for you. I always like to consult my partner about these things, you
know. Can you wait until this afternoon?”
Of course the applicant can wait, and between whiles are conferences
and decisions. All things considered, it may be advisable to do it.
“We will get twenty-five out of him, any way. He’s got a fine tenor
voice. You never can tell what he might do.”
So a pleasant smile and the money may be waiting when he returns. Or,
he may be put off, with excuses and apologies. It all depends.
There are cases, however, where not even so much delay can be risked,
where a hearty “sure” _must_ be given. This is to that lord of the
stage whose fame as a singer is announced by every minstrel billboard
as “the renowned baritone, Mr. Calvin Johnson,” or some such. For him
the glad hand and the ready check, and he is to be petted, flattered,
taken to lunch, dinner, a box theater party--anything--everything,
really. And then, there is that less important one who has
over-measured his importance. For him the solemn countenance and the
suave excuse, at an hour when his need is greatest. Lastly, there is
the sub-strata applicant in tawdry, make-believe clothes, whose want
peeps out of every seam and pocket. His day has never been as yet,
or mayhap was, and is over. He has a pinched face, a livid hunger, a
forlorn appearance. Shall he be given anything? Never. He is not worth
it. He is a “dead one.” Is it not enough if the publisher looks after
those of whose ability he is absolutely sure. Certainly. Therefore this
one must slop the streets in old shoes and thin clothing, waiting. And
he may never obtain a dime from any publisher.
Out of such grim situations, however, occasionally springs a success.
These “down and out” individuals do not always understand why fate
should be against them, why they should be down, and are not willing to
cease trying.
“I’ll write a song yet, you bet,” is the dogged, grim decision. “I’ll
get up, you bet.”
Once in a while the threat is made good, some mood allowing. Strolling
along the by-streets, ignored and self-commiserating, the mood seizes
them. Words bubble up and a melody, some crude commentary on the
contrasts, the losses or the hopes of life, rhyming, swinging as
they come, straight from the heart. Now it is for pencil and paper,
quick. Any old scrap will do--the edge of a newspaper, the back of
an envelope, the edge of a cuff. Written so, the words are safe and
the melody can be whistled until some one will take it down. And
so, occasionally, is born--has been often--the great success, the
land-sweeping melody, selling by the hundreds of thousands and netting
the author a thousand a month for a year or more.
Then, for him, the glory of the one who is at last successful. Was he
commonplace, hungry, envious, wretchedly clothed before? Well, now,
see! And do not talk to him of other authors who once struck it, had
their little day and went down again, never to rise. He is not of
them--not like them. For him, now, the sunlight and the bright places.
No clothing too showy or too expensive, no jewelry too rare. Broadway
is the place for him, the fine cafés and rich hotel lobbies. What about
those other people who looked down on him once? Ha! they scorned him,
did they? They sneered, eh? Would not give him a cent, eh? Let them
come and look now! Let them stare in envy. Let them make way. He is a
great man at last and the whole world knows it. The whole country is
making acclaim over that which he has done.
For the time being, then, this little center of song-writing and
publishing is for him the all-inclusive of life’s importance. From
the street organs at every corner is being ground the _one_ melody,
so expressive of his personality, into the ears of all men. In the
vaudeville houses and cheaper concert halls men and women are singing
it nightly to uproarious applause. Parodies are made and catch-phrases
coined, all speaking of his work. Newsboys whistle and older men pipe
its peculiar notes. Out of open windows falls the distinguished melody,
accompanied by voices both new and strange. All men seem to recognize
that which he has done, and for the time being compliment his presence
and his personality.
Then the wane.
Of all the tragedies, this is perhaps the bitterest, because of the
long-drawn memory of the thing. Organs continue to play it, but the
sale ceases. Quarter after quarter, the royalties are less, until at
last a few dollars per month will measure them completely. Meanwhile
his publishers ask for other songs. One he writes, and then another,
and yet another, vainly endeavoring to duplicate that original note
which made for his splendid success the year before. But it will not
come. And, in the meanwhile, other song-writers displace him for the
time being in the public eye. His publishers have a new hit, but it
is not his. A new author is being bowed to and taken out to dinner.
But he is not that author. A new tile-crowned celebrity is strolling
up his favorite Broadway path. At last, after a dozen attempts and
failures, there is no hurry to publish his songs. If the period of
failure is too long extended he may even be neglected. More and more,
celebrities crowd in between him and that delightful period when he was
greatest. At last, chagrined by the contrast of things, he changes
his publishers, changes his haunts and, bitterest of all, his style
of living. Soon it is the old grind again, and then, if thoughtless
spending has been his failing, shabby clothing and want. You may see
the doubles of these in any publisher’s sanctum at any time, the
sarcastically referred-to _has been_.
Here, also, the disengaged ballad singer, “peerless tenor” of some
last year’s company, suffering a period of misfortune. He is down on
his luck in everything but appearances, last year’s gorgeousness still
surviving in a modified and sedate form. He is a singer of songs,
now, for the publishers, by toleration. His one lounging-place in all
New York where he is welcome and not looked at askance is the chair
they may allow him. Once a day he makes the rounds of the theatrical
agencies; once, or if fortune favors, twice a day he visits some cheap
eating-house. At night, after a lone stroll through that fairyland
of theaters and gaudy palaces to which, as he sees it, he properly
belongs--Broadway, he returns to his bed, the carpeted floor of a room
in some tolerant publisher’s office, where he sleeps by permission,
perhaps, and not even there, too often.
Oh, the glory of success in this little world in his eye at this
time--how now, in want, it looms large and essential! Outside, as he
stretches himself, may even now be heard the murmur of that shiny,
joyous rout of which he was so recently a part. The lights, the
laughter; the songs, the mirth--all are for others. Only he, only he
must linger in shadows, alone.
To-morrow it will come out in words, if you talk with him. It is in
the publisher’s office, perhaps, where gaudy ladies are trying songs,
or on the street, where others, passing, notice him not but go their
way in elegance.
“I had it once, all right,” he will tell you. “I had my handful. You
bet I’ll get it next year.”
Is it of money he is thinking?
An automobile swings past and some fine lady, looking out, wakes to
bitterness his sense of need.
“New York’s tough without the coin, isn’t it? You never get a glance
when you’re out of the game. I spend too easy, that’s what’s the matter
with me. But I’ll get back, you bet. Next time I’ll know enough to
save. I’ll get up again, and next time I’ll stay up, see?”
Next year his hopes may be realized again, his dreams come true. If so,
be present and witness the glories of radiance after shadow.
“Ah, me boy, back again, you see!”
“So I see. Quite a change since last season.”
“Well, I should smile. I was down on my luck then. That won’t happen
any more. They won’t catch me. I’ve learned a lesson. Say, we had a
great season.”
Rings and pins attest it. A cravat of marvelous radiance speaks for
itself in no uncertain tones. Striped clothes, yellow shoes, a new hat
and cane. Ah, the glory, the glory! He is not to be caught any more,
“you bet,” and yet here is half of his subsistence blooming upon his
merry body.
_They_ will catch him, though, him and all in the length of time.
One by one they come, old, angular misfortune grabbing them all by
the coat-tails. The rich, the proud, the great among them sinking,
sinking, staggering backward until they are where he was and deeper,
far deeper. I wish I could quote those little notices so common in all
our metropolitan dailies, those little perfunctory records which appear
from time to time in theatrical and sporting and “song” papers, telling
volumes in a line. One day one such singer’s voice is failing; another
day he has been snatched by disease; one day one radiant author arrives
at that white beneficence which is the hospital bed and stretches
himself to a final period of suffering; one day a black boat steaming
northward along the East River to a barren island and a field of weeds
carries the last of all that was so gay, so unthinking, so, after all,
childlike of him who was greatest in his world. Weeds and a headboard,
salt winds and the cry of seagulls, lone blowings and moanings, and all
that light and mirth is buried here.
Here and there in the world are those who are still singing melodies
created by those who have gone this unfortunate way, singers of “Two
Little Girls in Blue” and “White Wings,” “Little Annie Rooney” and “The
Picture and the Ring,” the authors of “In the Baggage Coach Ahead” and
“Trinity Chimes,” of “Sweet Marie” and “Eileen”--all are here. There
might be recited the successes of a score of years, quaint, pleasing
melodies which were sung the land over, which even to-day find an
occasional voice and a responsive chord, but of the authors not one but
could be found in some field for the outcasts, forgotten. Somehow the
world forgets, the peculiar world in which they moved, and the larger
one which knew them only by their songs.
It seems strange, really, that so many of them should have come to
this. And yet it is true--authors, singers, publishers, even--and
yet not more strange is it than that their little feeling, worked
into a melody and a set of words, should reach far out over land and
water, touching the hearts of the nation. In mansion and hovel, by
some blazing furnace of a steel mill, or through the open window of
a farmland cottage, is trolled the simple story, written in halting
phraseology, tuned as only a popular melody is tuned. All have seen the
theater uproarious with those noisy recalls which bring back the sunny
singer, harping his one indifferent lay. All have heard the street
bands and the organs, the street boys and the street loungers, all
expressing a brief melody, snatched from the unknown by some process of
the heart. Yes, here it is, wandering the land over like a sweet breath
of summer, making for matings and partings, for happiness and pain.
That it may not endure is also meet, going back into the soil, as it
does, with those who hear it and those who create.
Yet only those who venture here in merry Broadway shall witness the
contrast, however. Only they who meet these radiant presences in the
flesh will ever know the marvel of the common song.
CHARACTERS
The glory of the city is its variety. The drama of it lies in its
extremes. I have been thinking to-day of all the interesting characters
that have passed before me in times past on the streets of this
city: generals, statesmen, artists, politicians, a most interesting
company, and then of another company by no means so distinguished or
so comfortable--the creatures at the other end of the ladder who, far
from having brains, or executive ability, or wealth, or fame, have
nothing save a weird astonishing individuality which would serve to
give pause to almost the dullest. Many times I have been compelled by
sheer astonishment to stop in the midst of duties that hurried me to
contemplate some weird creature, drawn up from heaven knows what depths
of this very strange and intricate city into the clear, brilliant
daylight of a great, clean thoroughfare, and to wonder how, in all
conscience, life had come to produce such a thing. The eyes of them!
The bodies! The hats, the coats, the shoes, the motions! How often
have I followed amazedly for blocks, for miles even, attempting to
pigeonhole in my own mind the astonishing characteristics of a figure
before me, attempting to say to myself what I really thought of it
all, what misfortune or accident or condition of birth or of mind had
worked out the sad or grim spectacle of a human being so distorted, a
veritable caricature of womanhood or manhood. On the streets of New
York I have seen slipping here and there truly marvelous creatures, and
have realized instantly that I was looking at something most different,
peculiar, that here again life had accomplished an actual _chef
d’œuvre_ of the bizarre or the grotesque or the mad, had made something
as strange and unaccountable as a great genius or a great master of
men. Only it had worked at the other extreme from public efficiency
or smug, conventional public interest, and had produced a singular
variation, inefficient, unsocial, eccentric or evil, as you choose,
qualities which worked to exclude the subject of the variation from any
participation in what we are pleased to call a normal life.
I am thinking, for instance, of a long, lean faced, unkempt and
bedraggled woman, not exceptionally old, but roughened and hardened
by what circumstances I know not into a kind of horse, whom once of
an early winter’s morning I encountered at Broadway and Fourteenth
Street pushing a great rattletrap of a cart in which was piled old
rags, sacks, a chair, a box and what else I know not, and all this with
long, lean strides and a kind of determined titan energy toward the
North River. Her body was clad in a mere semblance of clothing, rags
which hung limp and dirty and close to her form and seemingly wholly
insufficient for the bitter weather prevailing at the time. Her hair
was coarse and iron-gray, done in a shapeless knot and surmounted by
something in the shape of a small hat which might have been rescued
from an ashheap. Her eyes were fixed, glassy almost, and seemingly
unseeing. Here she came, vigorous, stern, pushing this tatterdemalion
cart, and going God knows where. I followed to see and saw her enter,
finally, a wretched, degraded west side slum, in a rear yard of
which, in a wretched tumble-down tenement, which occupied a part of
it, she appeared to have a room or floor. But what days and years of
chaffering, think you, were back of this eventual result, what years
of shabby dodging amid the giant legs of circumstances? To grow out
of childhood--once really soft, innocent childhood--into a thing like
this, an alley-scraping horse--good God!
And then the men. What a curious company they are, just those few who
stand out in my memory, whom, from a mere passing opportunity to look
upon, I have never been able to forget.
Thus, when I first came to New York and was on _The World_ there came
into the reportorial room one cold winter’s night a messenger-boy,
looking for a certain reporter, for whom he had a message, a youth who
positively was the most awkward and misshapen vehicle for the task in
hand that I have ever seen. I should say here that whatever the rate
of pay now, there are many who will recall how little they were paid
and how poorly they were equipped--a tall youth, for instance, with a
uniform and cap for one two-thirds his size; a short one with trousers
six inches too long and gathered in plenteous folds above his shoes,
and a cap that wobbled loosely over his ears; or a fat boy with a tight
suit, or a lean boy with a loose one. Parsimony and indifference were
the outstanding characteristics of the two most plethoric organizations
serving the public in that field.
But this one. He was eighteen or nineteen (as contrasted with others
of this same craft who were in the room at this very time, and who
were not more than twelve or thirteen; that was before the child-labor
laws), and his face was too large, and misshapen, a grotesquerie of the
worst invention, a natural joke. His ears were too big and red, his
mouth too large and twisted, his nose too humped and protruding, and
his square jaw stood out too far, and yet by no means forcefully or
aggressively. In addition, his hair needed cutting and stuck out from
underneath his small, ill-fitting cap, which sat far up on the crown of
his head. At the same time, his pants and coat being small, revealed
extra lengths of naked red wrist and hands and made his feet seem even
larger than they were.
In those days, as at present, it was almost a universal practice to kid
the messenger-boy, large or small, whoever and wherever he was--unless,
as at times he proved to be, too old or weary or down on his luck; and
even then he was not always spared. In this instance it chanced that
the reporter for whom this youth was looking was seated at a desk with
myself and some others. We were chatting and laughing, when suddenly
this apparition appeared.
“Why, hello Johnnie!” called the one addressed, turning and taking
the message yet finding time to turn on the moss-covered line of
messenger-boy humor. “Just in from the snow, are you? The best thing
is never to get a hair-cut in winter. Positively, the neck should be
protected from these inclement breezes.”
“A little short on the pants there, James,” chipped in a second, “but I
presume the company figures that the less the baggage or equipment the
greater the speed, eh?”
“In the matter of these suits,” went on a third, “style and fit are
necessarily secondary to sterling spiritual worth.”
“Aw, cut it!” retorted the youth defiantly.
Being new to New York and rather hard-pressed myself, I was throughout
this scene studying this amazing figure and wondering how any
corporation could be so parsimonious as to dress a starveling employee
in so shabby a way, and from what wretched circumstances such a youth,
who would endure such treatment and such work, must spring. Suddenly,
seeing me looking at him and wondering, and just as the recipient of
the message was handing him back his book signed, his face became
painfully and, as it seemed to me, involuntarily contorted with such
a grimace of misery and inward spiritual dissatisfaction as I had not
seen anywhere before. It was a miserable and moving grimace, followed
by a struggle not to show what he felt. But suddenly he turned and
drawing a big red cold wrist and hand across his face and eyes and
starting for the door, he blurted out: “I never did have no home, God
damn it! I never did have no father or mother, like you people, nor no
chance either. I was raised in an orphan asylum--” and he was gone.
“Sometimes,” observed the youth who had started this line of jesting,
getting up and looking apologetically at the rest of us, “this dam’
persiflage can be sprung in the wrong place and at the wrong time. I
apologize. I’m ashamed of myself, and sorry too.”
[Illustration: A Character]
“I’m sorry too,” said another, a gentlemanly Southerner, whom later I
came to know better and to like.
But that boy!
* * * * *
For years, when I was a youth and was reading daily at the old Astor
Library, there used to appear on the streets of New York an old man,
the spindling counterpart, so far as height, weight and form were
concerned, of William Cullen Bryant, who for shabbiness of attire,
sameness of appearance, persistence of industry and yet futility in
so far as any worth while work was concerned could hardly have been
outclassed. A lodger at the Mills Hotel, in Bleecker Street, that
hopeless wayplace of the unfortunate, he was also a frequenter of the
Astor Library, where, as I came to know through watching him over
months and years even, he would burrow by the hour among musty volumes
from which he made copious notes jotted on paper with a pencil, both
borrowed from the library authorities. Year after year for a period of
ten years I encountered him from time to time wearing the same short,
gray wool coat, the same thin black baggy trousers, the same cheap
brownish-black Fedora hat, and the same long uncut hair and beard,
the former curly and hanging about his shoulders. His body, even in
the bitterest weather, never supported an overcoat. His hands were
always bare and the wrists more or less exposed. He came invariably
with a quick, energetic step toward the library or the Mills Hotel
and turned a clear, blue, birdlike eye upon whomsoever surveyed him.
But of ability--nothing, in so far as any one ever knew. The library
authorities knew nothing of anything he had ever achieved. Those who
managed the hotel of course knew nothing at all; they were not even
interested, though he had lived there for years. In short, he lived and
moved and had his being in want and thinness, and finally died--leaving
what? His effects, as I was informed afterwards by the attendants of
the “hotel” which had housed him for years, consisted of a small parcel
of clothes, worthless to any save himself, and a box of scribbled
notes, relating to what no one ever knew. They were disjointed and
meaningless scraps of information, I was told, and dumped out with the
ashes after his demise. What, think you, could have been his import to
the world, his message?
* * * * *
And then Samuel Clampitt--or so a hand-lettered scrawl over his gate
read--who maintained a junk-yard near the Harlem River and One Hundred
and Thirty-eighth Street. He was a little man, very dark, very hunched
at the shoulders, with iron-gray hair, heavy, bushy, black eyebrows,
a very dark and seamy skin, and hands that were quite like claws. He
bought and sold--or pretended to--old bottles, tin, iron, rags, and
the like. His place was a small yard or space of ground lying next to
a coal-yard and adjoining the river, and about this he had built, or
had found there, a high board fence. And within, whenever the gates
were opened and one was permitted to look in, were collections of junk
about as above tabulated, with, in addition, some bits of iron fencing,
old window-frames, part of stair railings, gasoliers and the like. He
himself was rarely to be seen; I saw him no more than four or five
times during a period of three years in which I passed his yard daily.
But, having occasion once to dispose of a collection of waste rags
and clothing, I eventually sought him out and found him, after trying
his gate on an average of once every two days during a period of two
weeks and more. The thing that interested me from the first was that my
tentative knockings at his gate, which was always closed and very high,
were greeted by savage roars from several Great Danes that were far
within and that pawed the high gate whenever I touched it or knocked.
Yet eventually I did find him, the gate being open and the dogs chained
and he inside. He was sitting in a dark corner of his little hut inside
the yard, no window or door giving onto the street, and eating from
a discolored tin pan on his lap which held a little bread, a tomato
and some sausage. The thing that interested me most (apart from the
fact that he appeared to me more of a gnome than a man) was these
same dogs, now chained to a post a score of feet from me and most
savagely snarling and charging as I talked. They were so savage and
showed such great, white, glistening teeth that I was eager to retreat
without waiting to complete my errand. However, I managed to explain my
purpose--but to no result. He was not interested in my collection of
junk, saying that he only bought material that was brought to him.
But the voice, so cracked and wheezy. And the eyes, shining like
sparks of light under his heavy brows. And the thin, parchment-like,
claw-like hands. He rasped irritatingly with his throat whenever he
talked, before and after each word or sentence--“eck--eck--eck--I
don’t go out to buy stuff--eck--eck--eck. I only buy what’s brought
here--eck--eck--eck. I don’t want any old rags--eck--eck--eck--I have
more than I can sell now--eck--eck--eck.” Then he fell to munching
again.
“Those look like savage dogs,” I ventured, hoping to lure him into a
conversation.
It was not to be.