Principally, so much in the majority as to characterize it, men of affairs, country merchants, out-of-town visitors, with and without their womenkind, the New York audience to whom actor and clergyman alike make their appeal; while circling about in it, embroidered so to speak on its surface, is that other crowd—high fashion, artists, actors, distinguished visitors, wardmen, Bohemians, sporting people, thieves and confidence men—which also produces its effect, and lends its coloring and vivacity to the picture. The side streets, looking east at least, are respectable, but they are not brilliant. Fashion, Bohemia and fast life are, after all, what we have come to watch. And as fashion mostly cuts Broadway—where it used to live and promenade when Mr. N. P. Willis’ natty boots pattered about Fourteenth Street—at the first crossing, it is Bohemia and the “wise push” we will sup with.
In Broadway parlance, Bohemia means newspaper and theatrical people. And I venture to remind the ladies and gentlemen of the drama in presenting them in such a company, that I am painting a city nocturne, and may properly introduce Mr. Morgan, Mr. Beerbohm Tree, Father Ducey, dear man, in his cape overcoat, Al Smith leaning against the Gilsey House railing, or any other characteristic and familiar figure natural to the composition. No picture of Broadway would be complete, they will acknowledge, without them, and to use a metaphor I have before employed, they are certainly accustomed to occupy “the center of the stage” with dignity and elegance.
Anyway, they all come here, and I should think they would all love it. This part of Broadway is nicknamed the Rialto. Nowhere else are they taken so cordially and frankly by the hand. They lounge about it by day and win fame and fortune in its theaters at night. Nat Goodwin and his wife, Hackett and Mary Mannering—when they can meet—Sir Henry Irving, De Wolf Hopper, Miss Annie Russell, bowing to Charles Richman out of a cab, Amelia Bingham, Joseph Jefferson, whose only fault is that he isn’t immortal, and funny, rollicking Fay Templeton, humming a new coon song—old favorites and new ones, you may see them going to supper at the Lambs’ Club, the Players, the Waldorf, Delmonico’s, Sherry’s, any evening they are in town.
Broadway is darker. The theater lights are out. Only bars and apothecaries, shops and hotels, are brilliant. The opera is over, and carriages are whirling away toward Fifth Avenue, and tramcars crawling along in procession, packed to the platforms with gayly dressed passengers. Across the way from Macy’s huge dark store, the Herald presses are rushing off the biography of the day in sight of everybody, and no philosopher moralizes on that awful, tremendous record of four-and-twenty hours of a whole world’s work, play, crime, suffering, heroism, love, faith.
Our fast friends must tremble as they pass those windows, and remember the relentless, watchful eyes forever fixed on them. The ladies and gentlemen of this society dine at Shanley’s and Rector’s, and call supper lunch. Except that they are more painstakingly dressed, they don’t look very different from others. I have often thought that such a congregation might gather in Trinity Chapel, say, and be preached to by an innocent clergyman with a weary sense of the futility of trying to make such evidently virtuous persons penitent.
Should you like to really know them? They are thick about you on every hand. Drama and tragedy and pathos are in rehearsal now; and that old comedy of “A Fool and His Money.” Walk a few blocks with the night clerk of Wilson’s chemist shop. Get to know the bookmaker coming out of George Considine’s Metropole bar, chat with our acquaintance, the plainclothes man. Join that man-about-town, on his way to the Astoria Club. Masks will be torn off then, every actor will be seen as he is. That family coachman is a burglar just out of Auburn. That thin, alert gentleman in evening clothes is a gambler, getting a breath of air before taking his place behind Daly’s wheel. That pale-faced student is a reporter on his way to “hit the pipe.” That sweet-faced girl will be screaming drunk by two o’clock—the pale little man in mourning is the most notorious divekeeper in America. The one with the beautiful silver beard is a race-track owner over in New Jersey, and they call the red-headed Jew talking to “Honest John Kelly” the king of the gold-brick men. This well-dressed gentleman with the large hands is Corbett, the pugilist; that kindly-faced, handsome one, going into Tom O’Rourke’s, is a famous all-round sport. Notice that beautifully gowned, superbly handsome brunette who is getting out of a hansom at Martin’s Restaurant. She had a yataghan in her flat she brought from Paris with her, and she caught it up one night and drove it into her lover’s neck, and was acquitted on the ground that it was done in self-defense.
Do you want more detailed biographies, or is your acquaintance sufficiently extended? The owls on the Herald building are staring knowingly at the moon, who is coquettishly hiding her face behind a cloud. Mr. Greeley has fallen asleep in his chair, facing Mr. Dodge, after listening to that eternal long temperance speech which is never ended. I don’t think Broadway is amusing after midnight.
Let’s go to Brown’s and have some deviled kidneys and a mug of Bass.
