_Trails of Bohemia_
Trails of Bohemia--The Avenue and its Tributaries--The "Musketeers of
the Brush"--The Voice of the Ghetto--South Fifth Avenue and the Old
French Quarter--The Garibaldi--"A la Ville de Rouen "--The Restaurant du
Grand Vatel--The New Bohemia--The Lane of the Mad Eccentrics--Sheridan
Square--"The Pirate's Den"--Absolam, a Slave--Gonfarone's--Maria's.
Once upon a time an over-astute critic found grave fault with the title
of a novel by Mr. William Dean Howells. There was to his mind at least
an unfortunate suggestion in calling a book "The Coast of Bohemia," even
though "Bohemia" was used in its figurative sense. What if the title had
been derived from a line in Shakespeare? That did not alter the fact
that ascribing a coast to Bohemia was like giving the Swiss Republic an
Admiralty and alluding to Berne as a naval base. What would that
censorious critic have to say of the association of Bohemia with stately
Fifth Avenue? For to him and his kind it is not given to realize that
Bohemia is a state of mind, a period of ardour and exaltation, a
reminiscence of youth rather than a material region.
The great stream has its tributaries. To Fifth Avenue belong the side
streets that feed it and in turn draw from it flavour and inspiration.
To it belong Washington Square, the south side as well as the north
side, and the street beyond, that today is known as West Broadway, and
yesterday was South Fifth Avenue, and before that, in the remote past,
was Laurens Street; and the crossing thoroughfares that constituted the
French Quarter of the late seventies and early eighties; and the
northeastern part of Greenwich Village, that was once the "American
Quarter," and is now masquerading as a super Monmartre, with its
"Vermillion Hounds," and "Purple Pups," and "Pirates' Dens."
Nor for the flavour of Bohemia is there actual need of leaving the
Avenue itself. It was more than twenty years ago that the writer,
turning into Fifth Avenue at Twenty-sixth Street of a sunshiny
afternoon, was confronted with an apparition, or rather with
apparitions, direct from the Latin Quarter of Paris. Three top-hatted
young men were walking arm in arm. One, of imposing stature, wore
conspicuously the type of side whiskers formerly known as "Dundrearys."
The second, of medium height, was adorned by an aggressive beard. The
third, small and slight, was smooth shaven. A similar trio was
encountered a dozen blocks farther up the Avenue, and, in the
neighbourhood of the Plaza, a third trio. It was a time when George Du
Maurier's "Trilby" was in the full swing of its great popularity, when
the name of the sinister Svengali was on every lip, and certain young
eccentrics found huge delight in attracting attention to themselves by
parading the Avenue attired as "Taffy," the "Laird," and "Little
Billee."
There is a stretch of the Avenue upon which the Fifth Avenue Association
frowns; which the native American avoids; and which the old-time New
Yorker regards with passionate regret as he recalls the departed glories
of the Union Club and the jutting brown-stone stoops of yesterday. At
the noon hour the sidewalks swarm with foreign faces. There is shrill
chatter in alien tongues and the air is laden with strange odours. Even
here Bohemia may be. Perhaps, toiling over a machine in one of the
sweat-shops of the towering buildings a true poet may be coining his
dreams and aspirations and heartaches into plaintive song; another, like
the Sidney Rosenfeld of a score of years ago, who, over his work in the
Ghetto of the lower East Side, asked and answered:
"Why do I laugh? Why do I weep?
I do not know; it is too deep."
The attic, the studio, the restaurant, the café are the accepted symbols
of Bohemia. What reader of Henri Murger's "Scenes de la Vie de Bohème"
has ever forgotten the Café Momus, where the riotous behaviour of
Marcel, Schaunard, Rodolphe, and Colline brought the proprietor to the
verge of ruin? Who has not in his heart a tender spot for Terre's
Tavern, in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, where the bouillebaisse came
from--the bouillebaisse, of which some of the ingredients were "red
peppers, garlic, saffron roach, and dace"? It is of no great importance
whether the particular scene be on the "_rive gauche_" of the River
Seine, or in the labyrinth of narrow streets that make up the Soho
district of London, or in rapidly shifting New York. All that is needed
is youth, or unwilling middle age still playing at youth, and the
atmosphere where artistic and literary aspirations are in the air, and
poverty wearing a conspicuous stock, and the "glory that was Greece and
the grandeur that was Rome," and the relative merits of Tennyson and
Browning being talked over to the accompaniment of knives and forks
rattling against plates of spaghetti and the clinking of wine glasses.
Years ago, to find the tangible New York Bohemia would have been a
matter of crossing from the Avenue's southern extremity, and diving into
the streets that lie to the south of Washington Square. There was the
old French Quarter, and there foregathered the professional joke-makers
and the machine poets who contributed to "Puck," and the "New York
Ledger" when that periodical felt the guiding hand of Robert Bonner. Of
that group Henry Cuyler Bunner was probably the most conspicuous. In his
early days he was a twenty-four-hour Bohemian. In later life, when he
had moved to the country, he remained a noon Bohemian. He was the prime
spirit of the little Garibaldi in MacDougal Street of which James L.
Ford wrote in "Bohemia Invaded." Not often did he stray over to
Greenwich Village. He disliked what he called its bourgeois
conservatism.
For a period of years that section immediately to the south of the
Square was the French Quarter. There were the peaceful artisans, and
also there were political refugees of dangerous proclivities, men who
had had a share in the blazing terrors of the Commune, and who, in some
cases, had paid the price in years of imprisonment under the tropical
sun of Cayenne. In all their wanderings they had carried the spirit of
revolution with them and spouted death to despots over their glasses of
absinthe in cellar cafés. William H. Rideing, in an article which was
published in "Scribner's Magazine" for November, 1879, described these
men as he had found them in the Taverne Alsacienne in Greene Street:
"gathered around the tables absorbed in piquet, écarté, or vingt-et-un
... most of them without coats, the shabbiness of their other garments
lighted up by a brilliant red bandanna kerchief or a crimson overshirt."
Keen glances were shot at strangers, for the tavern had a certain
_clientèle_ outside of which it had few customers and suspicion was rife
at any invasion. "They are drinking wine, vermouth, and greenish opaline
draughts of absinthe. Staggering in unnerved and stupefied from the
previous night's debauch, they show few signs of vitality until four or
five glasses of the absinthe have been drunk, and then they awaken;
their eyes brighten and their tongues are loosened--the routine of play,
smoke, and alcohol is resumed."
Pleasanter to recall are the sober, industrious men and women who were
denizens of the neighbourhood in the years gone by--Mademoiselle Berthe
and her little sisters, fabricating roses and violets out of muslin and
wax in their attic apartment, Madame Lange, the _blanchisseuse_, ironing
in front of an open window, Triquet, the _charcutier_, Roux, the
_bottier_, Malvaison, the _marchand de vin_. Then there were others of
the colony, higher in the social scale and less prosperous in their
finances, the impecunious music-teachers and professors of languages who
maintained themselves with a frosty air of shabby gentility on a very
slender income, and the practitioners of literature and art who
maintained themselves somehow on no income at all. For the leisure hours
of these there were the innocent wine-shops of South Fifth Avenue, such
as the Brasserie Pigault, which Bunner introduced to the readers of "The
Midge" with a quaint conceit. The sign of the little café from without
read: "A LA VILLE DE ROUEN. J. PIGAULT. LAGER BEER. FINE WINES AND
LIQUEURS." But its regular patrons knew it best from within, from
the warm tables they liked to scan the letters backward, against the
glass that protected them from the winter's night. It was a quaint
haunt, where gathered Doctor Peters and Father Dube, and Parker Prout,
the old artist who had failed in life because of too much talent, and M.
Martin, and the venerable Potain, who had lost his mind after his wife's
death, and Ovide Marie, the curly-haired musician from Amity Street.
But the prize exhibit, the _pièce de resistance_ of that old Bohemia of
the French Quarter to the south of Washington Square was the Restaurant
du Grand Vatel in Bleecker Street. Not only the French strugglers, but
American artists and authors in embryo used to dine there substantially
and economically. As Mr. Rideing described it: "The floor is sanded, and
the little tables are covered with oil-cloth, each having a pewter cruet
in the centre. A placard flutters from the wall, announcing a grand
festival, banquet, ball, and artistic tombola in celebration of the
eighth anniversary of the bloody revolution of March 18, 1871, under the
auspices of the 'Société des Réfugiés de la Commune'--'Family tickets,
twenty-five cents, hat-room checks, ten cents'--from which we gather
that the 'Restaurant du Grand Vatel' has some queer patrons. The
landlady sits behind a little desk in the corner. She is a woman of
enormous girth, with short petticoats which reveal her thick, white
woolen socks; her complexion is dark, her eyes are black and deep, and
large golden rings dangle from her ears."
The regular patrons begin to come in. The poor professor, after his
unprofitable labours of the day, enters, and bows to the landlady, who
is cordial or severe in her greeting according to the items on the
little slate which records her accounts. He begins his meal. "He has
_soupe aux croutons_, _veau à la Marengo_, _pommes frites_, a small
portion of _Gruyère_, and a bottle of wine. He eats appreciatively after
the manner of a _bon vivant;_ he uses his napkin gently and frequently;
he glances blandly at the surroundings; watching him, you would suppose
the viands were the choicest of the season, exquisitely prepared, while,
in reality, they are poor and unsubstantial stuff, the refuse, perhaps,
of better restaurants. Having finished the edibles, he calls for a
'gloria,' that is, black coffee and cognac; and, sipping this, he
communes with his fancies which come and vanish in the blue waves of
cigarette smoke. His aspect bespeaks perfect complacency--Fate cannot
harm me; I have dined today."
To Mr. Rideing we are indebted for certain items indicating the very
moderate scale of prices at the Restaurant du Grand Vatel. Outside there
was a sign that read: _"Tous les plats,_ eight cents; _plats extra
variés; café superieur,_ three cents; _café au lait,_ five cents." Here
is a list of some of the dishes and their cost: Soup and a plate of beef
and bread, ten cents; _soupe aux croutons_, five cents; _boeuf_,
_legumes_, ten cents; _veau à la Marengo_, twelve cents; _mouton à
Ravigotte_, ten cents; _ragout de mouton aux pommes_, eight cents;
_boeuf braisé aux oignons_, ten cents; _macaroni au gratin_, six cents;
_celeri salade_, six cents; _compote de pommes_, four cents; _fromage
Neufchâtel_, three cents; _Limbourg_, four cents; _Gruyère_, three
cents; bread, one cent. Thus, Mr. Rideing figured out, the professor's
dinner, wine included, cost him the sum of forty cents, and with five
cents added for a roll and a cup of coffee in the morning, his daily
expenditure for food was less than half a dollar.
The trails of Bohemia, or of pseudo-Bohemia, have never been so flaming
and flagrant as they are today. From that corner of the Avenue facing
the Arch cross the Square diagonally to the head of Washington Place. A
hundred yards to the west lies the Lane of the Mad Eccentrics. Two or
three years ago the little triangle of a park known as Sheridan Square
was surrounded by structures of red brick that dated from the days when
Greenwich Village preserved something of its proud individuality. Then a
plan of transformation, involving a new avenue, cleared a wide path with
the suddenness of a Kansas cyclone. Bits of the picturesque past went
tumbling down before the onslaught of the demolishers. But in various
nooks and corners that remained there sprang up bits of a picturesque
although probably ephemeral present.
It is easy to regard the Lane of the Mad Eccentrics from the point of
view of metropolitan sophistication; to dismiss the Vermilion Hound and
the Hell Hole and the Pirate's Den and the Purple Pup and Polly's as
clap-trap and tinsel designed for the mystification of yokels and social
investigators from Long Island City. But it is impossible to deny that
the crazy decorations have added a touch of real colour to what had been
a drab corner of the town. The present writer has no intention of going
into a detailed sketch of this fragment of Bohemia for the reason that
Anna Alice Chapin discussed it so well, so buoyantly, and so
sympathetically in her book on "Greenwich Village" published a year or
so ago. A few lines from her description of the Pirate's Den will give
the flavour of any one of the enterprises that line the Lane of the Mad
Eccentrics and are to be found, here and there, in the neighbouring
streets.
"It is a very real pirate's den, lighted only by candles. A coffin casts
a shadow, and there is a regulation 'Jolly Roger,' a black flag
ornamented with skull and crossbones. Grim? Surely, but even a
healthy-minded child will play at gruesome and ghoulish games once in a
while.
"There is a Dead Man's Chest, too--and if you open it you will find a
ladder leading down into the mysterious depths unknown. If you are very
adventurous you will climb down and bump your head against the cellar
ceiling and inspect what is going to be a subterranean grotto as soon as
it can be fitted up. You climb down again and sit in the dim, smoky
little room and look about you. It is the most perfect pirate's den you
can imagine. On the walls hang huge casks and kegs and wine bottles in
their straw covers--all the sign manuals of past and future orgies. Yet
the 'Pirate's Den' is 'dry'--straw-dry, brick-dry--as dry as the Sahara.
If you want a 'drink' the well-mannered 'cut-throat' who serves you will
give you a mighty mug of ginger-ale or sarsaparilla. If you are a real
Villager and can still play at being a real pirate you drink it without
a smile, and solemnly consider it real red wine filched at the end of a
cutlass from captured merchantmen on the high seas. On the big, dark
centre table is carefully drawn the map of 'Treasure Island.'
"The pirate who serves you (incidentally he writes poetry and helps to
edit a magazine among other things) apologizes for the lack of a
Stevenson parrot. 'A chap we know is going to bring back one from the
South Sea Islands,' he declares seriously. 'And we are going to teach it
to say: "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!"'"
Then there is the Bohemian trail that leads along three sides of
Washington Square. In the red Benedick much literary ink has been
spilled. Until a few years ago there were several studios of artists
along the south side of the Square. One of the artists, highly talented
but quite mad, boasted for a brief period the possession of a slave--a
huge Riff from the mountains of Morocco, acquired in some mysterious
manner. All Bohemia flocked to the studio to witness the anachronism.
For the benefit of those of New York who did not belong to Bohemia the
artist delighted to promenade the streets followed at a respectful
distance by his serf. Absolam--so the chattel was called--bearing his
chains lightly, considered his main duty to be to make love to the
ladies of Bohemia. The artist's real troubles began when he undertook to
rid himself of his slave. Absolam, waxing greasily fatter and fatter,
basking in the warmth of delightful celebrity, refused to be lost.
Long before the days of Absolam and his master there were painter men
about the Square. Morse, according to Helen W. Henderson's "A Loiterer
in New York," was the first artist to work there. He lived in the old
New York University building, and when he was not before his easel, was
experimenting with the telegraph. In that building also Draper wrote,
and perfected his invention of the daguerreotype, and Colt invented the
revolver named after him. The old grey castellated structure, erected in
1837, stood on the east side of the Square until 1894.
Of a restaurant that played a part in one of his stories O. Henry wrote:
"Formerly it was a resort of interesting Bohemians; but now only
writers, painters, actors, and musicians go there." The same
topsy-turvical irony might have been directed with equal happiness at
the café of the Brevoort, or the Black Cat on West Broadway, or
Gonfarone's at the corner of Eighth and MacDougal Streets, or at old
Maria's. Whatever else it may be Bohemia is a democracy, and regardless
of condition or occupation any one who so wishes may lay claim to and
enjoy the privileges of immediate citizenship. We have become more
tolerant with the years. He who prates of Philistines is himself a
Philistine.
Formerly it was different. To escape the reproach of the uplifted
eyebrow, the quizzical look, the "_que diable allait il faire dans cette
galère_?" expression, it was necessary to be one of the Mr. Lutes or
Miss Nedra Jennings Nuncheons, of Stephen French Whitman's
"Predestined," who were regular habitués of "Benedetto's," under which
name Gonfarone's was thinly disguised. Mr. Lute wrote a quatrain once
every three months for the "Mauve Monthly," and Miss Nuncheon, tall and
thin, with a mop of orange-coloured hair, contributed somewhere stories
about the "smart set," "a society existing far off amid the glamour of
opera-boxes, conservatories full of orchids, yachts like ocean
steamships, mansions with marble stairways, Paris dresses by the gross,
and hatfuls of diamonds, where the women were always discovered in
boudoirs with a French maid named Fanchette in attendance, receiving
bunches of long-stemmed roses from potential correspondents, while the
men, all very tall and dark, possessed of interesting pasts, were
introduced before fireplaces in sumptuous bachelor apartments, the veins
knotted on their temples, and their strong yet aristocratic fingers
clutching a photograph or a scented note."
Gonfarone's, the "Benedetto's" of the tale, is an old, converted
dwelling house. There are the brown-stone steps, flanked by a pair of
iron lanterns, giving entrance to a narrow corridor; and, beyond, to the
right, the dining room, extending through the house, linoleum underfoot,
hat-racks and buffets of oak aligned against the brownish walls, and,
everywhere, little tables, each covered with a scanty cloth, set close
together. In the days when Felix Piers was in the habit of patronizing
the place there floated to his ears such phrases as "bad colour scheme!"
"sophomoric treatment!" "miserable drawing!" "no atmosphere!" But all
that was years ago. When the writer dined there last, a month or so
back, fragments of conversation caught from the clatter of the tongues
of the Bohemians were: "Take it from me, kid!" "If old man Weinstein
thinks he can put that over, he's got another guess coming!" "And then I
give her the juice and we lost that super-six in the dust!" "Yes,
Huggins has got _some_ infield!"
Fifteen or twenty years ago the trail of Bohemia would have inevitably
led to Maria's in West Twelfth Street. For there to be found, among
others, was a certain Mickey Finn, as celebrated in his day and town as
Aristide Bruant was in a section of Paris of the nineties. About Finn
gathered a group of newspaper men and journalists. The distinction was
that the newspaper man was one who earned his daily bread on Park Row,
while the journalist had written a sketch for the New York "Sun" in
1878, and still carried and proudly exhibited the clipping. The original
Maria, a large Italian cook who presided autocratically over the kitchen
of the basement restaurant, long since migrated somewhere to the north.
She had exacted her share of the homage and the substance of her
clients. After her departure there was still the attempt to keep up the
ancient fire of witticism, and "la la la la!" was still uttered in what
was thought to be the best Parisian accent, and the judgments of
magazine editors, and the achievements of the painters who sold their
portraits, and the writers whose novels crept into the lists of the "six
bestsellers" continued to be damned in no uncertain tones. But the old
spirit seems irrevocably gone.