When I met his partners I was impressed with the probability of success which they seemed to suggest and which came true. The senior member, Howley, was a young, small, goggle-eyed hunchback with a mouthful of protruding teeth, and hair as black as a crow, and piercing eyes. He had long thin arms and legs which, because of his back, made him into a kind of Spider of a man, and he went about spider-wise, laughing and talking, yet always with a heavy “Scutch” burr.
“We’re joost aboot gettin’ un our feet here nu,” he said to me, his queer twisted face screwed up into a grimace of satisfaction and pride, “end we hevn’t ez yet s’mutch to show ye. But wuth a lettle time I’m a-theenkin’ ye’ll be seem’ theengs a-lookin’ a leetle bether.”
I laughed. “Say,” I said to Paul when Howley had gone about some work, “how could you fail with him around? He’s as smart as a whip, and they’re all good luck anyhow.” I was referring to the superstition which counts all hunchbacks as lucky to others.
“Yes,” said my brother. “I know they’re lucky, and he’s as straight and honest as they make ’em. I’ll always get a square deal here,” and then he began to tell me how his old publisher, by whom Howley had been employed, had “trimmed” him, and how this youth had put him wise. Then and there had begun this friendship which had resulted in this partnership.
The space this firm occupied was merely one square room, twenty by twenty, and in one corner of this was placed the free “tryout” piano. In another, between two windows, two tables stood back to back, piled high with correspondence. A longer table was along one side of a wall and was filled with published music, which was being wrapped and shipped. On the walls were some wooden racks or bins containing “stock,” the few songs thus far published. Although only a year old, this firm already had several songs which were beginning to attract attention, one of them entitled On the Sidewalks of New York. By the following summer this song was being sung and played all over the country and in England, an international “hit.” This office, in this very busy center, cost them only twenty dollars a month, and their “overhead expeenses,” as Howley pronounced it, were “juist nexta nothin’.” I could see that my good brother was in competent hands for once.
And the second partner, who arrived just as we were sitting down at a small table in a restaurant nearby for lunch, was an equally interesting youth whose personality seemed to spell success. At this time he was still connected as “head of stock,” whatever that may mean, with that large wholesale and retail music house the Ditson Company, at Broadway and Eighteenth Street. Although a third partner in this new concern, he had not yet resigned his connection with the other and was using it, secretly of course, to aid him and his firm in disposing of some of their wares. He was quite young, not more than twenty-seven, very quick and alert in manner, very short of speech, avid and handsome, a most attractive and clean-looking man. He shot out questions and replies as one might bullets out of a gun. “Didy’seeDrake?” “What ‘d’esay?” “AnynewsfromBaker?” “Thedevily’say!” “Y’ don’tmeanit!”
I was moved to study him with the greatest care. Out of many anywhere, I told myself, I would have selected him as a pushing and promising and very self-centered person, but by no means disagreeable. Speaking of him later, as well as of Howley, my brother once said: “Y’see, Thee, New York’s the only place you could do a thing like this. This is the only place you could get fellows with their experience. Howley used to be with my old publisher, Woodward, and he’s the one that put me wise to the fact that Woodward was trimming me. And Haviland was a friend of his, working for Ditson.”
From the first, I had the feeling that this firm of which my brother was a part would certainly be successful. There was something about it, a spirit of victory and health and joy in work and life, which convinced me that these three would make a go of it. I could see them ending in wealth, as they did before disasters of their own invention overtook them. But that was still years away and after they had at least eaten of the fruits of victory.
As a part of this my initiation into the wonders of the city Paul led me into what he insisted was one of the wealthiest and most ornate of the Roman Churches in New York, St. Francis Xavier in Sixteenth Street, from which he was subsequently buried. Standing in this, he told me of some Jesuit priest there, a friend of his, who was comfortably berthed and “a good sport into the bargain, Thee, a bird.” However, having had my fill of Catholicism and its ways, I was not so much impressed, either by his friend or his character. But Sixth Avenue in this sunshine did impress me. It was the crowded center of nearly all the great stores, at least five, each a block in length, standing in one immense line on one side of the street. The carriages! The well-dressed people! Paul pointed out to me the windows of Altman’s on the west side of the street at Eighteenth and said it was the most exclusive store in America, that Marshall Field & Company of Chicago was as nothing, and I had the feeling from merely looking at it that this was true; it was so well-arranged and spacious. Its windows, in which selected materials were gracefully draped and contrasted, bore out this impression. There were many vehicles of the better sort constantly pausing at its doors to put down most carefully dressed women and girls. I marveled at the size and wealth of a city which could support so many great stores all in a row.
Because of the heat my brother insisted upon calling a hansom cab to take us to Fourteenth and Broadway, where we were to begin our northward journey. Just south of Union Square at Thirteenth Street was the old Star Theater of which he said: “There you have it. That used to be Lester Wallack’s Theater twenty years ago—the great Lester Wallack. There was an actor, my boy, a great actor! They talk about Mansfield and Barrett and Irving and Willard and all these other people today. All good, my boy, all good, but not in it with him, Theodore, not in it. This man was a genius. And he packed ’em too. Many a time I’ve passed this place when you couldn’t get by the door for the crowd.” And he proceeded to relate that in the old days, when he first came to New York, all the best part of the theatrical district was still about and below Union Square—Niblo’s, the old London on the Bowery, and what not.