THE COLOR OF A GREAT CITY
BOOKS BY
THEODORE DREISER
SISTER CARRIE
JENNIE GERHARDT
THE FINANCIER
THE TITAN
THE GENIUS
A TRAVELER AT FORTY
A HOOSIER HOLIDAY
PLAYS OF THE NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL
THE HAND OF THE POTTER
FREE AND OTHER STORIES
TWELVE MEN
HEY RUB-A-DUB-DUB
A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF
THE COLOR OF A GREAT CITY
[Illustration: The City of My Dreams]
THE COLOR OF
A GREAT CITY
THEODORE DREISER
_Illustrations by_
C. B. FALLS
[Illustration]
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1923, by_
BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
First Printing, December, 1923
Second Printing, May, 1924
FOREWORD
My only excuse for offering these very brief pictures of the City of
New York as it was between 1900 and 1914 or ’15, or thereabout, is
that they are of the very substance of the city I knew in my early
adventurings in it. Also, and more particularly, they represent in
part, at least, certain phases which at that time most arrested and
appealed to me, and which now are fast vanishing or are no more. I
refer more particularly to such studies as _The Bread-line_, _The
Push-cart Man_, _The Toilers of the Tenements_, _Christmas in the
Tenements_, _Whence the Song_, and _The Love Affairs of Little Italy_.
For, to begin with, the city, as I see it, was more varied and
arresting and, after its fashion, poetic and even idealistic then than
it is now. It offered, if I may venture the opinion, greater social
and financial contrasts than it does now: the splendor of the purely
social Fifth Avenue of the last decade of the last century and the
first decade of this, for instance, as opposed to the purely commercial
area that now bears that name; the sparklingly personality-dotted Wall
Street of 1890–1910 as contrasted with the commonplace and almost bread
and butter world that it is to-day. (There were argonauts then.) The
astounding areas of poverty and of beggary even,--I refer to the east
side and the Bowery of that period--unrelieved as they were by civic
betterment and social service ventures of all kinds, as contrasted with
the beschooled and beserviced east side of to-day. Who recalls Steve
Brodies, McGurks, Doyers Street and “Chuck” Connors?
The city is larger. It has, if you will, more amazing architectural
features. But has it as vivid and moving social contrasts,--as hectic
and poignant and disturbing mental and social aspirations as it had
then? I cannot see that it has. Rather, as it seems to me, it is duller
because less differentiated. There are millions and millions but what
do they do? Tramp aimlessly, for the most part, here and there in
shoals, to see a ball game, a football game, a parade, a prize-fight,
a civic betterment or automobile exhibition or to dance or dine in a
hall that holds a thousand. But of that old zest that seemed to find
something secret and thrilling in a thousand nooks and corners of the
old city, its Bowery, its waterfront, its rialto, its outlying resorts,
not a trace. One cannot even persuade the younger generation, that
never even knew the old city, to admit that they feel a tang of living
equivalent to what they imagined once was. The truth is that it is not
here. It has vanished--along with the generation that felt it.
The pictures that I offer here, however, are not, I am compelled
to admit, of that more distinguished and vibrant crust, which my
introduction so far would imply. Indeed they are the very antithesis,
I think, of all that glitter and glister that made the social life
of that day so superior. Its shadow, if you will, its reverse face.
For being very much alone at the time, and having of necessity, as
the situation stood, ample hours in which to wander here and there,
without, however, sufficient financial means to divert myself in any
other way, I was given for the most part to rambling in what to me
were the strangest and most peculiar and most interesting areas I
could find as contrasted with those of great wealth and to speculating
at length upon the phases and the forces of life I then found so
lavishly spread before me. The splendor of the, to me, new dynamic,
new-world metropolis! Its romance, its enthusiasm, its illusions, its
difficulties! The immense crowds everywhere--upon Manhattan Island,
at least. The beautiful rivers and the bay with its world of shipping
that washed its shores. Indeed, I was never weary of walking and
contemplating the great streets, not only Fifth Avenue and Broadway,
but the meaner ones also, such as the Bowery, Third Avenue, Second
Avenue, Elizabeth Street in the lower Italian section and East
Broadway. And at that time even (1894) that very different and most
radically foreign plexus, known as the East Side, already stretched
from Chatham Square and even farther south--Brooklyn Bridge--north to
Fourteenth Street. For want of bridges and subways the city was not, as
yet, so far-flung but for that reason more concentrated and almost as
congested.
Yet before I was fifteen years in the city, all of the additional
bridges, other than Brooklyn Bridge which was here when I came and
which so completely served to change New York from the thing it was
then to what it is now, were already in place--Manhattan, Williamsburg,
Queens Borough Bridges. And the subways had been built, at least in
part. But before then, if anything, the great island, as I have said,
was even more compact of varied and foreign groups, and one had only
to wander casually and not at any great length to come upon the Irish
in the lower East and West Sides; the Syrians in Washington Street--a
great mass of them; the Greeks around 26th, 27th and 28th Streets on
the West Side; the Italians around Mulberry Bend; the Bohemians in East
67th Street, and the Sicilians in East 116th Street and thereabouts.
The Jews were still chiefly on the East Side.
Being fascinated by these varying nationalities, and their
neighborhoods, I was given for the first year or two of my stay here
to wandering among them, as well as along and through the various
parks, the waterfronts and the Bowery, and thinking, thinking, thinking
on this welter of life and the difficulties and the strangeness of
it. The veritable tides of people that were forever moving here--so
different to the Middle-West cities I had known. And the odd, or at
least different, devices and trades by which they made their way--the
small shops, trades, tricks even. For one thing, I was often given to
wondering how so many people could manage to subsist in New York by
grinding hand organs alone, or shining shoes or selling newspapers or
peanuts, or fruits or vegetables from a small stand or cart.
And the veritable shoals and worlds, even, of beggars and bums and
idlers and crooks in the Bowery and elsewhere. Indeed I was more or
less dumbfounded by the numerical force of these and the far cry it
was from them to the mansions in Fifth Avenue, the great shops in
Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, the world famous banking houses
and personalities in Wall Street, the comfortable cliff-dwellers who
occupied the hotels and apartment houses of the upper West Side and
along Broadway. For being young and inexperienced and penniless, these
economic differences had more significance for me then than they have
since been able to maintain. Yet always and primarily fascinated by
the problem of life itself, the riddle of its origin, the difficulties
seemingly attending its maintenance everywhere, such a polyglot city
as this was, was not only an economic problem, but a strange and
mysterious picture, and I was never weary of spying out how the other
fellow lived and how he made his way. And yet how many years it was,
really, after I arrived here, quite all of ten, before it ever occurred
to me that apart from the novel or short story, these particular scenes
and my own cogitations in connection might possess merit as pictures.
And so it was that not before 1904--ten years later, really--that I
was so much as troubled to sketch a single impression of all that I
had seen and then only at the request of a Sunday editor of a New York
newspaper who was short of “small local stuff” to fill in between
his more lurid features. And even at that, not more than seven or
eight of all that are here assembled were at that time even roughly
sketched,--_The Bowery Mission_, _The Waterfront_, _The Cradle of
Tears_, _The Track Walker_, _The Realization of an Ideal_, _The Log of
a Harbor Pilot_. Later, however, in 1908 and ’09, finding space in a
magazine of my own--_The Bohemian_--as well as one conducted by Senator
Watson of Georgia, and bethinking me of all I had seen and how truly
wonderful and colorful it really was, I began to try to do more of
them, and at that time wrote at least seven or eight more--_The Flight
of Pigeons_, _Six O’clock_, _The Wonder of Water_, _The Men in the
Storm_, and _The Men in the Dark_. The exact titles of all, apart from
these, I have forgotten.
Still later, after the opening of the World War, and because I was
noting how swiftly and steadily the city was changing and old landmarks
and conditions were being done away with, I thought it worth while to
bring together, not only all the scenes I had previously published or
sketched, but to add some others which from time to time I had begun
but never finished. Among these at that time were _The Fire_, _Hell’s
Kitchen_, _A Wayplace of the Fallen_, _The Man on the Bench_. And
then, several years ago, having in the meanwhile once more laid aside
the material to the advantage of other matters, I decided that it was
still worth while. And getting them all out and casting aside those I
no longer cared for, and rewriting others of which I approved, together
with new pictures of old things I had seen, i.e., _Bums_, _The Michael
J. Powers Association_, _A Vanished Summer Resort_, _The Push-cart
Man_, _The Sandwich Man_, _Characters_, _The Men in the Snow_, _The
City Awakes_--I finally evolved the present volume. But throughout all
these latest additions I sought only to recapture the flavor and the
color of that older day--nothing more. If they are anything, they are
mere representations of the moods that governed me at the time that I
had observed this material at first hand--not as I know the city to be
now.
In certain of these pictures, as will be seen, reference is made to
wages, hours and working and living conditions not now holding, or
at least not to the same severe degree. This is especially true of
such presentations as _The Men in the Dark_, _The Men in the Storm_,
_The Men in the Snow_, _Six O’clock_, _The Bread-line_, (long since
abolished), _The Toilers of the Tenements_, and _Christmas in the
Tenements_. Yet since they were decidedly true of that particular
period, I prefer to leave them as originally written. They bear, I
believe, the stamp of their hour.
THEODORE DREISER.
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD ix
THE CITY OF MY DREAMS 1
THE CITY AWAKES 5
THE WATERFRONT 9
THE LOG OF A HARBOR PILOT 14
BUMS 34
THE MICHAEL J. POWERS ASSOCIATION 44
THE FIRE 56
THE CAR YARD 68
THE FLIGHT OF PIGEONS 74
ON BEING POOR 77
SIX O’CLOCK 81
THE TOILERS OF THE TENEMENTS 85
THE END OF A VACATION 100
THE TRACK WALKER 104
THE REALIZATION OF AN IDEAL 108
THE PUSHCART MAN 112
A VANISHED SEASIDE RESORT 119
THE BREAD-LINE 129
OUR RED SLAYER 133
WHENCE THE SONG 138
CHARACTERS 156
THE BEAUTY OF LIFE 170
A WAYPLACE OF THE FALLEN 173
HELL’S KITCHEN 184
A CERTAIN OIL REFINERY 200
THE BOWERY MISSION 207
THE WONDER OF THE WATER 216
THE MAN ON THE BENCH 219
THE MEN IN THE DARK 224
THE MEN IN THE STORM 230
THE MEN IN THE SNOW 233
THE FRESHNESS OF THE UNIVERSE 238
THE CRADLE OF TEARS 241
WHEN THE SAILS ARE FURLED 244
THE SANDWICH MAN 260
THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF LITTLE ITALY 267
CHRISTMAS IN THE TENEMENTS 275
THE RIVERS OF THE NAMELESS DEAD 284
ILLUSTRATIONS
The City of My Dreams _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
The City Awakes 6
The Waterfront 12
The Michael J. Powers Association 48
The Fire 58
The Car Yard 70
The Flight of Pigeons 74
Being Poor 78
Six O’clock 82
Toilers of the Tenements 88
The Close of Summer 100
The Realization of an Ideal 108
The Pushcart Man 114
Whence the Song 142
A Character 160
The Beauty of Life 170
A Wayplace of the Fallen 174
Hell’s Kitchen 186
An Oil Refinery 204
The Bowery Mission 210
The Wonder of the Water 216
The Man on the Bench 220
The Men in the Dark 226
The Men in the Storm 230
The Men in the Snow 234
The Freshness of the Universe 238
The Cradle of Tears 241
Sailors’ Snug Harbor 250
The Sandwich Man 264
A Love Affair in Little Italy 270
Christmas in the Tenements 278
THE COLOR OF A GREAT CITY
THE CITY OF MY DREAMS
It was silent, the city of my dreams, marble and serene, due perhaps
to the fact that in reality I knew nothing of crowds, poverty, the
winds and storms of the inadequate that blow like dust along the paths
of life. It was an amazing city, so far-flung, so beautiful, so dead.
There were tracks of iron stalking through the air, and streets that
were as cañons, and stairways that mounted in vast flights to noble
plazas, and steps that led down into deep places where were, strangely
enough, underworld silences. And there were parks and flowers and
rivers. And then, after twenty years, here it stood, as amazing almost
as my dream, save that in the waking the flush of life was over it. It
possessed the tang of contests and dreams and enthusiasms and delights
and terrors and despairs. Through its ways and cañons and open spaces
and underground passages were running, seething, sparkling, darkling, a
mass of beings such as my dream-city never knew.
The thing that interested me then as now about New York--as indeed
about any great city, but more definitely New York because it was
and is so preponderantly large--was the sharp, and at the same time
immense, contrast it showed between the dull and the shrewd, the
strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant.
This, perhaps, was more by reason of numbers and opportunity than
anything else, for of course humanity is much the same everywhere. But
the number from which to choose was so great here that the strong, or
those who ultimately dominated, were so very strong, and the weak so
very, very weak--and so very, very many.
I once knew a poor, half-demented, and very much shriveled little
seamstress who occupied a tiny hall-bedroom in a side-street
rooming-house, cooked her meals on a small alcohol stove set on a
bureau, and who had about space enough outside of this to take three
good steps either way.
“I would rather live in my hall-bedroom in New York than in any
fifteen-room house in the country that I ever saw,” she commented
once, and her poor little colorless eyes held more of sparkle and snap
in them than I ever saw there, before or after. She was wont to add
to her sewing income by reading fortunes in cards and tea-leaves and
coffee-grounds, telling of love and prosperity to scores as lowly as
herself, who would never see either. The color and noise and splendor
of the city as a spectacle was sufficient to pay her for all her ills.
And have I not felt the glamour of it myself? And do I not still?
Broadway, at Forty-second Street, on those selfsame spring evenings
when the city is crowded with an idle, sightseeing cloud of Westerners;
when the doors of all shops are open, the windows of nearly all
restaurants wide to the gaze of the idlest passer-by. Here is the
great city, and it is lush and dreamy. A May or June moon will be
hanging like a burnished silver disc between the high walls aloft. A
hundred, a thousand electric signs will blink and wink. And the floods
of citizens and visitors in summer clothes and with gay hats; the
street cars jouncing their endless carloads on indifferent errands;
the taxis and private cars fluttering about like jeweled flies. The
very gasoline contributes a distinct perfume. Life bubbles, sparkles;
chatters gay, incoherent stuff. Such is Broadway.
And then Fifth Avenue, that singing, crystal street, on a shopping
afternoon, winter, summer, spring or fall. What tells you as sharply of
spring when, its windows crowded with delicate effronteries of silks
and gay nothings of all description, it greets you in January, February
and March? And how as early as November again, it sings of Palm Beach
and Newport and the lesser or greater joys of the tropics and the
warmer seas. And in September, how the haughty display of furs and
rugs, in this same avenue, and costumes de luxe for ball and dinner,
cry out of snows and blizzards, when you are scarcely ten days back
from mountain or seaside. One might think, from the picture presented
and the residences which line the upper section, that all the world was
inordinately prosperous and exclusive and happy. And yet, if you but
knew the tawdry underbrush of society, the tangle and mat of futile
growth between the tall trees of success, the shabby chambers crowded
with aspirants and climbers, the immense mansions barren of a single
social affair, perfect and silent!
I often think of the vast mass of underlings, boys and girls, who,
with nothing but their youth and their ambitions to commend them, are
daily and hourly setting their faces New Yorkward, reconnoitering the
city for what it may hold in the shape of wealth or fame, or, if not
that, position and comfort in the future; and what, if anything, they
will reap. Ah, their young eyes drinking in its promise! And then,
again, I think of all the powerful or semi-powerful men and women
throughout the world, toiling at one task or another--a store, a mine,
a bank, a profession--somewhere outside of New York, whose one ambition
is to reach the place where their wealth will permit them to enter and
remain in New York, dominant above the mass, luxuriating in what they
consider luxury.
The illusion of it, the hypnosis deep and moving that it is! How the
strong and the weak, the wise and the fools, the greedy of heart and of
eye, seek the nepenthe, the Lethe, of its something hugeness. I always
marvel at those who are willing, seemingly, to pay any price--_the_
price, whatever it may be--for one sip of this poison cup. What a
stinging, quivering zest they display. How beauty is willing to sell
its bloom, virtue its last rag, strength an almost usurious portion of
that which it controls, youth its very best years, its hope or dream
of fame, fame and power their dignity and presence, age its weary
hours, to secure but a minor part of all this, a taste of its vibrating
presence and the picture that it makes. Can you not hear them almost,
singing its praises?
THE CITY AWAKES
Have you ever arisen at dawn or earlier in New York and watched the
outpouring in the meaner side-streets or avenues? It is a wondrous
thing. It seems to have so little to do with the later, showier,
brisker life of the day, and yet it has so very much. It is in the
main so drab or shabby-smart at best, poor copies of what you see done
more efficiently later in the day. Typewriter girls in almost stage or
society costumes entering shabby offices; boys and men made up to look
like actors and millionaires turning into the humblest institutions,
where they are clerks or managers. These might be called the machinery
of the city, after the elevators and street cars and wagons are
excluded, the implements by which things are made to go.
Take your place on Williamsburg Bridge some morning, for instance, at
say three or four o’clock, and watch the long, the quite unbroken line
of Jews trundling pushcarts eastward to the great Wallabout Market over
the bridge. A procession out of Assyria or Egypt or Chaldea, you might
suppose, Biblical in quality; or, better yet, a huge chorus in some
operatic dawn scene laid in Paris or Petrograd or here. A vast, silent
mass it is, marching to the music of necessity. They are so grimy, so
mechanistic, so elemental in their movements and needs. And later on
you will find them seated or standing, with their little charcoal
buckets or braziers to warm their hands and feet, in those gusty, icy
streets of the East Side in winter, or coatless and almost shirtless
in hot weather, open-mouthed for want of air. And they are New York,
too--Bucharest and Lemberg and Odessa come to the Bowery, and adding
rich, dark, colorful threads to the rug or tapestry which is New York.
Since these are but a portion, think of those other masses that come
from the surrounding territory, north, south, east and west. The
ferries--have you ever observed them in the morning? Or the bridges,
railway terminals, and every elevated and subway exit?
Already at six and six-thirty in the morning they have begun to
trickle small streams of human beings Manhattan or cityward, and by
seven and seven-fifteen these streams have become sizable affairs.
By seven-thirty and eight they have changed into heavy, turbulent
rivers, and by eight-fifteen and eight-thirty and nine they are raging
torrents, no less. They overflow all the streets and avenues and every
available means of conveyance. They are pouring into all available
doorways, shops, factories, office-buildings--those huge affairs
towering so significantly above them. Here they stay all day long,
causing those great hives and their adjacent streets to flush with a
softness of color not indigenous to them, and then at night, between
five and six, they are going again, pouring forth over the bridges
and through the subways and across the ferries and out on the trains,
until the last drop of them appears to have been exuded, and they
are pocketed in some outlying side-street or village or metropolitan
hall-room--and the great, turbulent night of the city is on once more.
[Illustration: The City Awakes]
And yet they continue to stream cityward,--this cityward. From all
parts of the world they are pouring into New York: Greeks from Athens
and the realms of Sparta and Macedonia, living six, seven, eight, nine,
ten, eleven, twelve, in one room, sleeping on the floors and dressing
and eating and entertaining themselves God knows how; Jews from Russia,
Poland, Hungary, the Balkans, crowding the East Side and the inlying
sections of Brooklyn, and huddling together in thick, gummy streets,
singing in street crowds around ballad-mongers of the woes of their
native land, seeking with a kind of divine, poetic flare a modicum of
that material comfort which their natures so greatly crave, which their
previous condition for at least fifteen hundred years has scarcely
warranted; Italians from Sicily and the warmer vales of the South,
crowding into great sections of their own, all hungry for a taste of
New York; Germans, Hungarians, French, Polish, Swedish, Armenians, all
with sections of their own and all alive to the joys of the city, and
how eager to live--great gold and scarlet streets throbbing with the
thoughts of them!
And last but not least, the illusioned American from the Middle West
and the South and the Northwest and the Far West, crowding in and
eyeing it all so eagerly, so yearningly, like the others. Ah, the
little, shabby, blue-light restaurants! The boarding houses in silent
streets! The moral, hungry “homes”--how full they are of them and how
hopeless! How the city sings and sings for them, and in spite of them,
flaunting ever afresh its lures and beauties--a city as wonderful and
fateful and ironic as life itself.
THE WATERFRONT
Were I asked to choose a subject which would most gratify my own fancy
I believe I would choose the docks and piers of New York. Nowhere may
you find a more pleasingly encouraging picture-life going on at a
leisurely gait, but going, nor one withal set in a lovelier framework.
And, personally, I have always foolishly imagined that the laborers
and men of affairs connected with them must be the happier for that
connection. It is more than probable that that is not true, but what
can be more interesting than long, heavily-laden piers jutting out into
the ever-flowing waters of a river? And those tall masts adjoining, how
they rock and swing! Whistler had a fancy for scenes like these; they
appealed to his sense of line and background and romance. You can look
at his etchings of collections of boats along the Thames at London and
see how keenly he must have felt the beauty of what he saw. Networks
of ropes and spars; stout, stodgy figures of half-idle laborers;
delicious, comforting, homey suggestions of houses and spires behind;
and then the water.
How the water sips and gurgles about these stanchions and spiles and
hulls! You stand on the shore or on the hard-cobbled streets of the
waterfront, crowded with trucks and cars, and you realize that the
too, too solid substance of which they are composed is to be here for
years. But this water at your feet, this dark, silent current sipping
about the boats and rocking them, the big boats and the little boats,
is running away. Here comes a chip, there goes a wisp of straw. A
tomato box comes leisurely bobbing upon the surface of the stream,
and now a tug heaves into view, puffing and blowing, and then a great
“liner” being towed to her dock. And then these nearer boats fastened
here--how they rest and swing in the summer sunshine! No rush, no
hurry. Only slow movement. Yet all are surely and gradually slipping
away. In an hour your ship will be a mile or two farther down stream.
In a day or two or three your liner will be once more upon the bosom of
the broad Atlantic or, later even, the Pacific. The tug you saw towing
it will be pulling at something else, or you will find it shoving its
queer stubby nose into some quaint angle of the waterside, hardly
earning its skipper’s salt. Is it not a delicious, lovely, romantic
picture? And yet with the tang of change and decay in it too, the
gradual passing of all things--yourself--myself--all.
As for the vast piers on the shores of the Hudson, the East River, the
Jersey side and Brooklyn and Staten Island, where the liners house
themselves, I cannot fancy anything more colorful. They come from all
ports of the world, these big ships. They bring tremendous cargoes,
not only of people but of goods, and they carry large forces of men,
to say nothing of those who assist them to load and unload. If you
watch any of the waterfronts to and from which they make their entry
and departure you will find that you can easily tell when they are
loading and unloading. The broad, expansive street-fronts before these
piers are crowded with idling men waiting for the opportunity to work,
the call of duty or of necessity. And it is an interesting crowd of men
always, this, imposingly large on occasion. Individually these men are
crude but appealing, the kind of man that is usually and truly dubbed
a workingman. They have in the main, rough, quaint, ambling figures,
and rougher, ruder hands and faces. Some of them are black from having
shoveled in the holds of vessels or passed coal (coal-passers is their
official title), and some are dusky and strawy from having juggled
boxes and bales, but they are men who with a small capacity for mental
analysis are taking things exactly as they find them. They are not even
possessed of a trade, unless you would call the art of piling boxes
and bales under the direction of a foreman a trade. Apparently they
have no sense of the sociologic or economic arrangement of life, no
comprehension of the position which they occupy in the affairs of the
world. They know they are laborers and as such subject to every whim
and fancy of their masters. They stand or sit like sheep in droves
awaiting the call of opportunity. You see them in sun or rain, on
hot days and cold ones, waiting here. Sometimes they jest, sometimes
they talk, sometimes they sit and wait. But the water with which they
are so intimately connected, from which they draw their subsistence,
flows on. I have seen a vain, self-conscious foreman come out from one
of these great pier buildings and with a Cæsar-like wave of his hand
beckon to this man and that. At his sign a dozen, a score of men would
rise and look inquiringly in his direction, dumb and patient like
cattle. And then he would pick this one and that, wavering subtly over
his choice, pushing aside this one, who was not quite strong enough,
perhaps, or agile enough, laying a hand favoringly on that, and then
turning eventually and leaving the remaining members of the group dumb
but a little disappointed. Invariably they seemed to me to be a bit
bereaved and neglected, sorry that they could not help themselves, but
still willing to wait. I have sometimes thought that cattle are better
provided for, or at least as well.
But from an artistic and natural point of view the scene has always
fascinated me. Is it morning? The sun sparkles on the waters, the wind
blows free, gulls wheel and turn and squeal, white flecks above the
water, swarms of vehicles gather with their loads, life seems to move
at a smart clip. Is it noon? A large group of men is to be seen idling
in the sun, blue-jacketed, swarthy-faced, colorful against the dark
background of the piers. Is it night? The lanterns swing and rock.
There is darkness overhead and the stars.
[Illustration: The Waterfront]
I sometimes think no human being ever lived who caught more
significantly, more sweetly, the beauty of the waterfront than the
great Englishman, Turner. When one looks at his canvases, rich in their
gold of sunshine, their blue of sky, their haze of moisture, one feels
all that the sea really presents. This man understood, as did Whistler,
only he translated his mood in regard to it all into richer colors,
those gorgeous golds, reds, pinks, greens, blues. And he had a greater
tenderness for atmosphere than did Whistler. In Whistler one misses
more than the bare facts, albeit deliciously, artistically, perfectly
presented. In Turner one finds the facts presented as by nature in her
balmiest mood, and idealized by the love and affection of the artist.
You have seen “The Fighting Téméraire,” of course. It is here in New
York harbor any sunny afternoon. The wind dies down, the sun pours in a
golden flood upon the east bank from the west, the tall elevator stacks
and towering chimneys of factories on the west shore give a beauty
of line which no artist could resist. Up the splashing bosom of the
river, trembling silver and gold in the evening light, comes a great
vessel. Her sides stand out blackly. Her masts and funnels, tinged
with an evening glow of gold, burn and shimmer. Against a magnificent,
a radiant sky, where red and gold clouds hang in broken patches, she
floats, exquisitely penciled and colored--“The Fighting Téméraire.” You
would know her. Only it is now the Hudson and not the Thames.
The skyline, the ship masts, the sun, the water, all these are alike.
The very ship is the same, apparently, and the sun drops down as it
did that other day when his picture was painted. The stars come out,
the masts rock, swinging their little lamps, the water runs sipping
and sucking at the docks and piers. The winds blow cool, and there is
silence until the morning. Then the waterfront assumes its quaint,
delicious, easy atmosphere once more. It is once more fresh and free.
So runs its tide, so runs its life, so runs our very world away.
THE LOG OF A HARBOR PILOT
An ocean pilot-boat lay off Tompkinsville of an early spring afternoon,
in the stillest water. The sun was bright, and only the lightest wind
was stirring. When we reached the end of the old cotton dock, an
illustrator and myself, commissioned by a then but now no more popular
magazine, there she was, a small, two-masted schooner of about fifty
tons burden, rocking gently upon the water. We accepted the services
of a hawking urchin, who had a canoe to rent, and who had followed us
down the main street in the hope of earning a half-dollar. He led the
way through a hole in a fence that enclosed the street at the water end
and down a long, stilted plank walk to a mess of craft and rigging,
where we found his little tub, and pushed out. In a few minutes we had
crossed the quiet stretch of water and were alongside.
[Illustration]
Like all pilot-boats, the _Hermann Oelrichs_ was built low in the
water, so that it was easy to jump aboard. Her sails were furled
and, from the quiet prevailing, one might have supposed that the
crew had gone into the village. No sound issued until we reached the
companionway. Then below we could see the cook scraping cold ashes
out of a fireless stove. He was cleaning the cabin and putting things
to rights before the pilots arrived. He accepted our intrusion with a
friendly glance.
“Captain Rierson told us to come aboard,” we said.
“All right, sir. Stow your things in any one of them bunks.”
We went about this while the ashes were taken out and tossed overboard.
When the cook returned it was with a bucket and brush, and he attacked
the oilcloth on the floor industriously.
“Cozy little cabin, this, eh?”
“Yes, she’s a comfortable little boat,” replied the cook. “These pilots
take things purty comfortable. She’s not as fast as some of the boats,
but she’s all right in rough weather.”
“Do you encounter much rough weather?”
“Well, now and again,” answered the cook, with the vaguest suggestion
of a twinkle in his eye. “It’s purty rough sometimes in winter.”
“How long do you stay out?”
“Sometimes three, sometimes five days, sometimes we get rid of all
seven pilots the first day--there’s no telling. It’s all ’cording to
how the steamers come in.”
“So we may be out a week?”
“About that. Maybe ten days.”
We went on deck. It was warm and bright. Some sailors from the
fore-hatch were scrubbing down the deck, which dried white and warm as
fast as they swabbed off the water. Wide-winged gulls were circling
high and low among the ships of the harbor. On Staten Island many a
little curl of smoke rose from the chimneys of white cottages.
That evening the crew of five men kept quietly to their quarters and
slept. The moon shone clear until ten, when the barometer suddenly fell
and clouds came out of the east. By cock-crow it was raining, and by
morning it was drizzling and cold.
The pilots appeared one after another. They came out to the edge of
the cotton wharf through the mist and rain, and waved a handkerchief
as a signal that a boat should be sent ashore for them. One or two,
failing to attract the immediate attention of the crew, resorted to the
expedient of calling out: “Schooner, Ahoy!” in voices which partook of
some of the stoutness of the sea.
“Come ashore, will you?” they shouted, when a head appeared above deck.
No sooner were they recognized than the yawl was launched and sent
ashore. They came aboard and descended quickly out of the rain into
the only room (or cabin) at the foot of the companionway. This was at
once their sitting-room, dining-room, bedroom, and every other chamber
for the voyage. Here they stowed their satchels and papers in lockers
beneath their individual sleeping berths. Each one sought out a stout
canvas clothes bag, which all pilots use in lieu of a trunk, and began
to unpack his ship’s clothes. All took off their land apparel and
dressed themselves in ancient seat-patched and knee-worn garments,
which were far more comfortable than graceful, and every one produced
the sailor’s essential, a pipe and tobacco.
Dreary as was the day overhead, the atmosphere of the cabin changed
with their arrival. Not only was it soon thick with the fumes of many
pipes, but it was bright with genial temper. Not one of the company of
seven pilots seemed moody.
“Whose watch is it?” asked one.
“Rierson’s, I think,” was the answer.
“He ain’t here yet.”
“Here he comes now.”
At this a hale Norwegian, clean and hard as a pine knot, came down the
companionway.
“My turn to-day, eh? Are we all here?”
“Ay!” cried one.
“Then we might as well go, hey?”
“Ay! Ay!” came the chorus.
“Steward!” he called. “Tell the men to hoist sail!”
“Ay! Ay! sir!” answered the steward.
Then were rattlings and clatterings overhead. While the little company
in the cabin were chatting, the work on deck was resulting in a gradual
change, and when, after a half-hour, Rierson put his head out into
the wind and rain above the companionway, the cotton docks were far
in the rear, all but lost in the mist and drizzle. All sails were up
and a stiff breeze was driving the little craft through the Narrows.
McLaughlin, the boatman and master of the crew, under Rierson, was at
the wheel. Already we were being rocked and tossed like a child in a
cradle.
“Who controls the vessel,” I asked of him, “while the pilots are on
board?”
“The pilots themselves.”
“Not all of them?”
“No, not all at one time. The pilot who has the watch has full control
for his hours, then the next pilot after him, and so on. No pilot is
interfered with during his service.”
“And where do we head now?”
“For Sandy Hook and the sea east of that. We are going to meet inbound
European steamers.”
The man at the wheel, McLaughlin, was a clean athletic young chap, with
a straight, full nose and a clear, steady eye. In his yellow raincoat,
rubber boots and “sou’wester” he looked to be your true sea-faring man.
With the little craft plunging ahead in a storm of wind and rain and
over ever-increasing billows, he gazed out steadily and whistled an
airy tune.
“You seem to like it,” I remarked.
“Yes,” he answered. “It’s not a bad life. Rather cold in winter, but
summer makes up for it. Then we’re in port every fifth or sixth day on
an average. Sometimes we get a night off.”
“The pilots have it better than that?”
“Oh, yes; they get back quicker. The man who has the first watch may
get back to-day, if we meet a steamer. They might all get back if we
meet enough steamers.”
“You put a man aboard each one?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know when a steamer wants a pilot?”
“Well, we are in the track of incoming steamers. There is no other
pilot-boat sailing back and forth on this particular track at this
time. If a steamer comes along she may show a signal for a pilot or she
may turn a little in our direction. Either way, we know she wants one.
Then we lay to and wait until she comes up. You’ll see, though. One is
likely to come along at any time now.”
The interior of the little craft presented a peculiar contrast to
storm and sea without. In the fore compartment stood the cook at his
stove preparing the midday meal. Sailors, when no orders were called
from above, lay in their bunks, which curved toward the prow. The pots
and pans of the stove moved restlessly about with the swell. The cook
whistled, timbers creaked, the salt spray swished above the hatch, and
mingled odors of meats and vegetables combined and thickened the air.
In the after half of the boat were the pilots, making the best of idle
time. No steamer was sighted, and so they lounged and smoked. Two
or three told of difficulties on past voyages. Two of the stoutest
and jolliest were met in permanent conflict over a game of pinochle.
One read, the others took down pillows from the bunks, and spreading
them out on the wide seat that lined two sides of the room, snored
profoundly. Nearly all took turns, before or after games, or naps, at
smoking. Sometimes all smoked. It was observable that no “listener”
was necessary for conversation. Some talked loudly, without a single
person heeding. At times all talked at once in those large imperious
voices which seem common to the sea. The two old pilots at cards never
halted. Storms might come and storms might go; they paused only to
renew their pipes.
At the wheel, in tarpaulin and sou’wester, McLaughlin kept watch. Sea
spray kept his cheeks dripping. His coat was glassy with water. Another
pilot put his head above deck.
“How are we heading?”
“East by no’.”
“See anything?”
“A steamer, outbound.”
“Which one?”
“The _Tauric_.”
“Wish she was coming in!” concluded the inquirer, as he went below.
We kept before the wind in this driving way. All the morning and all
the afternoon the rain fell. The cook served a wholesome meal of
meats and vegetables, and afterwards all pipes were set smoking more
industriously than ever. The two old pilots renewed their cards. Every
one turned to trifling diversions, with the feeling that he must get
comfort out of them. It was a little drowsy, a little uncomfortable,
a little apt to make one long for shore. In the midst of the lull the
voice of the man at the wheel sounded at the companionway.
“Steamer on the port bow! Pilot-boat Number Nine! She’s hailing us.”
“Well, what does she want?”
“Can’t make out yet.”
One and all hastened on deck. On our left, in the fog and rain, tossed
a little steamer which was recognized as the steam pilot-boat stationed
at Sandy Hook. She was starboarding to come nearer and several of her
pilots and crew were at her rail hailing us. As she approached, keener
ears made out that she wanted to put two men aboard us.
“We don’t want any more men aboard here,” said one. “We’ve got seven
now.”
“No!” said several in chorus. “Tell ’em we can’t take ’em.”
“We can’t take any more,” shouted the helmsman, in long-drawn sounds.
“We’ve got seven aboard now.”
“Orders to put two men aboard ye,” came back over the tumbling waters.
“We’ve a sick man.”
“Don’t let ’em put any more men aboard here. Where they goin’ to
sleep?” argued another. “One man’s got to bunk it as it is, unless we
lose one pretty soon.”
“How you goin’ to help it? They’re puttin’ their men out.”
“Head away! Head away! They can’t come aboard if you head away!”
“Oh, well; it’s too late now.”
It was really too late, for the steamer had already cast a yawl and
the two men, together with the crew, were in it and heading over the
churning water. All watched them as they came alongside and clambered
on.
They were Jersey pilots who had been displaced on the other boat
because one of their number had been taken sick and more room was
needed to make him comfortable. He was thought to be dying, and must be
taken back to New York at once, and his condition formed the topic of
conversation for the rest of the day.
Meanwhile our schooner headed outward, with nothing to reward her
search. At five o’clock there was some talk of not finding anything
before morning. Several advised running toward Princess Bay on Staten
Island and into stiller water, and as the minutes passed the feeling
crystallized. In a few minutes all were urging a tack toward port, and
soon it was done. Sails were shifted, the prow headed shoreward, and
gradually, as the track of the great vessels was abandoned, the waters
became less and less rough, then more and more quiet, until finally,
when we came within distant sight of Princess Bay and the Staten Island
shore, the little vessel only rocked from side to side; the pitching
and churning were over.
It was windy and cold on deck, however, and after the crew had dropped
anchor they remained below. There was nothing to do save idle the time.
The few oil lamps, the stove-fire and the clearing away of dishes after
supper, gave the cabin of the fore-and-aft a very home-like appearance.
Forward, most of the sailors stretched in their bunks to digest their
meal. There were a few magazines and papers on the table, a few decks
of cards and a set of checkers. It was interesting to note the genial
mood of the men. One might fancy oneself anywhere but at sea, save for
the rocking of the boat. It was more like a farmhouse kitchen. One
little old sailor, grizzled and lean, had only recently escaped from
a Hongkong trader, where he had been sadly abused. Another was a mere
boy, who belonged to Staten Island. He had been working in a canning
factory all winter, he said, but had decided to go to sea for a change.
It was not his first experience; this alternating was a regular thing
with him. The summer previous he had worked as cook’s scullion on one
of the other pilot-boats; this summer he was a sailor.
The Staten Islander had the watch on deck from ten to twelve that
night. By that time the rain had ceased and the lights on the distant
shore were visible, glimmering faintly, it seemed good to be on deck.
The wind blew slightly chill and the waters sipped and sucked at the
prow and sides. Coming above I chatted with the young sailor.
“Do you like sea life?” I asked him.
“There ain’t much to it.”
“Would you rather be on shore?”
“Well, if I didn’t have to work so hard.”
“You like one, then, as well as the other?”
“Well, on shore the hours are longer, but you get your evenings and
Sundays. Out here there ain’t any hour your own, but there’s plenty
days when there’s nothin’ doin’. Some days there ain’t no wind.
Sometimes we cruise right ahead without touchin’ the sails. Still, it’s
hard, ’cause you can’t see nobody.”
“What would you do if you were on shore?”
“Oh, go to the show.”
It developed that his heart yearned for “nights off.” The little,
bright-windowed main street in New Brighton was to his vision a kind of
earthly heaven. To be there of an evening when people were passing, to
loaf on the corner and see the bright-eyed girls go by, to be in the
village hubbub, was to him the epitome of living. The great, silent,
suggestive sea meant nothing to him.
After a while he went below and tumbled in and McLaughlin, the boatman,
took the turn. In the cabin most of the pilots had gone to bed. Yet the
two old salts were still at pinochle, browbeating each other, but in a
subdued tone. All pipes were out. Snores were numerous and long.
At dawn the pilot whose turn it was to guide the next steamer into
New York took the wheel. We sailed out into the east and the morning,
looking for prey. It came soon, in the shape of a steamer.
“Steamer!” called the pilot, and all the other pilots turned out and
came on deck. The sea to the eastward, whither they were looking, was
utterly bare of craft. Not a sail, not a wisp of smoke! Yet they saw
something and tacked ship so as to swing round and sail toward it. Not
even the telescope revealed it to my untrained eyes until five minutes
had gone by, when afar off a speck appeared above the waters. It came
on larger and larger, until it assumed the proportions of a toy.
With the first announcement of a steamer the pilot who was to take this
one in gave the wheel to the pilot who was to have the next one. He
seemed pleased at getting back to New York so soon. While the ship was
coming forward he went below and changed his clothes. In a few minutes
he was on deck, dressed in a neat business suit and white linen. His
old clothes had all been packed in a grain sack. He had a bundle of New
York papers and a light overcoat over his arm.
“How did you know that steamer wanted a pilot?” I asked him.
“I could tell by the way she was heading.”
“Do you think she saw you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you always tell when a steamer so far off wants a pilot?”
“Nearly always. If we can’t judge by her course we can see through the
telescope whether she has a signal for a pilot flying.”
“And when you go aboard her what will you do?”
“Go to the bridge and direct her course.”
“Do you take the wheel or do any work?”
“Not at all.”
“What about your breakfast?”
“I’ll take that with the officers of the deck.”
“Do you always carry a bundle of papers?”
“Sure. The officers and passengers like to get early news of New York.
Sometimes the papers are pretty old before we hand them out, but
they’re better than nothing.”
He studied the approaching steamer closely through the glass.
“The _Ems_,” he said laconically. “Get the yawl ready, boys.”
Four sailors went to the lee side and righted the boat there. The great
vessel was plowing toward us at a fine rate. Every minute she grew
larger, until at half a mile she seemed quite natural.
“Heave the yawl,” called the man at the wheel.
Over went the boat with a splash, and two men after and into it. They
held it close to the side of the schooner until the departing pilot
could jump in.
“Cast loose!” said the man at the wheel to the men holding the rope.
“Ay! Ay! sir!” they replied.
“Good-by, Billie,” called the pilots.
“So long, boys,” he cried back.
Our schooner was moving swiftly away before the wind. The man in the
yawl pulled out toward where the steamer must pass. Already her engines
had stopped, and the foam at her prow was dying away. One could see
that a pilot was expected. Quite a crowd of people, even at that early
hour, was gathered at the rail. A ladder of rope was hanging over the
side, almost at the water’s edge.