“This is really the smart street now, Thee, this and a part of Fifth Avenue about Twenty-third. The really exclusive stores are coming in here. If you ever work in New York, as you will, you’ll want to know about these things. You’ll see more smart women in here than in any other shopping street,” and he called my attention to the lines of lacquered and be-furred and beplushed carriages, the harness of the horses aglitter with nickel and gilt4.
Passing Daly’s he said: “Now here, my boy, is a manager. He makes actors, he don’t hire them. He takes ’em and trains ’em. All these young fellows and girls who are making a stir,” and he named a dozen, among whom I noted5 such names as those of Maude Adams, Willie Collier, Drew and Faversham, “worked for him. And he don’t allow any nonsense. There’s none of that upstage stuff with him, you bet. When you work for him you’re just an ordinary employee and you do what he tells you, not the way you think you ought to do. I’ve watched him rehearse, and I know, and all these fellows tell the same story about him. But he’s a gentleman, my boy, and a manager. Everybody knows that when he finishes with a man or a woman they can act.”
At Thirty-third Street he waved his hand in the direction of the Waldorf, which was then but the half of its later size.
“Down there’s the Waldorf. That’s the place. That’s the last word for the rich. That’s where they give the biggest balls and dinners, there and at Delmonico’s and the Netherland.” And after a pause he continued: “Some time you ought to write about these things, Thee. They’re the limit for extravagance and show. The people out West don’t know yet what’s going on, but the rich are getting control. They’ll own the country pretty soon. A writer like you could make ’em see that. You ought to show up some of these things so they’d know.”
Youthful, inexperienced, unlettered, the whole scroll6 of this earthly wallow a mere7 guess, I accepted that as an important challenge. Maybe it ought to be shown up.... As though picturing or indicating life has ever yet changed it! But he, the genial8 and hopeful, always fancied that it might be so—and I with him.
When he left me this day at three or four, his interest ended because the wonders of Broadway had been exhausted9, I found myself with all the great strange city still to be explored. Making inquiry10 as to directions and distances, I soon found myself in Fifth Avenue at Forty-second Street. Here, represented by mansions11 at least, was that agglomeration12 of wealth which, as I then imagined, solved all earthly ills. Beauty was here, of course, and ease and dignity and security, that most wonderful and elusive13 thing in life. I saw, I admired, and I resented, being myself poor and seeking.
Fifth Avenue then lacked a few of the buildings which since have added somewhat to its impressiveness—the Public Library, the Metropolitan14 Museum façade at Eighty-second Street, as well as most of the great houses which now face Central Park north of Fifty-ninth Street. But in their place was something that has since been lost and never will be again: a line of quiet and unpretentious brownstone residences which, crowded together on spaces of land no wider than twenty-five feet, still had about them an air of exclusiveness which caused one to hesitate and take note. Between Forty-second and Fifty-ninth Street there was scarcely a suggestion of that coming invasion of trade which subsequently, in a period of less than twenty years, changed its character completely. Instead there were clubs, residences, huge quiet and graceful16 hotels such as the old Plaza17 and the Windsor, long since destroyed, and the very graceful Cathedral of St. Patrick. All the cross streets in this area were lined uniformly with brownstone or red brick houses of the same height and general appearance, a high flight of steps leading to the front door, a side gate and door for servants under the steps. Nearly all of these houses were closely boarded up for the summer. There was scarcely a trace of life anywhere save here or there where a servant lounged idly at a side gate or on the front steps talking to a policeman or a cabman.
At Fiftieth Street the great church on its platform was as empty as a drum. At Fifty-ninth, where stood the Savoy, the Plaza, and the Netherland, as well as the great home of Cornelius Vanderbilt, it was all bare as a desert. Lonely handsome cabs plupped dismally19 to and fro, and the father or mother of the present Fifth Avenue bus, an overgrown closed carriage, rolled lonesomely between Washington Square and One Hundred and Tenth Street. Central Park had most of the lovely walks and lakes which grace it today, but no distant skyline. Central Park West as such had not even appeared. That huge wall that breaks the western sky now was wanting. Along this dismal18 thoroughfare there trundled a dismal yellow horse-car trailing up a cobble-paved street bare of anything save a hotel or two and some squatter20 shanties21 on rocks, with their attendant goats.
But for all that, keeping on as far north as the Museum, I was steadily22 more and more impressed. It was not beautiful, but perhaps, as I thought, it did not need to be. The congestion23 of the great city and the power of a number of great names were sufficient to excuse it. And ever and anon would come a something—the Gould home at Sixty-first, the Havemeyer and Astor residences at Sixty-sixth and Sixty-eighth, the Lenox Library at Seventy-second—which redeemed24 it. Even the old red brick and white stone Museum, now but the central core of the much larger building, with its attendant obelisk25, had charm and dignity. So far I wandered, then took the bus and returned to my sister’s apartment in Fifteenth Street.
If I have presented all this mildly it was by no means a mild experience for me. Sensitive to the brevity of life and what one may do in a given span, vastly interested in the city itself, I was swiftly being hypnotized by a charm more elusive than real, more of the mind than the eye perhaps, which seized upon and held me so tensely nevertheless that soon I was quite unable to judge sanely26 of all this and saw its commonplace and even mean face in a most roseate light. The beauty, the hope, the possibilities that were here! It was not a handsome city. As I look back on it now, there was much that was gross and soggy and even repulsive27 about it. It had too many hard and treeless avenues and cross streets, bare of anything save stone walls and stone or cobble pavements and wretched iron lamp-posts. There were regions that were painfully crowded with poverty, dirt, despair. The buildings were too uniformly low, compact, squeezed. Outside the exclusive residence and commercial areas there was no sense of length or space.
But having seen Broadway and this barren section of Fifth Avenue, I could not think of it in a hostile way, the magnetism28 of large bodies over small ones holding me. Its barrenness did not now appall29 me, nor its lack of beauty irritate. There was something else here, a quality of life and zest30 and security and ease for some, cheek by jowl with poverty and longing31 and sacrifice, which gives to life everywhere its keenest most pathetic edge. Here was none of that eager clattering32 snap so characteristic of many of our Western cities, which, while it arrests at first, eventually palls33. No city that I had ever seen had exactly what this had. As a boy, of course, I had invested Chicago with immense color and force, and it was there, ignorant, American, semi-conscious, seeking, inspiring. But New York was entirely34 different. It had the feeling of gross and blissful and parading self-indulgence. It was as if self-indulgence whispered to you that here was its true home; as if, for the most part, it was here secure. Life here was harder perhaps, for some more aware, more cynical35 and ruthless and brazen36 and shameless, and yet more alluring37 for these very reasons. Wherever one turned one felt a consciousness of ease and gluttony, indifference38 to ideals, however low or high, and coupled with a sense of power that had found itself and was not easily to be dislodged, of virtue39 that has little idealism and is willing to yield for a price. Here, as one could feel, were huge dreams and lusts40 and vanities being gratified hourly. I wanted to know the worst and the best of it.
During the few days that I was permitted to remain here, I certainly had an excellent sip41. My brother, while associated with the other two as a partner, was so small a factor so far as his firm’s internal economy was concerned that he was not needed as more than a hand-shaker on Broadway, one who went about among vaudeville42 and stage singers and actors and song-composers and advertised by his agreeable personality the existence of his firm and its value to them. And it was that quality of geniality43 in him which so speedily caused his firm to grow and prosper44. Indeed he was its very breath and life. I always think of him as idling along Broadway in the summer time, seeing men and women who could sing songs and writers who could write them, and inducing them by the compelling charm of his personality, to resort to his firm. He had a way with people, affectionate, reassuring45, intimate. He was a magnet which drew the young and the old, the sophisticated and the unsophisticated, to his house Gradually, and because of him and his fame, it prospered46 mightily47, and yet I doubt if ever his partners understood how much he meant to them. His house was young and unimportant, yet within a year or two it had forged its way to the front, and this was due to him and none other. The rest was merely fair commercial management of what he provided in great abundance.
While he waited for his regular theatrical48 season to resume, he was most excellently prepared to entertain one who might be interested to see Broadway. This night, after dinner at my sister’s, he said, “Come on, sport,” and together, after promising49 faithfully to be back by midnight, we ambled50 forth51, strolling across Fifteenth Street to Sixth Avenue and then taking a car to Thirty-third Street, the real center of all things theatrical at the time. Here, at Broadway and Thirty-fifth, opposite the Herald building and the Herald Square Theater, stood the Hotel Aulic, a popular rendezvous52 for actors and singers, with whom my brother was most concerned. And here they were in great number, the sidewalks on two sides of the building alive with them, a world of glittering, spinning flies. I recall the agreeable summer evening air, the bright comforting lights, the open doors and windows, the showy clothes, the laughter, the jesting, the expectorating, the back-slapping geniality. It was wonderful, the spirit and the sense of happiness and ease. Men do at times attain53 to happiness, paradise even, in this shabby, noisome54, worthless, evanescent, make-believe world. I have seen it with mine own eyes.
And here, as in that more pretentious15 institution at Forty-second Street, the Metropole, my brother was at ease. His was by no means the trade way of a drummer but rather that of one who, like these others, was merely up and down the street seeing what he might. He drank, told idle tales, jested unwearyingly. But all the while, as he told me later, he was really looking for certain individuals who could sing or play and whom in this roundabout and casual way he might interest in the particular song or instrumental composition he was then furthering. “And you never can tell,” he said. “You might run into some fellow who would be just the one to write a song or sing one for you.”
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1
herald
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| vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎 | |
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playwright
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| n.剧作家，编写剧本的人 | |
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colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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scroll
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| n.卷轴，纸卷；(石刻上的)漩涡 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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mansions
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| n.宅第，公馆，大厦( mansion的名词复数 ) | |
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agglomeration
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| n.结聚，一堆 | |
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elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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pretentious
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| adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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plaza
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| n.广场，市场 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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dismally
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| adv.阴暗地，沉闷地 | |
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squatter
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| n.擅自占地者 | |
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shanties
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| n.简陋的小木屋( shanty的名词复数 )；铁皮棚屋；船工号子；船歌 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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congestion
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| n.阻塞，消化不良 | |
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redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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obelisk
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| n.方尖塔 | |
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sanely
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| ad.神志清楚地 | |
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repulsive
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| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
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magnetism
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| n.磁性，吸引力，磁学 | |
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appall
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| vt.使惊骇，使大吃一惊 | |
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zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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clattering
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的现在分词形式） | |
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palls
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| n.柩衣( pall的名词复数 )；墓衣；棺罩；深色或厚重的覆盖物v.（因过多或过久而）生厌，感到乏味，厌烦( pall的第三人称单数 ) | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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brazen
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| adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的 | |
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alluring
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| adj.吸引人的，迷人的 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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lusts
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| 贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式） | |
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sip
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| v.小口地喝，抿，呷；n.一小口的量 | |
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vaudeville
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| n.歌舞杂耍表演 | |
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geniality
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| n.和蔼，诚恳；愉快 | |
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prosper
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| v.成功，兴隆，昌盛；使成功，使昌隆，繁荣 | |
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45
reassuring
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| a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的 | |
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prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mightily
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| ad.强烈地；非常地 | |
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48
theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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49
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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50
ambled
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| v.（马）缓行( amble的过去式和过去分词 )；从容地走，漫步 | |
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51
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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52
rendezvous
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| n.约会，约会地点，汇合点；vi.汇合，集合；vt.使汇合，使在汇合地点相遇 | |
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53
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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54
noisome
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| adj.有害的，可厌的 | |
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