New York Sketches

by Jesse Lynch Williams

IV

Now this last lap of the walk—from green Madison Square and the new Martin's up the sparkling avenue to the broad, bright Plaza at the Park entrance, where the brightly polished hotels look down at the driving, with their awnings flapping and flags out straight—makes the most popular part of all the walk.

This is the land of liveried servants and jangling harness, far away, or pretending to be, from work and worry; this is where enjoyment is sought and vanity let loose—and that, with the accompanying glitter and glamour, is always more interesting to the great bulk of humanity.

It is also better walking up here. The pavements are cleaner now and there is more room upon them. A man could stand still in the middle of the broad, smooth walk and look up in the air without collecting a crowd instantaneously. You can talk to your companion and hear the reply since the welcome relief of asphalt.

Here can be seen hundreds of those who walk for the sake of walking, not only at this hour but all day long. In the morning, large, prosperous-looking New Yorkers with side-whiskers and well-fed bodies—and, unintentionally, such amusing expressions, sometimes—walking part way, at least, down to business, with partly read newspapers under their arms; while in the opposite direction go young girls, slender, erect, with hair in a braid and school-books under their arms and well-prepared lessons.

It is also better walking up here.

Then come those that walk at the convenience of dogs, attractive or kickable, and a little later the close-ranked boarding-school squads and the cohorts of nurse-maids with baby-carriages four abreast, charging everyone off the sidewalk. Next come the mothers of the babies and their aunts, setting out for shopping, unless they have gone to ride in the Park, and for Guild Meetings and Reading Clubs and Political Economy Classes and Heaven knows what other important morning engagements, ending, perhaps, with a visit to the nerve-specialist.

And so on throughout the morning and afternoon and evening hours, each with its characteristic phase, until the last late theatre-party has gone home, laughing and talking, from supper at Sherry's or the Waldorf-Astoria; the last late bachelor has left the now quiet club; the rapping of his cane along the silent avenue dies away down an echoing side-street; and a lonely policeman nods in the shadow of the church gate-post. Suddenly the earliest milk-wagon comes jangling up from the ferry; then dawn comes up over the gas-houses along East River and it all begins over again.

... those who walk for the sake of walking.

But the most popular and populous time of all is the regular walking-home hour, not only for those who have spent the day down toward the end of the island at work, but for those who have no more serious business to look after than wandering from club to club drinking cocktails, or from house to house drinking tea.

All who take the walk regularly meet many of the same ones every day, not only acquaintances, but others whom we somehow never see in any other place, but learn to know quite well, and we wonder who they are—and they wonder who we are, I suppose. Pairs of pink-faced old gentlemen, walking arm-in-arm and talking vigorously. Contented young couples who look at the old furniture in the antique-shop windows and who are evidently married, and other younger couples who evidently soon will be, and see nothing, not even their friends. Intent-browed young business men with newspapers under their arms; governesses out with their charges; bevies of fluffy girls with woodcock eyes, especially on matinée day with programmes in their hands, talking gushingly.

At the lower corner of the Waldorf-Astoria.

It is a sort of a club, this walking-up-the-avenue crowd; and each member grows to expect certain other members at particular points in the walk, and is rather disappointed when, for instance, the old gentleman with the large nose is not with his daughter this evening. "What can be the matter?" the rest of us ask each other, seeing her alone.

There is one man, the disagreeable member of the club, a bull-frog-looking man of middle age with a Germanic face and beard, a long stride, and a tightly buttoned walking-coat (I'm sure he's proud of his chest), who comes down when we are on the way up and gets very indignant every time we happen to be late. His scowl says, as plainly as this type, "What are you doing way down here by the Reform Club? You know you ought to be passing the Cathedral by this time!" And the worst of it is, we always do feel ashamed, and I'm afraid he sees it.

... with baby-carriages.

*****

This mile and a half from where Flora McFlimsey lived to the beginning of the driving in the Park is not the staid, sombre, provincial old Fifth Avenue which Flora McFlimsey knew. Up Fifth Avenue to the Park New York is a world-city.

Not merely have so many of the brownstone dwellings, with their high stoops and unattractive impressiveness, been turned over to business or pulled down altogether to make room for huge, hyphenated hotels, but the old spirit of the place itself has been turned out; the atmosphere is different.

The imported smartness of the shops, breeches makers to His Royal Highness So-and-So, and millinery establishments with the same Madame Luciles and Mademoiselle Lusettes and high prices, that have previously risen to fame in Paris and London, together with the numerous clubs and picture-galleries, all furnish local color; but it is the people themselves that you see along the streets, the various languages they speak, their expression of countenance, the way they hold themselves, the manner of their servants—in a word, it is the atmosphere of the spot that makes you feel that it is not a mere metropolis, but along this one strip at least our New York is a cosmopolis.

This is the region of clubs. (The Union League.)

And the Walk-Up-town hour is the best time to observe it, when all the world is driving or walking home from various duties and pleasures.

There, on that four-in-hand down from Westchester County comes a group of those New Yorkers who, unwillingly or otherwise, get their names so often in the papers. The lackey stands up and blows the horn and they manage very well to endure the staring of those on the sidewalks.

Here, in the victoria behind them, is a woman who worships them. She would give many of her husband's new dollars to be up there too, though pretending not to see the drag. See how she leans back in the cushions and tries to prop her eyebrows up, after the manner of the Duchess she once saw in the Row. She succeeds fairly well, too, if only her husband wouldn't spoil it by crossing his legs and exposing his socks.

Here are other women with sweet, artless faces who do not seem to be strenuous or spoiled (as yet) by the world they move in, and these are the most beautiful women in all the world; some in broughams (as one popular story-writer invariably puts his heroines), or else walking independently with an interesting gait.

... close-ranked boarding-school squads.

Here, in that landau, comes the latest foreign-titled visitor, urbane and thoughtfully attentive to all that his friends are saying and pointing out to him. And here is a bit of color, some world-examining, tired-eyed Maharajah, with silk clothes—or was it only one of the foreign consuls who drive along here every day.

There goes a fashionable city doctor, who has a high gig, and correspondingly high prices, hurrying home for his office hours. Surely, it would be more comfortable to get in and out of a low phaëton; this vehicle is as high as that loud, conspicuous, advertising florist's wagon—can it be for the same reason?

Here in that grinding automobile come a man and two women on their way to an East Side table d'hôte, to see Bohemia, as they think; see how reckless and devilish they look by anticipation! Up there on that 'bus are some people from the country, real people from the real country, and their mouths are open and they don't care. They are having much more pleasure out of their trip than the self-conscious family group entering that big gilded hotel, whose windows are constructed for seeing in as well as out (and that is another way of advertising).

... the coachmen and footmen flock there.

Here comes a prominent citizen outlining his speech on his way home to dress for the great banquet to-night, for he is a well-known after-dinner orator, and during certain months of the year never has a chance to dine at home with his family. Suppose, after all, he fails of being nominated!

Here come a man and his wife walking down to a well-known restaurant—early, so that he will have plenty of time to smoke at the table and she to get comfortably settled at the theatre with the programme folded before the curtain rises; such a sensible way. He is not prominent at all, but they have a great deal of quiet happiness out of living, these two.

And there goes the very English comedian these two are to see in Pinero's new piece after dinner, though they did not observe him, to his disappointment. It is rather late for an actor to be walking down to his club to dine, but he is the star and doesn't come on until the end of the first act, and his costume is merely that same broad-shouldered English-cut frock coat he now has on. We, however, must hurry on.

The Church of the Heavenly Rest.

*****

Because it keeps the eyes so busy, seeing all the people that pass, one block of buildings seems very much like another the first few times the new-comer takes this walk, except, of course, for conspicuous landmarks like that of the new library on the site of the late reservoir or the Arcade on the site of the old Windsor Hotel, with its ghastly memories; but after awhile all the blocks begin to seem very different; not only the one where you saw a boy on a bicycle run down and killed, or where certain well-known people live, but the blocks formerly considered monotonous. There are volumes of stories along the way. Down Twenty-ninth Street can be seen, so near the avenue and yet so sequestered, the Church of the Transfiguration, as quaint and low and toy-like as a stage-setting, ever blessed by stage-people for the act which made the Little Church Around the Corner known to everyone, and by which certain pharisees were taught the lesson they should have learned from the parable in their New Testament.

Farther up is a church of another sort, where Europeans of more or less noble blood marry American daughters of acknowledged solvency, while the crowd covers the sidewalks and neighboring house-steps. Here, consequently, other people's children come to be married, though neither, perhaps, attended this church before the rehearsal, and get quite a good deal about it in the society column too, though, to tell the truth, they had hoped that the solemn union of these two souls would appropriately call forth more publicity. Shed a tear for them in passing. There are many similar disappointments in life along this thoroughfare.

Farther back we passed what a famous old rich man intended for the finest house in New York, and it has thus far served chiefly as a marble moral. Its brilliance is dingy now, its impressiveness is gone, and its grandeur is something like that of a Swiss chalet at the base of a mountain since the erection across the street of an overpowering, glittering hotel.

This is the region of clubs; they are more numerous than drug-stores, as thick as florists' shops. But it seems only yesterday that a certain club, in moving up beyond Fortieth Street, was said to be going ruinously far up-town. Now nearly all the well-known clubs are creeping farther and farther along, even the old Union Club, which for long pretended to enjoy its cheerless exclusiveness down at the corner of Twenty-first Street, stranded among piano-makers and publishers, and then with a leap and a bound went up to Fiftieth Street to build its bright new home.

Approaching St. Thomas's.

Soon the new, beautiful University Club at Fifty-fourth Street, with the various college coats of arms on its walls, which never fail to draw attention from the out-of-town visitors on 'bus-tops, will not seem to be very far up-town, and by and by even the great, white Metropolitan will not be so much like a lonely iceberg opposite the Park entrance. I wonder if anyone knows the names of them all; there always seem to be others to learn about. Also one learns in time that two or three houses which for a long time were thought to be clubs are really the homes of former mayors, receiving from the city, according to the old Dutch custom, the two lighted lamps for their doorways. This section of the avenue where, in former years, were well-known rural road-houses along the drive, is once more becoming, since the residence régime is over, the region of famous hostelries of another sort.

The University Club ... with college coats of arms.

There is just one of the old variety left, and it, strangely enough, is within a few feet of two of the most famous restaurants in America—the somewhat quaint and quite dirty old Willow Tree Cottage; named presumably for the tough old willow-tree which still persistently stands out in front, not seeming to mind the glare and stare of the tall electric lights any more than the complacent old tumble-down frame tavern itself resents the proximity of Delmonico's and Sherry's, with whom it seems to fancy itself to be in bitter but successful rivalry—for do not all the coachmen and footmen flock there during the long, wet waits of winter nights, while the dances are going on across at Sherry's and Delmonico's? Business is better than it has been for years.

In time, even the inconspicuous houses that formerly seemed so much alike become differentiated and, like the separate blocks, gain individualities of their own, though you may never know who are the owners. They mean something to you, just as do so many of the regular up-town walkers whose names you do not know; fine old comfortable places many of them are, even though the architects of their day did try hard to make them uncomfortable with high, steep steps and other absurdities. When a "For Sale" sign comes to one of these you feel sorry, and finally when one day in your walk up-town you see it irrevocably going the way of all brick, with a contractor's sign out in front, blatantly boasting of his wickedness, you resent it as a personal loss.

Olympia Jackies on shore leave.

It seems all wrong to be pulling down those thick walls; exposing the privacy of the inside of the house, its arrangement of rooms and fireplaces, and the occupant's taste in color and wall decorations. Two young women who take the walk up-town always look the other way when they pass this sad display; they say it's unfair to take advantage of the house. Soon there will be a deep pit there with puffing derricks, the sidewalk closed, and show-bills boldly screaming. And by the time we have returned from the next sojourn out of town there will be an office-building of ever-so-many stories or another great hotel. Already the sign there will tell about it.

You quicken your pace as you draw near the Park; some of the up-town walkers who live along here have already reached the end of their journey and are running up the steps taking out door-keys. The little boy in knickerbockers who seems responsible for lighting Fifth Avenue has already begun his zigzag trip along the street; soon the long double rows of lights will seem to meet in perspective. A few belated children are being hurried home by their maids from dancing-school; their white frocks sticking out beneath their coats gleam in the half light. Cabs and carriages with diners in them go spinning by, the coachmen whip up to pass ahead of you at the street-crossing; you catch a gleam of men's shirt-bosoms within and the light fluffiness of women, with the perfume of gloves. Fewer people are left on the sidewalks now—those that are look at their watches. The sun is well set by the time you reach the Plaza, but down Fifty-ninth Street you can see long bars of after-glow across the Hudson.

In the half-dark, under the Park trees, comes a group of Italian laborers; their hob-nailed shoes clatter on the cement-walk, their blue blouses and red neckerchiefs stand out against the almost black of the trees; they, too, are walking home for the night. The Walk Up-town is finished and the show is over for to-day.

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[THE CROSS STREETS]

Down near the eastern end of the street.