We have always been a strong partisan of Brooklyn, and when we found
ourself, in company with Titania, set down in the middle of a golden
afternoon with the vista of Grand Avenue before us, we felt highly
elated. Just how these two wayfarers chanced to be deposited in that
quiet serenity, so far from their customary concerns, is not part of the
narrative.
There are regions of Brooklyn, we have always felt, that are too good to
be real. Placid stretches of streets, with baby carriages simmering in
the sun, solid and comfortable brownstone houses exhaling a prosperous
condition of life, tranquil old-fashioned apothecaries' shops without
soda fountains, where one peers in and sees only a solitary customer
turning over the pages of a telephone book. It is all rather like a
chapter from a story, and reminds us of a passage in "The Dynamiter"
where some untroubled faubourgs of London are winningly described.
Titania was wearing a little black hat with green feathers. She looked
her best, and was not unaware of it. Our general plan, when destiny
suddenly plumps us into the heart of Brooklyn, is to make our way
toward Fulton Street, which is a kind of life-line. Once on Fulton
Street we know our way. Moreover, Fulton Street has admirable
second-hand bookshops. Nor do we ever forget that it was at the corner
of Fulton and Cranberry streets that "Leaves of Grass" was set up, in
the spring of 1855, Walt doing a good deal of the work himself. The only
difficulty about getting to Fulton Street is that people will give you
such contradictory instruction. One will tell you to go this way; the
next will point in the opposite direction. It is as though Brooklynites
suspect the presence of a stranger, and do not wish their sacred secrets
to be discovered. There is a deep, mysterious freemasonry among the
residents of this genial borough.
At the corner of Grand and Greene avenues we thought it well to ask our
way. A lady was standing on the corner, lost in pleasant drowse. April
sunshine shimmered all about: trees were bustling into leaf, a wagonload
of bananas stood by the curb and the huckster sang a gay, persuasive
madrigal. We approached the lady, and Titania spoke gently: "Can you
tell me----" The lady screamed, and leaped round in horror, her face
stricken with fearful panic. She gasped and tottered. We felt guilty and
cruel. "We were not meditating an attack," we said, "but just wanted to
ask you the way to Fulton Street." Perhaps the poor soul's nerves were
unstrung, for she gave us instruction that we felt instinctively to be
wrong. Had we gone as she said (we now see by studying the map) we would
have debouched into Wallabout Bay. But undoubtedly it was the protective
instinct of the Brooklynite, on guard before strangers. Is there some
terrific secret in Brooklyn that all residents know about but which must
never be revealed to outsiders?
Making a mental note not to speak too suddenly at the next encounter,
the two cheerful derelicts drifted along the sunny coast of Grand
Avenue. A shining and passionless peace presided over the streets. A
gentle clop-clop of hooves came trotting down the way: here was a man
driving a white horse in a neat rubber-tired buggy without a top. He
leaned back and smiled to himself as he drove along. Life did not seem
to be the same desperate venture it appears round about Broadway and
Wall Street. Who can describe the settled amiability of those rows of
considerable brown houses, with their heavy oak doors, their pots of
daisies on the stoop, their clear window panes, and now and then the
face of a benignant grandmother peeping from behind lace curtains. The
secret of Brooklyn, perhaps, is contentment, and its cautious residents
do not want the rest of us to know too much about it, lest we all flock
over there in swarms.
We then came to the bustle of Fulton Street, which deserves a book in
itself. Some day we want to revisit a certain section of Fulton Street
where (if we remember rightly) a rotisserie and a certain bookstore
conspire to make one of the pleasantest haunts in our experience. We
don't know exactly what the secret of Brooklyn may be, but we are going
to spend some time over there this spring and lie in wait for it.