put out, and they were put out. There being none in the rooms, all was
dark. Before this you would hear the shuffling of this throng bedward,
and the piling of chairs on tables in the lobbies for the night in
order that the orderlies of the hotel might sweep afterwards. There
followed a general opening and shutting of doors and the sound made by
individuals here and there stirring among their effects in the dark or
straightening their beds. Finally, during the small hours of the night,
when peace was supposed to reign, you would hear, whether you wished to
or not, your neighbor and your neighbor’s neighbor, even to the extent
of aisles and floors distant, snoring and coughing or complaining.
There were raucous demands from the irritated to “cut it out” or “turn
over,” and from others return remarks as “go to hell. Who do you think
you are!”--retorts, sometimes brutal, sometimes merely irritable,
which, however, kept the night vocal and one awake.
When, however, all these little difficulties had been finally ironed
out and the last man had either quit grumbling or decided to dispose of
his thoughts in a less audible way, there came an hour in which nature
seemed truly able, even here, to “knit up the raveled sleeve of care.”
The noisy had now become silent, the nervous peaceful. Throughout the
whole establishment an audible, rhythmic, synchronic breathing was now
apparent. You felt as though some great chemic or psychic force were at
work in the world, as though by some strange hocus-pocus of chemistry
or physics, life was still capable of solving its difficulties, even
though you were not, and as though these misfits of soul and body were
still breathing in unison with something, as though silence and shadow
were parts of some shrewd, huge plan to soothe the minds of the weary
and to bring final order out of chaos.
In the morning, however, one awoke once more (at least I did) to a
still more painful realization of what it means to be very poor. There
were no conveniences, as I found, at least none which were private.
Your bath was a public one, a shower only, one; of a series of spouting
discs in the basement, where you were compelled to foregather with
others, taking your clothes with you--for unless you arose early you
could not return to your room. The towels, fortunately, were separate,
except for some roll-towels that served at washstands. The general
toilet was either a long trough or a series of exposed closets,
doorless segments extending along one wall. The shaving-room consisted
of the mirrors above the washstands, nothing separate. Over all were
the guards loitering to see that nothing was misused.
There is no question as to the necessity of such rigid, almost
prison-like control, perhaps, but the general effect of it on one--or
on me, let me say--was coarse and bitter.
“Blime me” (the attendants were for some curious reason mostly
English), “you’d think there was no other time but nine for ’im to come
start shaving. I say, you can’t do that. We’re closing ’ere now. Cut it
out.”
This to a shabby soul with a three days’ growth of beard who has
evidently not reached the stage where he understands the regulations of
the institution.
“You’ll ’ave to quit splattering water ’ereabouts, I’m telling you.
This ain’t no bawth. If you want to do that, go in the basement.”
This to one who was not as careful about his shaving as he might be.
“You’ll ’ave to be moving out o’ ’ere now.”
This to one who had fixed himself comfortably in the lobby and who
might be in the way of some orderly who wanted to sweep or sprinkle a
little sawdust. On every hand, at every time, as I noticed, it was the
orderly or the hired servant, not the guest, who was the important and
superior person. And it seemed to me, after a three days’ study of it,
that they were really looking for flaws and slight mistakes on the part
of guests in order that they might show their authority and proclaim to
the world their strength. It was discouraging.
The saddest part of it was that this place, with all its drawbacks,
was still beyond the purse of many. Some, as anyone could see, only
came here between the hours of ten in the morning and ten at night,
the hours when lounging in these lobbies was permitted, to loaf and
keep warm. They could not afford one of these palatial rooms but must
only loaf here by day. It was at least warm and bright, and so, up to
ten o’clock at night, not unsatisfactory. But having no room to go
to at ten at night, they must make their way out. And this necessity,
exposing them for what they were, bench-warmers, soon made them known
to the guards or orderlies, who could be seen eyeing them, sometimes
speaking to them, suggesting that they come no more, that they “cut
it out.” They were bums, benchers, really below the level of those
who could afford to stop here, and so beneath that level of contempt
which was regularly meted out to those who could stop here. I myself
have seen them sidling or slipping out at 9:30 or 9:45, and with what
an air--like that of a dog that is in danger of a booting. I have also
seen a man at closing time count the remaining money in his possession,
calculate a moment, and then rise and slip out into the night. Men
such as these are not absolutely worthless, but they have reached the
lowest rung of the ladder, are going down, not up, and beyond them is
the Bowery, the hospital, and the river--the last, I think, the most
merciful of all.
HELL’S KITCHEN
N. B. When I first came to New York, and for years afterward, it was
a whim of the New York newspapers to dub that region on the West Side
which lies between Thirty-sixth and Forty-first Streets and Ninth
Avenue and the Hudson River as _Hell’s Kitchen_. There was assumed
to be operative there, shooting and killing at will, a gang of young
roughs that for savagery and brutality was not to be outrivaled by
any of the various savage groups of the city. Disturbances, murders,
riots, were assumed to be common; the residents of this area at once
sullen and tempestuous. Interested by the stark pictures of a slum life
so often painted, I finally went to reside there for a period. What
follows is from notes or brief pictures made at the time.
* * * * *
It is nine o’clock of a summer’s evening. Approaching my place at this
hour, suddenly I encounter a rabble issuing out of Thirty-ninth Street
into Tenth Avenue. It is noisy, tempestuous, swirling. A frowsy-headed
man of about thirty-eight, whose face is badly lacerated and bleeding
and whose coat is torn and covered with dust, as though he had been
rolling upon the ground, leads the procession. He is walking with
that reckless abandon which characterizes the movements of the angry.
A slatternly woman of doughy complexion follows at his heels. About
them sways a crowd of uncombed and stribbly-haired men and women and
children. In the middle of the street, directly on a line with the man
whom the crowd surrounds, but, to one side and nearer the sidewalk
walks another man, undersized, thickset and energetic, who seems to
take a great interest in the crowd. Though he keeps straight ahead,
like the others, he keeps turning and looking, as though he expected
a demonstration of some sort. No word is spoken by either the man or
the woman, and as the curious company passes along under the variable
glows of the store-lamps, shop-keepers and store-dealers come out and
make humorous comments, but seem to think it not worth while to follow.
I join the procession, since this now relates to my interests, and
finally shake an impish, black-haired, ten-year-old girl by the arm
until she looks up at me.
“What’s the matter?”
“Aw, he hit him with a banister.”
“Who hit him?”
“Why, that man out there in the street.”
“What did he hit him for?”
“I dunno,” she replies irritably. “He wouldn’t get out of the room.
They got to fightin’ in the hall.”
She moves away from me and I ply others fruitlessly, until, turning
into Thirty-seventh Street, the green lights of the police station
come into view. The object of this pilgrimage becomes apparent. I fall
silent, following.
Reaching the station door, the injured man and his woman attendant
enter, while the thickset individual who walked to one side, and the
curious crowd remain without.
“Well?” says the sergeant within, glaring intolerantly at the twain as
they push before him. The appearance of the injured man naturally takes
his attention most.
“Lookit me eye,” begins the wounded man, with that curious tone of
injured dignity which the drunk and disorderly so frequently assume.
“That--” and he interpolates a string of oaths descriptive of the man
who has assaulted him “--hit me with a banister leg.”
“Who hit you? Where is he? What did he hit you for?” This from the
sergeant in a breath. The man begins again. The woman beside him
interrupts with a description of her own.
“Shut up!” yells the sergeant savagely, showing his teeth. “I’ll ram me
fist down your throat if you don’t. Let him tell what’s the matter with
him. You keep still.”
The woman, overawed by the threat, stops her tirade. The man resumes.
“He hit me with a banister leg.”
“What for?”
“It was this way, Captain. I went to call on this here lady and that
---- came in and wanted me to get out of the room. I----”
“What relation is this man to you?” inquires the sergeant, addressing
the woman.
“Nothin’,” she replies blandly.
“Isn’t the other man your husband?”
[Illustration: Hell’s Kitchen]
“No, he ain’t, the blank-blank-blank-blank ----” and you have a
sweet string of oaths. “He’s a ----,” and she begins again to ardently
describe the assailant. The man assists her as best he can.
“I thought so,” exclaims the officer vigorously. “Now, you two get the
hell out of here, and stay out, before I club you both. Get on out!
Beat it!”
“Ain’t you goin’ to lock him up?” demands the victim.
“I lock nothing,” vouchsafes the sergeant intolerantly. “Clear out of
here, both of you. If I catch you coming around here any more I’ll give
you both six months.”
He calls an officer from the rear room and the two complainants,
together with others who have ventured in, myself included, beat a
sullen retreat, the crowd welcoming us on the outside. A buzz of
conversation follows. War is promised. When the victim is safely down
the steps he exclaims:
“All right! I ast him to arrest him. Now let ’em look out. I’ll go back
there, I will. Yes, I will. I’ll kill the bastard, that’s what I’ll
do. I’ll show him whether he’ll hit me with a banister leg, the ----,”
and as he goes now, rather straight and yet rhythmically forward, his
assailant, who has been opposite him all the while but in the middle of
the street, keeps an equal and amusing pace.
The crowd follows and turns into Thirty-ninth Street, a half-block east
of Tenth Avenue. It stops in front of an old, stale, four-story red
brick tenement. Some of its windows are glowing softly in the night. On
the third floor some one is playing a flute. Quiet and peace seem to
reign, and yet this----
“I’ll show him whether he’ll hit me,” insists the injured man, entering
the house. The woman follows, and then the short, thickset man from
the street. One after another they disappear up the narrow stairs
which begin at the back of the hall. Some of the crowd follows, myself
included.
Presently, after a great deal of scuffling and hustling on the fourth
floor, all return helter-skelter. They are followed by a large,
comfortably-built, healthy, white-shirted Irish-American, who lives
up there and who has strength and courage. Before him, pathetically
small in size and strength, the others move, the mutilated and still
protesting victim among them. Apparently he has been ejected from the
room in which he had been before.
“I’ll show him,” he is still boasting. “I’ll see whether he’ll hit me
with a banister leg, the ----.”
“That’s all right,” says the large Irishman with a brogue, pushing him
gently onto the sidewalk as he does so. “Go on now.”
“I’ll get even with him yet,” insists the victim.
“That’s all right. I don’t care what you do to-morrow. Go on now.”
The victim turns and looks up at this new authority fixedly, as though
he knew him well, scratches his head and then turns and solemnly walks
away. The other man does likewise. You wonder why.
“It’s over now,” says the new authority to the crowd, and he smiles
as blandly as if he had been taking part in an entertainment of some
kind. The crowd begins to dissolve. The man who drew the banister leg
or stick and who was to have been punished has also disappeared.
“But how is this?” I ask of some one. “How can he do that?”
“Him?” replies an Irish longshoreman who seems to wish to satisfy my
curiosity. “Don’t you know who that is? It’s Patsy Finnerty. He used
to be a champeen prize-fighter. He won all the fights around here ten
years ago. Everybody knows him. He’s in charge over at the steamship
dock now, but they won’t fight with him. If they did he wouldn’t give
’em no more work. They both work for him once in a while.”
I see it all in a blinding flash and go to my own room. How much more
powerful is self-interest as typified by Patsy than the police!
* * * * *
It is raining one night and I hear a voice in the room above mine,
singing. It is a good voice, sweet and clear, but a little weak and
faint down here.
“Tyro-al, Tyro-al! Tyro-al, Tyro-al!
Ich hab dich veeder, O mine Tyro-al!”
I know who lives up there by now: Mr. and Mrs. Schmick and a
little Schmick girl, about ten or eleven. Being courageous in this
vicinity because of the simplicity of these people, the awe they
have for one who holds himself rather aloof and dresses better than
they, and lonely, too, I go up. In response to my knock a little
fair-complexioned, heavily constructed German woman with gray hair and
blue eyes comes to the door.
“I heard some one singing,” I say, “and I thought I would come up and
ask you if I might not come in and listen. I live in the room below.”
“Certainly. Why, of course.” This with an upward lift of the voice.
“Come right in.” And although flustered and red because of what to her
seems an embarrassing situation, she introduces me to her black-haired,
heavy-faced husband, who is sitting at the center table with a zither
before him.
“Papa, here is a gentleman who wants to hear the music.”
I smile, and the old German arises, smiles and extends me a
welcoming hand. He is sitting in the center of this combination
sitting-room, parlor, kitchen and dining-room, his zither, inlaid with
mother-of-pearl, on the table before him.
“I don’t know your name,” I say.
“Schmick,” he replies.
I apologize for intruding but they both seem rather pleased. Also the
little daughter, who is sitting in one corner.
“Were you singing?” I ask her.
“No. Mamma,” she replies.
I look at the gray-haired little mother and she shows me even, white
teeth in smiling at my astonishment.
“I sing but very little,” she insists, blushing red. “My woice is not
so strong any more.”
“Won’t you sing what you were singing just before I came in?” I ask.
Without any of that diffidence which characterizes so many of all
classes she rises and putting one hand on the shoulder of her heavy,
solemn-looking husband, asks him to strike the appropriate chord, and
then breaks forth into one of those plaintive folksongs of the Tyrol
which describes the longing of the singer for his native land.
“I have such a poor woice now,” she insists when she concludes. “When I
was younger it was different.”
“Poor!” I exclaim. “It’s very clear and beautiful. How old are you?”
“I will be fifty next August,” she answers.
This woman is possessed of a sympathetic and altogether lovely
disposition. How can she exist in Hell’s Kitchen, amid grime and
apparent hardness, and remain so sweet and sympathetic? In my youth and
ignorance I wonder.
* * * * *
I am returning one day from a serious inspection of the small stores
and shops of the neighborhood. As I near my door I am preceded up the
street by three grimy coal-heavers, evidently returning from work in an
immense coalyard in Eleventh Avenue.
“Come on in and have a pint,” invites one great hulking fellow, with
hands like small coal-shovels. He was, as it chanced, directly in front
of my doorway.
One of his two companions needs no second invitation, but the other, a
small, feeble-witted-looking individual, seems uncertain as to whether
to go on or stay.
“Come on! Come on back and have a pint!” shouts the first coal-heaver.
“What the hell--ain’t you no good at all? Come on!”
“Sure I am,” returns the other diffidently. “But I ought to be home by
half-past.”
“Aw, home be damned! It won’t take long to drink a pint. Come on.”
“All right,” returns the other, grinning sheepishly.
They go over the way to a saloon, and I pause in my own door. Presently
a little girl comes down, carrying a tin pail.
“Whose little girl are you?” I inquire, not recognizing her.
“Mamma ain’t home to-day,” she returns quickly.
“Mamma?” I reply. “Why do you say that? I don’t want your mamma. I live
here.”
“Oh, I thought you was the insurance man,” she adds, grinning. “You
look just like him.”
“Aren’t you the coal man’s little girl?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he just went into the saloon over there.”
“Huh-uh. Mine’s upstairs, drunk. He must be Mr. Kelly,” and she goes
quickly on with her bucket.
* * * * *
I am sitting in my room one night, listening to the sounds that float
vaguely about this curious little unit of metropolitan life, when a
dénouement in the social complications of this same coal-heaver’s life
is reached. I already know him now to be a rough man, for once or twice
I heard him damning his children very loudly. But I did not suspect
that there were likely to be complications over and above the world of
the purely material.
“Die frau hat sich selbst umgebracht!” (“The woman has taken her
life!”) I hear some one crying out in the hall, and then there is such
a running and shuffling in the general hubbub. A score of tenants from
the different floors are talking and gesticulating, and in the rear of
the hall the door opening into the coal-heaver’s dining-room is open.
My landlady, Mrs. Witty, is on the scene, and even while we gaze a
dapper little physician of the region, in a high hat and frockcoat,
comes running up the steps and enters the open door in the rear.
“The doctor! The doctor!” The word passes from one to another.
“What is it?” I ask, questioning a little girl whom I had often seen
playing tag on the sidewalk below.
“She took poison,” she answers.
“Who?”
“That woman in there.”
“The wife of the coal man?”
“Sure.”
“What did she take it for?”
“I dunno. Here comes another doctor--look!”
Another young doctor is hurrying up the steps.
While we are still gaping at the opening and closing door, Mrs.
Schmick, the little German woman who sang for me, comes out. She has
evidently been laboring in the sick room and seems very much excited.
“Is she dead?” ask a half-dozen people as she hurries upstairs for
something.
“No-oh,” she answers, puckering up her mouth in her peculiar way. “She
is very low, though. I must get some things,” and she hurries away.
The crowd waits, and finally some light on the difficulty begins to
break.
“She wouldn’t live with him if he didn’t stop going with her,” my own
landlady is saying. “I heard her say it.”
“Who? Who?” inquires another.
“Why, that woman in Fortieth Street. You know her.”
“No.”
“Yes, you do. She lives next door to the blacksmith’s shop, upstairs
there, the woman with the two little girls.”
“Her? Is that why she did it?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t say!”
They clatter on in this way and gradually it comes out in good order.
This coal-heaver knows a widow in the next block. He is either in
love with her or she is in love with him, and sometimes she comes
here into Thirty-ninth Street to catch a glimpse of him. He has been
seen with her a number of times and had been in the habit of driving
his coal-wagon through Fortieth Street in order to catch a glimpse of
her. His wife has frequently complained, of course, and there have
been rows, bitter nocturnal wrangles, in which he has not come off
triumphant. He has sworn and raved and struck his wife but he has
been made to promise not to drive through Fortieth Street just the
same. This day, however, he failed to keep this injunction. She was in
Fortieth Street and had seen him, then had come home and in a fit of
jealous rage and affectionate distemper had drunk a bottle of camphor.
The husband is not home yet.
While we are still patiently awaiting him he arrives, dark, heavy,
unprepared for the difficulty awaiting him, and very much astonished at
the company gathered about his door.
“My wife!” he exclaims when told.
“Yes, your wife.” This from several members of the company.
He hurries in, very shaken and frightened.
“What is this?” he demands as he passes the door and is confronted by
serious-looking physicians. More we could not hear.
But after a time out he comes for something at the drugstore, then in
again. He is in and out two or three times, and finally, before the
assembled company and in explanation, wrings his hands.
“I never done nothin’ to make her do this. I never done nothin’.” He
pauses, awaiting a denial, possibly, from some one, then adds: “The
disgrace! I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t for the disgrace!”
I meet Mrs. Schmick the next day in the hall. She has been
indefatigable in her labors.
“Will she die?”
“No, she gets better now.”
“Is he going to behave himself?”
She shrugs her shoulders, lifts up her hands dubiously.
“Mrs. Schmick,” I ask, interestedly, her philosophy of life arresting
me, “why do you work so hard? You didn’t even know her, did you?”
“Ach, no. But she is sick now. She is in trouble. I would do as much
for anybody.”
And this is Hell’s Kitchen, I recall.
* * * * *
Looking out of my front window I can see a great deal of all that goes
on here, in connection with this house, I mean. Through the single
narrow door under my window issue and return all those who have in
any way anything to do with it. The mailman comes very seldom. There
is a weekly life-insurance man who comes regularly, bangs on doors
and complains that some people are in but won’t answer. Ditto the gas
man. Ditto the milkman. Ditto the collector for a rug and clock house.
Many duns of many kinds who come to collect bills of all kinds and
never can “get in.” Of a morning only a half-dozen men and some six or
eight girls seem to creep wearily and unwillingly forth to work. At
night they and others, who have apparently other methods than that of
regular toil for occupying their time, return with quite a different
air. Truckmen and coalmen and Mr. Schmick arrive about the same time,
half-past five. The son of a morose malster’s clerk, who occupies the
second floor rear, back of me, arrives at six. Beer-can carrying is the
chief employment of the city cart-driver’s wife, who lives on the third
floor, the unemployed iron-worker, whose front room I rent, and the
ill-tempered woman with the three children on the fourth floor. The six
or eight girls who go out evenings after their day’s labor frequently
do not begin to drift back until after eleven, several of them not
before three or four. I have met them coming in. Queer figures slip in
and out at all times, men and women who cannot be placed by me in any
regular detail of the doings of this house. Some of them visit one or
another of several “apartments” too frequently to make their comings
and goings explicable on conventional grounds. It is a peculiar region
and house, this, with marked streaks of gayety at times, and some
very evident and frequently long-continued periods of depression and
dissatisfaction and misery.
I am hanging out of my window one evening as usual when the keenest
of all these local tragedies, in so far as this house and a home
are concerned, is enacted directly below me. One of the daughters
above-mentioned is followed down four flights of stairs and pushed out
upon the sidewalk by her irate father and a bundle of wearing apparel
thrown after her.
He is very angry and shouts: “You get out now. You can’t come back into
my house any more. Get out!”
He waves his arms dramatically. A crowd gathers. Men and women hang out
of windows or gather closely about him and the girl, while the latter,
quite young yet, perhaps fifteen, cries, and the onlookers eagerly
demand to know what the trouble is.
“She’s a street-walker, that’s what she is,” he screams. “She comes to
my house after running around all night with loafers. Let her get out
now.”
“Aw, what do you want to turn her off for?” demands a sympathetic
bystander who is evidently moved by the girl’s tears. Others voice the
same sentiment.
“You! You!” exclaims the old locksmith, who is her father, in
uncontrollable rage. “You mind your own business. She is a
street-walker, that’s what she is. She shall not come into my house any
more.”
There is wrangling and more exclamations, and finally into the thick of
the crowd comes a policeman, who tries to gather up all the phases of
the story.
“You won’t take her back, eh?” he asks of the father, after using all
sorts of arguments to prevent a family rupture. “All right, then,
come along,” he says to the girl, and leads her around to the police
station. “We’ll find some place for you, maybe, to-night anyhow.”