Mr. Shaniawski has been before in America, and his knowledge of American customs was very useful to us. He took upon himself the task of finding us a lodging. We went to an hotel called the Clarendon, a sort of boarding-house, situated in the 18th street, where big and small apartments are the same price, three dollars and a half for each, including breakfast, lunch and dinner; there is a bathroom to each room. The head waiter led us up the handsomely carpeted stairs to our apartment. The room was pleasant and cool, with pictures on the walls and a thick carpet.
We were just in time for an early lunch when we arrived at the hotel. Fruit was served to us before the meal, which ended with iced-tea. The American custom is having a vast number of small dishes, each counting separately.
All the men in America are clean-shaven and have the appearance of actors, and it seemed strange to me that one of the waiters who served at table-d’hôte, wore a big moustache. A law had just been promulgated forbidding the waiters in the restaurants to wear moustaches, but they all declared that they would obey only if their wages were increased. Having announced that ultimatum they left their patrons, and had thus their own way. The servants in this country are very highly paid, the waiters in our hotel received eighty dollars a month. They believe in the social equality of all human beings but do not seem to mind admitting that there is a class above their’s. They just condescend to wait upon us, and think they can demonstrate their equality by being as rude as possible. Dr. Pokrovski asked a waiter to close the window during dinner, and that uncivil man answered coolly: “Why don’t you do it yourself?” The day of our arrival happened to be on a Sunday, and the servants here are very scrupulous about keeping the Sabbath. Mrs. Serebriakoff called the chambermaid to take away a broken glass, and the girl, resenting the advent of visitors on a Sunday, replied impertinently that she did not work on Sundays. It was also impossible to have our boots cleaned at the hotel, and we had to go into the street for that operation.
Our consul came to call upon us with his wife, a smart young Californian with yellow locks, who looked like a pretty wax figure in a show-window. She doesn’t speak a word of Russian, though her little daughter, aged six, has had a Russian nurse since her very birth. The Olarowskis took us to a music hall on the top of a ten-storied house, lighted with different coloured lamps, from which you have a bird’s-eye view of the great city. The lift carried us to the roof of the big house, transformed into a garden. We entered a vast hall with a glass roof. It was most interesting and quite without the feeling that you might fall off.
Nearly all the houses in New York are twelve-storeyed, with terrace roofs which serve sometimes as play-grounds for school children. In the working quarters the municipality has organised Roof-Gardens, where the poor people can breathe a purer air than in their hovels. In Madison Square, one of the richest quarters of New York, a sculptor has arranged a study on his roof, and in the next house a sportsman has organised, at the height of ninety yards above the pavement, a big dog-kennel where he breeds bull-dogs. In Eighth’s Avenue a Protestant church with a belfry is perched on the roof of an immense building. The houses here are all divided into flats. In Broadway, the main street of New York, they are all built in different styles and architecture, and in the next street, on the contrary, the houses are all alike.
Next day we went to call on the Hollands, our Cairo friends, who live at Windsor Hotel. We started down Fifth Avenue, a street lined with solemn stately buildings with pillared porticoes, all of the self-same pattern. The height of the houses amazed me, some of them being from twenty to twenty-five stories high. The streets are mostly numbered and run in rows. The life in the streets is tremendous. There was an appalling thunder of trains rushing every minute above our heads.
Finally we got to the Windsor Hotel which, like all the big hotels, has its own telegraph and telephone offices, its milliner, hairdresser, etc. We were told at the office that the Hollands had gone the day before to Lake Mohawk. We sent a wire to tell them that we were here, and started back to our hotel by the “Elevated,” an electric suspended railway built upon iron struts above the houses, which cuts through New York in all directions. It made abrupt turnings, and rushed at a reckless pace over the roofs of the houses, or raced through tunnels beneath them. It is great fun looking through other people’s windows, and getting a peep into comedies and tragedies sometimes. The train suddenly stops short with a jerk that sends the passengers into a conglomerate struggling mass, and throws them into each other’s arms. The train brought us to the hotel with a flourish that precipitated me on the knees of my vis-a-vis, an odious man with a red nose.
The Hollands had wired that they were coming over by the night train, and early next morning they sent me a bandbox full of beautiful red roses—so enormous, they looked like peonies—with a note to ask us when we would receive them. The Hollands came to call on us in the afternoon. To meet their kind faces again was charming; the greetings between us were warm. I thought dear Mrs. Holland would never leave off kissing me.
The Hollands offered to drive us in their landau through Central Park. The beautiful weather had brought out all New York, driving, riding, walking. We returned by a lovely place called the Riverside Drive, a long road running along the banks of the Hudson, with charming houses looking straight out on the river, and bordered by trees on each side that spread their branches over us and made the roadway shady. Between the trees the river glistened like a silver ribbon.
On the 4th July, the day of the Anniversary of the Independence of America, we were wakened in the morning by crackers and rockets. In the afternoon the Hollands took us to Coney Island, a fashionable watering-place situated a few miles out of town. We took the tram to reach the port, and drove through streets bedecked with flags. We took places on board the Taurus, a pleasure steamer black with people going out for a boating picnic. The boat had a holiday air about it. The passengers were all workmen with their families, gay, noisy people all of them. On the stern a troupe of Neapolitans danced the tarantella. Leaning on the railing we admired the immense bay of New York, swarming with ships of different nationalities, amidst which we saw our Bourgogne on the point of leaving for Europe. From afar we heard the cannons saluting our Russian cruiser, the Admiral Nakhimoff, which was entering the port just then. The wind rose suddenly, and it took more than two hours before we could land at Manhattan Beach. At last we succeeded in dropping anchor. The boat was overcrowded, and all the people on the deck made a rush towards the stern, making the ship incline on one side, and I had to cling fast to Sergy’s arm not to be swept overboard.