though maids sweep their hearths no less
Than they were wont to do,
Yet who doth now for cleanliness
Find sixpence in her shoe?
A bright dune does very well as a sixpenny piece.
We always lunch at Moretti's on Saturday: it is the recognized beginning
of an adventure. The Moretti lunch has advanced from a quarter to thirty
cents, I am sorry to say, but this is readily compensated by the Grump
buying Sweet Caporals instead of something Turkish. A packet of
cigarettes is another curtain-raiser for an adventure. On other days
publishers' readers smoke pipes, but on Saturdays cigarettes are
possible.
"Antipasto?"
"No, thanks."
"Minestrone or consommé?"
"Two minestrone, two prime ribs, ice cream and coffee. Red wine,
please." That is the formula. We have eaten the "old reliable Moretti
lunch" so often that the routine has become a ritual. Oh, excellent
savor of the Moretti basement! Compounded of warmth, a pungent pourri of
smells, and the jangle of thick china, how diverting it is! The
franc-tireur in charge of the wine-bin watches us complaisantly from his
counter where he sits flanked by flasks of Hoboken chianti and a case of
brittle cigars.
How good Moretti's _minestrone_ tastes to the unsophisticated tongue.
What though it be only an azoic extract of intense potato, dimly tinct
with sargasso and macaroni--it has a pleasing warmth and bulk. Is it not
the prelude to an Adventure?
Well, where shall we go to-day? No two explorers dickering over azimuth
and dead reckoning could discuss latitude and longitude more earnestly
than Titania and I argue our possible courses. Generally, however, she
leaves it to me to chart the journey. That gives me the pride of
conductor and her the pleasure of being surprised.
According to our Mercator's projection (which, duly wrapped in a
waterproof envelope, we always carry on our adventures) there was a
little known region lying nor' nor'west of Blackwell's Island and
plotted on the map as East River Park. I had heard of this as a
picturesque and old-fashioned territory, comparatively free from
footpads and lying near such places as Astoria and Hell Gate. We laid a
romantic course due east along 35th Street, Titania humming a little
snatch from an English music-hall song that once amused us:
"My old man's a fireman
Now what do you think of that?
He wears goblimey breeches
And a little goblimey hat."
She always quotes this to me when (she says) I wear my hat too far on
the back of my head.
The cross slope of Murray Hill drops steeply downward after one leaves
Madison Avenue. We dipped into a region that has always been very
fascinating to me. Under the roaring L, past dingy saloons, animal
shops, tinsmiths, and painless dentists, past the old dismantled
Manhattan hospital. The taste of spring was in the air: one of the
dentists was having his sign regilded, a huge four-pronged grinder as
big as McTeague's in Frank Norris's story. Oysters going out, the new
brew of Bock beer coming in: so do the saloons mark the vernal equinox.
A huge green chalet built on stilts, with two tiers of trains rumbling
by, is the L station at 34th Street and Second Avenue. A cutting wind
blew from the East River, only two blocks away. I paid two nickels and
we got into the front car of the northbound train.
Until Titania and I attain the final glory of riding in an aeroplane,
or ascend Jacob's ladder, there never will be anything so thrilling as
soaring over the housetops in the Second Avenue L. Rocking, racketing,
roaring over those crazy trestles, now a glimpse of the leaden river to
the east, now a peep of church spires and skyscrapers on the west, and
the dingy imitation lace curtains of the third-story windows flashing by
like a recurring pattern--it is a voyage of romance! Did you ever stand
at the front door of an Elevated train, watching the track stretch far
ahead toward the Bronx, and the little green stations slipping nearer
and nearer? The Subway is a black, bellowing horror; the bus a swaying,
jolty start-and-stop, bruising your knees against the seat in front; but
the L swings you up and over the housetops, smooth and sheer and swift.
We descended at 86th Street and found ourselves in a new world. A broad,
dingy street, lined by shabby brown houses and pushbutton apartments,
led in a gentle descent toward the river. The neighbourhood was noisy,
quarrelsome, and dirty. After a long, bitter March the thaw had come at
last: the street was viscous with slime, the melting snow lay in grayish
piles along the curbs. Small boys on each side of the Street were
pelting sodden snowballs which spattered around us as we walked down the
pavement.
But after two blocks things changed suddenly. The trolley swung round
at a right angle (up Avenue A) and the last block of 86th Street showed
the benefit of this manoeuvre. The houses grew neat and respectable. A
little side street branching off to the left (not recorded by Mercator)
revealed some quaint cottages with gables and shuttered windows so
mid-Victorian that my literary heart leaped and I dreamed at once of
locating a novel in this fascinating spot. And then we rounded the
corner and saw the little park.
It was a bit of old Chelsea, nothing less. Titania clapped her hands,
and I lit my pipe in gratification. Beside us was a row of little houses
of warm red brick with peaked mansard roofs and cozy bay windows and
polished door knockers. In front of them was the lumpy little park, cut
up into irregular hills, where children were flying kites. And beyond
that, an embankment and the river in a dim wet mist. There was
Blackwell's Island, and a sailing barge slipping by. In the distance we
could see the colossal span of the new Hell Gate bridge. With the
journalist's instinct for superlatives I told Titania it was the largest
single span in the world. I wonder if it is?
As to that I know not. But it was the river that lured us. On the
embankment we found benches and sat down to admire the scene. It was as
picturesque as Battersea in Whistler's mistiest days. A ferryboat,
crossing to Astoria, hooted musically through the haze. Tugs, puffing up
past Blackwell's Island into the Harlem River, replied with mellow
blasts. The pungent tang of the East River tickled our nostrils, and all
my old ambition to be a tugboat captain returned.
And then trouble began. Just as I was planning how we might bilk our
landlord on Long Island and move all our belongings to this delicious
spot, gradually draw our friends around us, and make East End Avenue the
Cheyne Walk of New York--we might even import an English imagist poet to
lend cachet to the coterie--I saw by Titania's face that something was
wrong.