MODERN MEMPHIS
To be charmed by the social side of a city, yet to find little to admire
in its physical aspect, is like knowing a brilliant and beautiful woman
whose housekeeping is not of the neatest. If one were compelled to
discuss such a woman, and wished to do so sympathetically but with
truth, one might avoid brutal comment on the condition of her rooms by
likening them to other rooms elsewhere: rooms which one knew to be
untidy, but which the innocent listener might not understand to be so.
By this device one may even appear to pay a compliment, while, in
reality, indicating the grim truth. In such a case, I, for example,
might say that this supposititious lady's rooms reminded me of those I
occupied on the second floor of the famous restaurant called Antoine's,
in New Orleans; whereupon the reader, knowing the high reputation of
Antoine's cuisine, and never having seen the apartments to which I
refer, might assume an implication very favorable.
Let me say, then, that Memphis reminds me of St. Louis. Like St. Louis,
Memphis has charming society. Like St. Louis she has pretty girls. Like
St. Louis she is hospitable. And without particularizing too much, I
may say that her streets remind me of St. Louis streets, that many of
her houses remind me of St. Louis houses, and that her levee, with its
cobbled surface sloping down to the yellow, muddy Mississippi, the
bridges in the distance, the strange looking river steamers loading and
unloading below, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is much like the St.
Louis levee. So, if the reader happens to be unfamiliar with the
physical appearance of St. Louis, he may, at all events, perceive that I
have likened Memphis to a much larger city--thus, (it seems fair to
suppose) paying Memphis a handsome tribute.
Memphis has a definite self-given advantage over St. Louis in possessing
a pretty little park at the heart of the city, overlooking the river;
also she has the advantage of lying to the east of the great stream,
instead of to the west, so that, in late afternoon, when the sun
splashes down into the mysterious deserted reaches of the Arkansas
flats, across the way, sending splatterings of furious color across the
sky, one may seat oneself on a bench in the park and witness a
stupendous natural masterpiece. A sunset over the sea can be no more
wonderful than a sunset over this terrible, beautiful, inspiring,
enigmatic domineering flood. Or one may see the sunset from the
readingroom of the Cossitt Library, with its fine bay window commanding
the river almost as though it were the window of a pilot-house.
The Cossitt Library is only one of several free libraries in the city.
There is, for example, a free library in connection with the Goodwyn
Institute, an establishment having an endowment of half a million
dollars, left to Memphis by the late William A. Goodwyn. The Goodwyn
Institute provides courses of free lectures, by well-known persons, on a
great variety of subjects. The library is designed to add to the
educational work. Books are not, however, loaned, as they are from the
Cossitt Library, an institution to which I found myself returning more
than once; now for a book, now to look at the interesting collection of
mound-builder relics contained in an upper room, now merely because it
is a place of such reposeful hospitality that I liked to make excuses to
go back.
The library, a romanesque building of Michigan red sandstone, is by a
southern architect, but is in the style of Richardson, and is one of the
few buildings in that style which I have ever liked. It was given to
Memphis as a memorial to Frederick H. Cossitt, by his three daughters,
Mrs. A.D. Juilliard, Mrs. Thomas Stokes, and Mrs. George E. Dodge, all
of New York. Mr. Cossitt was born in Granby, Connecticut, but as a young
man moved South and in 1842 adopted Memphis as his home, residing there
until 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War he made an amicable
division of his business with his partner, and removed to New York,
where he resided until the time of his death. Finding among his papers a
memorandum indicating that he had intended to endow a library in
Memphis, his daughters carried out his wish.
Having already spoken of a number of Memphis' interesting citizens, I
find myself left with an ill-assorted trio of names yet to be mentioned,
because, different as they are, each of the three supplies a definite
part of the character of the city. First, then, Memphis has the honor of
possessing what not many of our cities possess: a man who stands high
among the world's artist-bookbinders. This gentleman is Mr. Otto Zahn,
executive head of the publishing house of S.C. Toof & Co. Mr. Zahn
himself has done some famous bindings, and books bound by him are to be
found in some of the finest private libraries in the land. Until a few
years ago he conducted an art-bindery in connection with the Toof
company's business, but it was unprofitable and finally had to be given
up.
Second, to descend to a more popular form of art, but one from which the
revenue is far more certain, Memphis has, in W.C. Handy, a negro ragtime
composer whose dance tunes are widely known. Among his compositions may
be mentioned the "Memphis Blues," the "St. Louis Blues," "Mr. Crump,"
and "Joe Turner." "Mr. Crump" is named in honor of a former mayor of
Memphis who was ousted for refusing to enforce the prohibition law; "Joe
Turner" is the name of a negro pianist who plays for Memphis to
dance--as Handy also does. Most of Handy's tunes are negro "rags" in
fox-trot time, and they are so effective that Memphis dances them
generally in preference to the one step.
My third celebrity is of a more astounding type. While in Memphis I
called aboard the river steamer _Grand_, and had a talk with Mrs. Nettie
Johnson, who is captain of that craft. Some one told me that Mrs.
Johnson was the only woman steamboat captain in the world, but she
informed me that at Helena, Arkansas, there lives another Mrs.
Johnson--no relative of hers--who follows the same calling.
The steamer _Grand_ is almost entirely a Johnson family affair. Mrs.
Johnson is captain; her husband, I.S. Johnson is pilot (though Mrs.
Johnson has, in addition to her master's license, a pilot's license, and
often takes the wheel); her elder son, Emery, is clerk; Emery's wife is
assistant clerk, while Arthur, the captain's younger son, is engineer.
Russell Johnson, Mrs. Johnson's grandson, is the only member of the
family I saw aboard the boat who does not take part in running it.
Russell was five years old when I met him, but that was nearly a year
ago, and by now he is probably chief steward, boatswain, or ship's
carpenter.
The regular route of the _Grand_ is from Memphis to Mhoon's Landing, on
the Arkansas River, a round trip of 120 miles, with thirty landings.
I asked Mrs. Johnson if she had ever been shipwrecked. Indeed she had!
Her former ship, the _Nettie Johnson_, struck thin ice one night in the
Arkansas River and went down.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"I reached after an iron ring," she replied, "and clumb on up into the
rigging. She went down about four-thirty A.M. and we stayed on her till
daylight; then we all swum ashore. I tell you it was cold! There was
icicles on my dress; my son Emery put his arms around me to keep me
warm, and his clothes froze onto mine."
"How long a swim was it to shore?" I asked.
"Oh," put in her husband, "it didn't amount to nothing. She was only
swimming about two minutes."
This statement, however, was repudiated by the captain. "Two minutes, my
foot!" she flung back at her spouse. "It was more than that, all right!"
Mrs. Johnson has done flood rescue work for the Government, with the
_Grand_. In the spring previous to our visit she rescued sixty families
from one plantation, besides towing barge-loads of provisions to various
points on the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers.
Captaining and piloting a river boat are clearly good for the health.
Mrs. Johnson looks too young to be a grandmother. Her skin is clear, her
cheeks are rosy, her brown eyes flash and twinkle, her voice, somewhat
hoarse from shouting commands, is deep and strong, and her laugh is like
the hearty laugh of a big man.
"Are you a suffragist?" I asked her.
"Not on your life!" was her reply.
"Now, what do you want to talk like that for?" objected her husband.
"You know women ought to be allowed to vote."
"I don't think so," she returned firmly.
At that her daughter-in-law, the assistant clerk of the _Grand_, took up
the cudgels.
"Of course they ought to vote!" she insisted. "You know _you_ can do
just as good as a man can do!"
"No," asseverated Captain Nettie. "Women ought to stay home and tend to
their families."
"As you do?" I suggested, mischievously.
"That's all right!" she flung back. "I stayed home and raised my family
until it was big enough to do its own navigating. Then I started in
steamboating. I had to have _something_ to do."
But the daughter-in-law did not intend to let the woman suffrage issue
drop.
"Do you mean to say," she demanded of Captain Nettie, "that you think
women haven't got as much sense as men?"
"Sure I do!" the captain tossed back. "There never was a woman on earth
that had as much sense as the men. Take it from me, that's so. I know
what I'm talking about--and that's more than a half of these other women
do!"
Then, as it was about time for the _Grand_ to cast off, Captain Nettie
terminated the interview by blowing the whistle; whereupon my companion
and I went ashore.
One of the best boats on the river is the _Kate Adams_ and one of the
most delightful two-days' outings I can imagine would be to make the
round trip with her from Memphis to Arkansas City. But if I were seeking
rest I should not take the trip at the time when it is taken by a score
or more of Memphis young men and women, who, with their chaperones, and
with Handy to play their dance-music, make the _Kate Adams_ an extremely
lively craft on one round trip each year.
Apropos of Arkansas, I am reminded that Memphis is not only the
metropolis of Tennessee, but is the big city of Arkansas and
Mississippi, as well. The Peabody Hotel in Memphis, a somewhat
old-fashioned hostelry, is a sort of Arkansas political headquarters,
and is sometimes humorously referred to as "Peabody township, Arkansas."
It is also used to a considerable extent by Mississippi politicians, as
well as by the local breed. The Peabody grill has a considerable
reputation for good cookery, and the Peabody bar, though it still looks
like a bar, serves only soft drinks, which are dispensed by female
"bartenders." The Gayoso hotel, named for the Spanish governor who
intruded upon Memphis territory for a time, stands where stood the old
Gayoso, which figured in Forrest's raid. The Gayoso made me think a
little of the old Victoria, in New York, torn down some years ago. The
newest hotel in town, at the time of our visit, was the Chicsa, an
establishment having a large and rather flamboyant office, and
considerably used, we were told, as a place for conventions. If I were
to go again to Memphis I should have a room at the Gayoso and go to the
Peabody for meals.
The axis of the earth, which Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, "sticks out
visibly through the center of each and every town or city," sticks out
in Memphis at Court Square, which the good red Baedeker dismisses
briefly with the remark that it "contains a bust of General Andrew
Jackson and innumerable squirrels." This is not meant to indicate that
the squirrels are a part of the bust of Jackson. The two are separate
and distinct. So are the pigeons which alight on friendly hands and
shoulders as do other confident pigeons on Boston Common, and in the
Piazza San Marco, in Venice.
I am always disposed to like the people of a city in which pigeons and
squirrels are tame. Every day, at noon, an old policeman, a former
Confederate soldier I believe he is, comes into the square with a basket
of corn. When he arrives all the pigeons see him and rush toward him in
a great flapping cloud, brushing past your face if you happen to be
walking across the square at the time. Nor is he the only one to feed
them. Numbers of citizens go at midday to the square, where they buy
popcorn and peanuts for the squirrels and pigeons--which, by the way,
are all members of old Memphis families, being descendants of other
squirrels and pigeons which lived in this same place before the Civil
War. One might suppose that the pigeons, being able to fly up to the
seventeenth floor windowsills of the Merchants' Exchange Building, where
men of the grain and hay bureau of the exchange are in the habit of
leaving corn for them, would prosper more than the squirrels, but that
is not the case for--and I regret to have to report such immorality--the
squirrels are in the habit of adding to the stores of peanuts which are
thrown to them, by thievery. Like rascally urchins they will watch the
peanut venders, and when their backs are turned, will make swift dashes
at the peanut stands, seizing nuts and scampering away again. Sometimes
the venders detect them, and give chase for a few steps, but that is
dangerous, for the minute the vender goes after one squirrel, others
rush up and steal more. It is saddening to find that even squirrels are
corrupted by metropolitan life!
In reviewing my visit to Memphis I find myself, for once, kindly
disposed toward a Chamber of Commerce and Business Men's Club. I like
the Business Men's Club because, besides issuing pamphlets shrieking the
glory of the city, it has found time to do things much more worth
while--notably to bring to Memphis some of the great American
orchestras.
A pamphlet issued by these organizations tells me that Memphis is the
largest cotton market in the country, the largest hardwood producing
market, the third largest grocery and jobbing market.
Cotton is, indeed, much in evidence in the city. The streets in some
sections are full of strange little two-wheel drays, upon which three
bales are carried, and which display, in combination, those three
southern things having such perfect artistic affinity: the negro, the
mule, and the cotton bale. The vast modern cotton warehouses on the
outskirts of the city cover many acres of ground, and with their gravity
system of distribution for cotton bales, and their hydraulic compresses
in which the bales are squeezed to minimum size, to the accompaniment of
negro chants, are exceedingly interesting.
The same pamphlet speaks also of the unusually large proportion of the
city's area which is given over to parks and playgrounds, and it seems
worth adding that though Memphis follows the general southern custom of
barring negroes--excepting, of course, nursemaids in charge of
children--from her parks, she has been so just as to provide a park for
negroes only. In this she stands ahead of most other southern cities.
Memphis has the only bridge crossing the Mississippi below the mouth of
the Ohio. At the time of our visit a new bridge was being built very
near the old one, and an interesting experience of our trip was our
visit to this bridge, under the guidance of Mr. M.B. Case, a young
engineer in charge.
On a great undertaking, such as this one, where the total cost mounts
into millions, the first work done is not on the proposed bridge itself,
but on the plant and equipment to be used in construction--derricks,
barges, concrete-mixers, air compressors for the caissons, small
engines, dump-cars and all manner of like things. This preparatory work
consumes some months. Caissons are then sunk far down beneath the river
bed. Caisson work is dangerous, and the insurance rate on "sand
hogs"--the men who work in the caissons--is very high. The scale of
wages, and of time, varies in proportion to the risk, which is according
to the depth at which work is being done. On this enterprise, for
example, men working from mean level to a depth of 50 feet received $3
for an eight-hour day. From 50 to 70 feet they worked but six hours and
received $3.75. From 90 to 105 feet they worked in three shifts of one
hour each, and received $4.25. And while they were placing concrete to
seal the working chamber there was an additional allowance of fifty
cents a day.
The chief danger of caisson work is the "bends," or "caisson disease."
In the caisson a man works under high air pressure. When he comes out,
the pressure on the fluids of the body is reduced, and this sometimes
causes the formation of a gas bubble in the vascular system. If this
bubble reaches a nerve-center it causes severe pain, similar to
neuralgia; if it gets to the brain it causes paralysis. Day after day
men will go into the caisson and come out without trouble, but sooner or
later from 2 to 8 per cent. of caisson workers are affected. Of 320
"sand-hogs" who labored in the caissons of this bridge, three died of
paralysis, and of course a number of others had slight attacks of the
"bends," in one form or another.
The bridge, when we visited it, was more than half completed. On the
Memphis side the approaches were almost ready, and the steel framework
of the bridge reached from the shore across the front pier, and was
being built out far beyond the pier, on the cantilever principle,
hanging in the air above the middle of the stream. By walking out on the
old bridge we could survey the extreme end of the new one, which was
being extended farther and farther, daily, by the addition of new steel
sections. There were then about 100 journeymen bridgemen on the
work--these being workmen of the class that erects steel skyscraper
frames--with some fifty apprentices and carpenters, and about twenty
common laborers. Bridgemen are among the highest paid of all workmen. In
New York, at that time, their wage was $6 for eight hours' work. Here it
was $4.50. Very few of the men had families with them in Memphis. They
are the soldiers of fortune among wage-earners, a wild, reckless, fine
looking lot of fellows, with good complexions like those of men in
training, and eyes like the eyes of aviators. No class of men in the
world, I suppose, have steadier nerves, think quicker, or react more
rapidly from stimulus to action, whether through sight or sound. They
have to be like that. For where other workmen pay for a mistake by loss
of a job, these men pay with life. Yet they will tell you that their
work is not dangerous. It is "just as safe as any other kind of
job"--that, although four of their number had already been lost from
this bridge alone. One went off the end of the structure with a derrick,
the boom of which he lowered before the anchor-bolts had been placed.
Two others fell. A fourth was struck by a falling timber.
Once, while we were watching the men scrambling about upon the steel
members of the uncompleted cantilever arm, one of them thought something
was about to fall, and ran swiftly in, over a steel beam, toward the
body of the structure; whereafter, as nothing did fall, he was
unmercifully twitted by his fellow workers for having shown timidity.
Many of the men working on this bridge had worked on the older structure
paralleling it. This was true not only of the laboring men, but of the
engineers. Ralph Modjeski, the consulting engineer at the head of the
work (he is, by the way, a son of Madame Modjeska), was chief
draughtsman when the earlier structure was designed; W.E. Angier,
assistant chief engineer in the present work, was a field engineer on
the first bridge, and it is interesting to know that, in constructing
the approach to the old bridge he unearthed a Spanish halbert which, it
is thought, may date from the time of De Soto. These bridge engineers
and bridgebuilders move in a large orbit. Their last job may have been
in Mexico, in the far West, or in India; their next may be in France.
Many of the men here, worked on the Blackwell's Island bridge, on the
Quebec bridge (which fell), on the Thebes bridge over the Mississippi,
twenty miles above Cairo, on the Vancouver and Portland bridges over the
Columbia and Willamette rivers, and on the great Oregon Trunk Railway
bridges.
After standing for a time on the old bridge watching work on the new,
and shuddering, often enough, at the squirrel-like way in which the men
scampered about up there, so far above the water, we walked in and moved
out again upon the partially completed floor of the new bridge. Here it
was necessary to walk on railroad ties, with gaps, six or eight inches
wide, between them. Even had one tried, one could hardly have managed to
squeeze one's body through these chinks; to fall through was impossible;
nevertheless it gave me an uncomfortable feeling in the region of the
stomach to walk out there, seeing the river all the time between the
interstices. When we had progressed for some distance we came to a gap
where, for perhaps a yard, there were no ties--just open space, with the
muddy water shining cold and cruel below. The opening was only about as
wide as the hall of a small New York flat, and heaven knows that to step
across such a hall is easy enough. But this was not so easy. When we
came to the gap I stopped. Mr. Case, the young engineer, who loved all
bridges with a sort of holy passion, and loved this bridge in
particular, was talking as we went along. I liked to hear him talk. He
had been telling us how a thing that is to _be_ strong ought to _look_
strong, too, and from that had got somehow to the topic of expansion and
contraction in bridges, with variations of temperature. "It isn't only
the steel bridges that do it," he said. "Stone arch bridges do it, too.
The crown of the arch rises and falls. The Greeks and Romans and
Egyptians knew that expansion and contraction occurred. They--"
While talking he had gone across the gap, stepping lightly upon a
stringpiece probably a foot wide, and proceeding over the ties. Now,
however, he ceased speaking and looked back, for I was no longer beside
him. At the gap I had stopped. I intended to step across, but I did not
propose to do so without giving the matter the attention it seemed to me
to deserve.
Mr. Case did not laugh at me. He came back and stood on the string-piece
where it crossed the opening, telling me to put my hand on his shoulder.
But I did not want to do that. I wanted to cross alone--when I got
ready. It took me perhaps two minutes to get ready. Then I stepped over.
It was, of course, absurdly easy. I had known it would be. But as we
walked along I kept thinking to myself: "I shall have to cross that
beastly place again when we come back," and I marveled the more at the
amazing steadiness of eye and mind and nerve that enables some men to go
continually prancing about over emptiness infinitely more engulfing than
that which had troubled and was troubling me.
Returning I stepped across without physical hesitation. But after I had
crossed I continued to hate that gap. I hated it as I drove back to the
hotel, that afternoon, as I ate dinner that night, as I went to bed, and
in my dreams I continued to cross it, and to see the river waiting for
me, seeming to look up and leer and beckon. I woke up hating the gap in
the bridge as much as ever; I hated it down into the State of
Mississippi, and over into Georgia; and wherever I have gone since, I
have continued to hate it. Of course there isn't any gap there now. It
was covered long ago. Yet for me it still exists, like some obnoxious
person who, though actually dead, lives on in the minds of those who
knew him.
FARTHEST SOUTH