Kay and I arrived in New York on a crisp, sunny afternoon with sixty
dollars in hand out of the original hundred set by for the purpose,
and took a room in the Imperial Hotel, Broadway, which someone had
recommended. We knew no one, had no letters of introduction. We were
tanned the colour of Red Indians, in perfect physical condition, but
with a very scanty wardrobe.
The furious turmoil of the noisy city, boiling with irrepressible
energies, formed an odd contrast to the peace and stillness of the
forests. There was indifference in both cases, but whereas there it
was tolerant and kindly, here it seemed intolerant and aggressive.
“Get a hustle on, or get out,” was the note. Nature welcomed, while
human nature resented, the intrusion of two new atoms. Nostalgia for
the woods swept over me vehemently, but at the same time an eager
anticipation to get work. We studied the papers at once for rooms,
choosing a boarding house in East 19th Street, between Broadway and
4th Avenue. Something in the wording caught us. An hour after our
arrival we interviewed Mrs. Bernstein and engaged the third floor
back, breakfast included, for eight dollars a week. It was cheap. The
slovenly, emotional, fat Jewess, with her greasy locks, jewellery, and
tawdry finery, had something motherly about her that appealed. She
smiled. She did not ask for payment in advance.
“What’s your work,” she inquired, gazing up at me.
“Oh, I’m going on the newspapers,” I said offhand, taking the first
idea that offered, but little dreaming it was to prove true.
“I shall be on the stage,” Kay promptly added, “as soon as my
arrangements are made.”
Mrs. Bernstein smiled. She knew the power of the Press and favoured
reporters. “My hospand,” she informed Kay sympathetically, “is an
artist too, a moosician. He has his own orghestra.”
While Kay studied the theatrical papers, I took the elevated railway
down-town. I wanted to stand on Brooklyn Bridge again. Since first
seeing it with my father a few years before, and again on my arrival
eighteen months ago, _en route_ for Toronto, the place had held my
imagination. Something sentimental lay in this third journey, for I
wanted to go alone.
Halfway across, at the highest point, I stood looking down upon the
great waterway between the two cities of the new world, and the feeling
of a fresh chapter in life, with its inevitable comparisons, rose in
me.... The sun was sinking behind the hills of New Jersey, and the
crowded bay lay a sheet of golden shimmer. Huge, double-ended ferry
boats, plying between the wooded shores of Staten and Manhattan Islands
and Brooklyn, rushed to and fro with great snortings and hootings;
little tugs dashed in every direction with vast importance; sailboats,
yachts, schooners and cat-boats dotted the water like a thousand living
things; and threading majestically through them all steamed one or two
impressive Atlantic liners, immense and castle-like, towering above all
else, as they moved slowly out toward the open sea. The deep poetry
which ever frames the most prosaic things, lending them their real
significance, came over me with the wind from that open sea.
I stood watching the fading lights beyond the bay, while behind me the
crowded trains, at the rate of one a minute, passed thundering across
the bridge, and thousands upon thousands of tired workers thronged to
their Brooklyn homes after their day in the bigger city. The great
bridge swayed and throbbed as the dense masses of pedestrians climbed
uphill to the centre, then swarmed in a thick black river down the
nether slope. I had never seen such numbers, or such speed of nervous
movement, and the eager, tense faces, usually strained, white, drawn
as well, touched an unpleasant note. New York, I felt, was not to be
trifled with; the human element was strenuously keen; no loafing
or dreaming here; work to the last ounce, or the city would make
cat’s meat of one! Whereupon, by contrast, stole back again the deep
enchantment of the silent woods, and the longing for the great, still
places rose; I saw our little island floating beneath glittering stars;
a loon was laughing farther out; the Northern Lights went flashing
to mid-heaven; there was a sound of wind among the pines. The huge
structure that reared above me seemed unreal; the river of men and
women slipped past like silent shadows; the trains and boats became
remote and hushed; and the ugly outer world about me merged in the
substance of a dream and was forgotten....
I turned and looked out over New York. I saw its lofty spires, its
massed buildings, gigantic in the sky; I saw the opening of the great
Hudson River, and the darkening water of the bay; I heard, like a
sinister multiple voice out of the future, the strident cry of this
wonderful and terrible capital of the New World, and the deep pulsings
of its engines of frantic haste and untiring energy. The general
note, I remember, was alarming rather; a touch of loneliness, of my
own stupid incompetence to deal with its aggressive spirit, in which
gleamed something merciless, almost cruel--this was the response it
stirred in me. I suddenly realized I had no trade, no talents to sell,
no weapons with which to fight. My heart sank a little. Among these
teeming millions, with their tearing speed, their frenzied energy,
their appalling practical knowledge, I possessed but one friend, Kay,
and some sixty dollars between us. New York would eat me up unless I
“got a hustle on.”
Next morning, our capital much reduced, we moved into the lodging
house. The idea of sharing a bed, in view of our size and the
narrowness of the bed, amused us, but without enthusiasm. The sofa was
too small to sleep on. “We’ll move,” announced Kay, “as soon as we get
jobs.” A telegram was sent to Toronto giving our address, and a few
days later a packing case arrived with our Toronto possessions, and
ten dollars to pay out of our small total. We found close at hand, in
20th Street, a cheap clean German restaurant--Krisch’s--where a meal of
sorts could be had for 30 cents, tip 5 cents; it had a sanded floor and
was half _bier-stube_, and one of its smiling waiters, Otto--he came
from the Black Forest where I had been to school--proved a true friend
later, allowing us occasional credit at his own risk; a Chinese laundry
was looked up in Fourth Avenue; I spent one of our precious dollars in
a small store of fiddle strings against a possible evil day--a string
meant more to me than a steak--and we were then ready for our campaign.
Not a minute was lost. Kay, in very sanguine mood, the Irving wig, I
shrewdly suspected, in his pocket, went out to interview managers;
while I took a train down-town to interview Harper’s, as being the
most important publishing house I knew. This step was the result of
many discussions with Kay, who said he was sure I could write. The Red
Indian advice of the Edinburgh “spirit” had impressed him. “That’s
your line,” he assured me. “Try the magazines.” I felt no similar
assurance, no desire to write was in me; we had worked ourselves up to
a conviction that bold, immediate action was the first essential of
our position; to get pupils for my two languages or shorthand seemed
impossible in a city like New York; therefore I hurried down, with
vague intentions but a high heart, to Harper’s.
There was the _Magazine_, the _Weekly_, and _Harper’s Young People_.
One of them surely would listen to my tale. I chose the _Weekly_ for
some unknown reason. For some equally unknown reason I was admitted to
the editor’s sanctum, and, still more strange, Richard Harding Davis
listened to my tale. His success as a novelist had just begun; he had
left the _Evening Sun_, where his “Van Bibber” stories had made him
first known; his popularity was rising fast, though I had never heard
of him.
My tale was brief, having been rehearsed in the train. It took,
perhaps, three minutes at most to rattle it off--my parentage, my farm
and hotel, my interest in Eastern Thought, my present destitution, and
I remember adding, “You see, I cannot possibly go home to England
again until I have made good somehow.”
“Have you written anything?” he asked, after listening patiently with
raised eyebrows.
“Well--no, I haven’t, not yet, I’m afraid.” I explained that I wanted
to begin, though what I really wanted was only paid employment.
The author of “Van Bibber” and “A Soldier of Fortune” looked me up and
down and then chuckled. After a moment’s silence, he got up, led me
across the hall to another door, opened it without knocking and said to
a man who was seated at a table smothered in papers:
“This is Mr. Blackwood, an Englishman, who wants to write something for
you. He is prepared to write anything--from Eastern philosophy to ‘How
to run a hotel in Canada.’”
The door closed behind me, with no word of farewell, and I learned
that the man facing me was the editor of _Harper’s Young People_. His
name, if I remember rightly, was Storey, and he was an Englishman,
who, curiously enough, almost at once mentioned my father. He had been
an employé of the G.P.O. in London. He was unpleasant, supercilious,
patronizing and off-hand, proud of his editorial power. He gave me,
however, my first assignment--to write a short, descriptive article
about a cargo of wild animals that had just arrived for the New York
“Zoo.” I hurried off to the steamer, bought some paper, wrote the
article in a pew of Trinity Church in Lower Broadway, and returned
three hours later to submit it. Storey read it and said without
enthusiasm it would do, but when I asked “Is it good?” he shook his
head with the comment “Well--some men would have made more of it
perhaps.” It was printed, however, and in due course I got ten dollars
for it. I inquired if I could do something else. He took my address.
No further results followed. Evidently, I realized, writing was not my
line, and both Kay and the Red Indian Medicine Man were mistaken.
Kay’s report of his luck, when we met again that evening was meagre;
he had met an English Shakespearean actor, Bob Mantell, and a Toronto
acquaintance, the “Duke.” The actor, however, had given him an
introduction or two, and the Duke had asked us to play next day in a
cricket match on Staten Island. It was an eleven of Actors _v._ the
Staten Island Club, and Kay would meet useful people. In sanguine mood
we agreed to go. It proved a momentous match for me.
Before it came off, however, something else had happened that may seem
very small beer, but that provided me with a recurrent horror for many
months to come, a horror perhaps disproportionate to its cause. It
filled me, at any rate, with a peculiar loathing as of some hideous
nightmare. I had never seen the things before; their shape, their
ungainly yet rapid movement, their uncanny power of disappearing in a
second, their number, their dirty colour, above all their smell, now
gave me the sensations of acute nausea. Kay’s laughter, though he too
felt disgust and indignation, brought no comfort. We eventually got
up and lit the gas. We caught it. I had my first view of the beast.
We stared at each other in horror. Then Kay sniffed the air. “That
explains it,” he said, referring to a faint odour of oil we had both
noticed when engaging the room. “They put it in the woodwork to kill
them,” he added. “It’s the only thing. But it never really gets rid of
them, I’m afraid.”
The anger of Mrs. Bernstein when we accused her in the morning, her
indignant denials, her bluster about “insoults,” and that “never had
sooch a t’ing been said of her house pefore,” were not half as comic as
her expression when I suddenly produced the soap-dish with its damning
evidence--17 all told.
She stared, held her breath a second, then very quietly said “Ach, Ach!
If you stay, chentelmen, I take von tollar off the price.”
It was impossible not to laugh with her; there was something kind
and motherly, something good and honest and decent about her we both
liked; she would do her best, we believed; possibly she really would
exterminate the other tenants. We stayed on.
Of the cricket match on Staten Island, beyond the pretty ground with
its big trees, and that we got a good lunch without paying for it,
no memory remains. What stands out vividly is the tall figure of
Arthur Glyn Boyde, a fast bowler and a good bat, and one of the most
entertaining and sympathetic companions I had ever met. His clothes
were shabby, but his graceful manners, his voice, his smile, everything
about him, in fact, betrayed the English gentleman. He was about thirty
years of age, of the most frank and engaging appearance, with kindly,
honest blue eyes, in one of which he wore an eyeglass. I remember the
little fact that he, Kay and myself were measured for a bet after the
match, and that he, like Kay, was six feet two inches, being one inch
shorter than myself.
I took to him at once, and he to me. His real name was a distinguished
one which he shared, it turned out, with some cousins of my own. We
were, therefore, related. The bond was deepened. Times had gone hard
with him, it seemed, but at the moment he was on the stage, being
understudy to Morton Selton as Merivale in “Captain Lettarblair,” which
E. H. Sothern’s company was then playing. In “The Disreputable Mr.
Reagen,” by, I think, Richard Harding Davis he had also played the rôle
of the detective. He was waiting, however, for a much better post, as
huntsman to the Rockaway Hunt, a Long Island fashionable club, and this
post, oddly enough, was in the gift, he told me, of Davis. It had been
practically promised to him, he might hear any day.... The story of his
many jobs and wanderings interested us, and his theatre work promised
to be helpful in many ways to what was called my “room-mate.” Boyde’s
experience of New York generally was invaluable to us both, and the
fact that he had nowhere to sleep that night (having been turned out
by his landlady) gave us the opportunity to invite him to our humble
quarters. We mentioned the other tenants, but he said that made no
difference, he would sleep on the sofa. He dined with us at Krisch’s;
he was extremely hard up; luckily, we still had enough to invite a
friend. His only luggage was a small bag, for he told us, with a rueful
smile, that his clothes were all in pawn. I had an extra suit or two
which, being of about my size, he was able to wear.
I felt immensely drawn to him, and his story touched my pity as well
as stirred my admiration. It was a happy evening we all spent in the
little bedroom, for he was not only well-read--he knew my various
“Eastern books” and could talk about them interestingly--but had a
fine tenor voice into the bargain. My fiddle came out of its case, and
if the other lodgers disliked our duets, they did not, at any rate,
complain. Boyde sang, he further told us, in the choir of the 2nd
Avenue Baptist Church, and was assistant organist there as well, but
made little out of this latter job, as he was only called upon when the
other man was unable to attend. He even taught sometimes in the Sunday
School--“to keep in the pastor’s good books,” as he explained with a
laugh. But the chief thing he told us that night was the heartening
information that, when all other chances failed, there was always a
fair living to be earned by posing to artists at 50 cents an hour, or a
dollar and a half for a full sitting of three hours. It was easy work
and not difficult to get. He would gladly introduce us to the various
studios, as soon as they opened, most of the artists being still in the
country.
The search for work was a distressing business, when to the inevitable
question “What can you do?” the only possible, but quite futile, reply
was, “I’ll do anything.” I had collected the ten dollars from _Harper’s
Young People_, but a letter to Storey for more work brought no reply.
The payment for the Toronto packing-case and for a week’s rent of the
rooms had reduced the exchequer so seriously that in a few days there
was only the _Harper’s_ money in hand. Boyde, who stayed on at our
urgent invitation, shared all he earned, and taught us, besides, the
trick of using the free lunch-counters in hotels and saloons. For a
glass of beer at five cents, a customer could eat such snacks as salted
chip-potatoes, strips of spiced liver sausage, small squares of bread,
and pungent almonds, all calculated to stimulate unnatural thirst. The
hotels provided more sumptuous dishes, though the price of drink was
higher, and the calm way Boyde would help himself deliberately to a
plate and fork, with an ample supply of the best food he could find,
then carry it all back to his glass of lager under the bar-tender’s
very nose, was an ideal we could only hope to achieve by practice as
long as his own. It was a question of nerve. Our midday meal was now
invariably of this kind. The free lunch brigade, to which we belonged,
was tolerantly treated by the majority of bar-tenders. A thirty cents
dinner at Krisch’s in the evening, choosing the most bulky dishes,
ended the long tiring day of disappointing search. Boyde also made us
buy oatmeal, with tin pot and fixture for cooking over the gas-jet. He
was invaluable in a dozen ways, always cheery, already on the right
side of Mrs. Bernstein, and turning up every evening with a dollar or
two he had earned during the day.
He further taught us--the moment had come, he thought--to pawn. The
packing-case in the basement was opened and rummaged through (a
half-used cheque-book from Toronto days was a pathetic relic!) for
things on which Ikey of 3rd Avenue might offer a few dollars. The
tennis cups, won at little Canadian tournaments, seemed attractive, he
thought, but our English overcoats would fetch most money. The weather
was still comfortable ... we sallied forth, hoping Mrs. Bernstein would
not see us, carrying two tennis cups and a couple of good overcoats.
Everybody stared and grinned, it seemed, though actually of course,
no one gave us a glance. Boyde, humming Lohengrin, was absolutely
nonchalant. For me, the pawnbroker’s door provided sensations similar
to those I knew when first entering the Hub just a year before.
“I want ten dollars on these,” said Boyde, in a firm voice. “What’ll
you give? I shall take ’em out next week.”
The Jew behind the counter gave one glance at the tennis cups, then
pushed them contemptuously aside; the overcoats he examined carefully,
holding them up to the light for holes or threadbare patches, feeling
the linings, turning the sleeves inside out.
“Good English cloth,” mentioned Boyde. “Hardly used at all.”
“A dollar each,” said the man, laying them down as though the deal was
finished. He turned to make out the tickets. He had not looked at us
once yet.
Boyde picked them up and turned to go. “Two dollars,” he said flatly,
“I can get five in 4th Avenue.”
“Go ged it,” was the reply, the man’s back still turned on us.
Boyde gave a cheery laugh. “Make it three dollars for the two,” he
suggested in an off-hand manner, “with another couple for the cups.
They’re prizes. We wouldn’t lose them for worlds.”
The man looked at us for the first time; we were fairly well dressed,
obviously English, three hulking customers of a type he was not used
to. Perhaps he really believed we might redeem the cups one day. “Worth
less than nozzing,” he said in his Yiddish accent. The keen, appraising
look he gave us made me feel even less than that.
“Worth a lot to us, though,” came Boyde’s quick comment.
“Name?” queried the man, bending over a table with his back turned
again.
“John Doe,” came promptly, and a moment later, with the ticket, the
Jew handed out four dirty dollar bills and fifty cents in coin. The
interest was twelve per cent. per month, and the articles could be
redeemed any time up to the end of a year.
“Never ask more than you really need at the moment,” was Boyde’s advice
as we came out into the street. “I could have raised him a few dollars
probably, but, remember, you’ll have to get the coats out again before
long.”
When we got back to the room a Western Union telegram lay on the table
for him; it was from Davis: “Please call to-morrow 3 o’clock without
fail _re_ Rockaway,” it read. And hope ran high. That night we spent
half of our new money at Krisch’s, giving a tip of thirty cents to
Otto....
Some ten days to a fortnight had passed, and October with its cooler
winds had come, though life was still possible without overcoats. Our
dress-clothes were now in Ikey’s, moth-balls beside them. The Chinese
laundry had been paid, but not the second week’s rent, for money was
very low and dinners of the smallest. Practice at the free lunch
counters had improved our methods of strolling up absent-mindedly,
perceiving the food apparently for the first time, then picking up with
quick fingers the maximum quantity. Kay, meanwhile, had secured a part
in a touring company which was to start out for a series of one-night
stands in about three weeks, his salary of fifteen dollars to begin
with the first night. He was already rehearsing. My own efforts had
produced nothing. Boyde, too, had not yet landed his huntsman job,
which was to include comfortable quarters as well as a good salary. I
had been down with him when he went to see Davis, waiting in the street
till he came out, and the interview, though reassuring, he told me,
involved a little further delay still. He, therefore, continued his odd
jobs, calling at the theatre every night and matinée to see if he was
wanted, playing the organ in church occasionally, and getting a small
fee for singing in the choir. He shared with us as we shared with him;
he slept on the sofa in our room; he was welcome to wear my extra suits
of clothes--until Ikey might care to see them.
Then, quite suddenly, fate played a luckier card.
Kay and I were at the free lunch counter of the Fifth Avenue Hotel,
Boyde having been called away to do something at his Baptist church,
when Bob Mantell strolled up, bringing a tall, grey-haired man with
him. The next minute he was introducing me to Cecil Clay, with a
remark to the effect that he must surely have known my father, and
that I surely must know Mr. Clay’s famous book on whist. Cecil Clay,
anyhow, was a kindly old Englishman, and evidently was aware how the
land lay with us, for a few minutes later he had given me a card to
Laffan, manager of the _New York Sun_. “Go and see him the day after
to-morrow,” he said. “Meanwhile I’ll write him a line about you.”
Had it been possible to go then and there I should have felt more
confidence and less nervousness than when I called at the appointed
hour. The interval, with its hopeful anticipation and alternate dread,
was a bad preparation for appearing at my best. After a few questions,
however, Mr. Laffan, a man of very powerful position in the newspaper
world, a great art collector and connoisseur, head, too, of the Laffan
News Bureau, said that Mr. McCloy, managing editor of the _Evening
Sun_, would give me a trial as a reporter, and I could start next
Monday--four days away--at fifteen dollars a week. I had mentioned that
I knew French and German, and could write shorthand. He spoke to me in
both languages, but, luckily, he did not think of testing the speed and
accuracy of my self-taught Pitman.
On the staff of a great New York newspaper! That it was anti-British
and pro-Tammany did not bother me. A reporter! A starting salary of
£3 a week that might grow! I wrote the news to my father that very
afternoon, and that night Kay, Boyde and I had almost a festive dinner
at Krisch’s restaurant--that is, we ended with sweets and coffee. The
following day I spent practising my rusty shorthand, about 90 words
a minute being my best speed consistent with legibility. Would it
be fast enough? I might have spared myself the trouble for all the
use shorthand was to me on the _Evening Sun_ during the two years I
remained with it. Only once--much later, when I was with the _New
York Times_, did it prove of value, securing for me on that occasion
an increase of salary.... The slogan of the _Sun_, printed on each
copy was, “If you See it in the _Sun_ it is so!” accuracy the strong
point. The _Times_ preferred a moral tinge: “All the News that’s Fit to
Print.” Both mottoes were faithfully observed and rigidly practised.