At Home with the Jardines
L >> Lilian Bell >> At Home with the JardinesAnd the Angel must have quiet in which to write!
We discussed the situation, and resolved to take action. Move?
Certainly not! We had done our best in taking this apartment, and we
modestly felt that our best was not to be sneezed at. We would make
the other people move,--the impertinent people who had dared to produce
children off the premises, and then to introduce them ready-made in a
non-children apartment-house. Of course a landlord could not protect
himself against the home-grown article, so to speak, but he could
defend both himself and us against articles of foreign manufacture, and
so flagrantly, as evidenced by the names of these "made in Germany."
Other noises which stunned us were remediable by other means. For
example, the janitor of the apartment-house which stood next had a
pleasant little habit of three times a day emptying some dozen or more
metal garbage-cans in the stone-paved court, and as these with their
lids and handles merrily jingled back into place, a roar as if from a
boiler factory rose, reverberating between the high buildings until,
when it reached the sensitive ears of the Jardines, it created
pandemonium.
At such times the Angel used to look at me in dumb but helpless misery.
I tried bribing the janitor, but they changed so often I couldn't
afford it. Then, without a word to the Angel, I appealed to the Health
Department. I made a stirring plea. I set forth that not only our
health, but our lives (by which I meant our pocketbooks, because the
Angel could not write in a noise), were threatened, and I implored
protection.
An Irishman answered. God bless soft-hearted, pleasant-spoken
Irishmen! This one rescued us from a slow death by torture. He was
amenable to blarney. He got it. The result was that never again did
any of the serial of janitors, which ran continuously next door, empty
garbage-cans in the court.
Rendered jubilant by this victory, we confidently prepared to meet the
agents of our building. But before we could arrange this, Considine,
the novelist who had come to New York for the winter, called. He was
one of the Angel's dearest friends, and we greeted him with effusion.
"I've come to say good-bye," he said at once. "I'm off to-morrow for
my farm."
"For a visit?" I cried, unwilling to believe the worst.
"No, for good. I'm done. I'm finished. New York has put an end to
me!"
"Why, how do you mean?" we asked, in a breath.
"The noise! The blankety, blankety, et cetera noise of this ditto
ditto town! The remainder of these remarks will be sent in a plain,
sealed envelope upon application and the receipt of a two-cent stamp!"
The Angel and I looked at each other. We dared not speak.
"How--why--" I faltered at last.
It was all Considine needed--perhaps more than he needed--to set him
going.
"I came here under contract, as you know. I was behindhand in my work,
but I hoped that the inspiration I would receive from the society of my
fellow authors would give me an impetus I lacked in the country. There
I often have to spur myself to my work. Here I hoped to work more
steadily and with less effort. Ye gods!" He got up and strode around
the apartment. "Ye gods! What fallacies we provincials believe! I
was in heaven on my farm and didn't know it! And from that celestial
paradise of peace and quiet and tranquillity of nature, I deliberately
came to this--with a view of bettering my surroundings! When I think
of it--when I consider the money I have spent and the time I have
lost--" he stopped by reason of choking.
"Why, do you know," he began again, squaring around on the Angel, "I've
spent twenty thousand dollars on that apartment of mine, trying to make
it sound-proof so that I could make ten thousand by writing! I rented
the apartment below me--had to, in order to get a fellow out whose son
was learning the violin. I've bribed, threatened, enjoined, and at the
last a subway explosion of dynamite broke all the double windows and
mirrors, knocked down my Italian chandeliers, and--people tell me I
have no redress! Now they have started some kind of a drilling machine
in the next block that runs all night, and I can't sleep. New York to
live in? New York to work in? Why, I'd rather be a yellow dog in
Louisville than to be Mayor of New York!"
But before he could go the bell rang and Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie walked in,
so then Considine came back for ten minutes, and stayed two hours.
We told them what we had been discussing, and then we all took
comfortable chairs. Cigars and tall glasses with ice and decanters and
things that fizz were produced, and, as Jimmie said, "we had such a
hammerfest on the City of New York as the old town hadn't experienced
in many a long day."
But then, when you come to think of it, didn't she deserve it?
In New York the elevated trains thundering over your head and darkening
the street, surface electric cars beneath them being run at lightning
speed, the street paved with cobblestones over which delivery carts are
being driven at a pace which is cruelty to animals, form a combination
of noises compared to which a battery of artillery in action is a
lullaby, and which I defy any other city in the world to equal. A hen
crossing a country lane in front of a carriage, squawking and
wild-eyed, is a picture of my state of mind whenever I have a street to
cross. Yesterday there were two street-car accidents and one runaway,
which I saw with my own eyes in an hour's outing, and I had no sooner
locked myself in my sixth-floor apartment with a sigh of relief at
being saved from sudden death when a crash came in the street below,
and by hanging out of the window I saw that an electric car had struck
a plate-glass delivery wagon in the rear, upset it, smashed the glass,
thrown the horse on his side, and so pushed them, horse, cart, and all,
for a quarter of a block before the car could be stopped. I shrieked
loud and long, but in the noise of the city no one heard me, and all
the good it did was to ease my own mind.
New York is a good place to come to, to be amused, or to spend money,
but as a city of terrific and unnecessary noises, there is not one in
the world which can compare to it.
Scissors-grinders are allowed to use a bugle--a bugle, mind you, well
known to be the most far-reaching sound of all sounds, and intended to
carry over the roar of even artillery, else why is it used in a battle?
So this bugling begins about seven in the morning, and penetrates the
most hermetically sealed apartments. Then the street-cleaners, the
"White Wings," garbage and ash-can men begin their deadly rounds, and
the clang of dashing empty metal cans on the stone-paved courts and
areas reverberates between high buildings until one longs for the
silence of the grave.
The noise and shock of blasting rock is incessant. They are blasting
all along the Hudson shore and in Central Park. It sounds like
cannonading, and the succession of explosions sometimes wakens one
before dawn or after midnight with the frightened conviction that a
foreign fleet is upon us to force us to reduce the tariff. The
blasting occasionally goes a little too far, and breaks windows or
brings down pieces of the ceiling. Last week it caved in a house and
broke some arms and legs of the occupants. One woman went into
convulsions, and was rigid for hours from the shock, but as nobody was
killed no action was taken.
Old clothes men are permitted a string of bells on their carts, which
all jangle out of tune and at once, while street-cries of all
descriptions abound in such numbers and of such a quality that I often
wonder that the very babies trundled by in their perambulators do not
go into spasms with the confusion of it.
Considine and I stated all this with some excusable heat while the
Angel was serving our guests with what their different tastes demanded.
It always gives me a feeling of unholy joy seeing Mrs. Jimmie trying to
join her husband in his low pleasures. She regarded it as a religious
duty to take beer when he did while we were abroad, but in England and
here he takes whiskey and soda, so as champagne is not always on tap in
people's houses, sometimes she tries to emulate his example.
Have you ever seen anybody take cod-liver oil? Well, that is the look
which comes over Mrs. Jimmie's face when the odour of whiskey assails
her aristocratic nostrils. Nevertheless she valiantly sits the whole
evening through with her long glass in her hand. The ice melts and the
whole mess grows warm and nauseous, but she hangs on, sipping at it
with an air of determined enjoyment painful to see. If she did as she
would like, she would either hold her nose and gulp it all down at once
or else she would fling glass and all out of the window.
In vain we all try to make it easy for her to refuse. If we don't
offer it she looks hurt, so the kindest thing we can do is to pretend
we notice nothing, and to let her believe that she is her husband's
boon companion, since that is her futile ambition.
Jimmie crossed his feet, blew a cloud of smoke into the air, and
carried on the attack by saying:
"London, Paris, and Berlin all put together cannot furnish the noise of
New York, while the roar of Chicago is the stillness of a cathedral
compared to it. And most of it, I may be allowed to state, is entirely
unnecessary. The papers are full of accounts of nervous collapses, the
sanatoria are crowded, while I never heard as much about insanity in
the whole of my life elsewhere as I have heard in New York in one year.
There is not a day in which the papers do not contain some mention of
insane wards in the city hospitals, but people here are so accustomed
to it, that no one except a newcomer like yourself would be likely to
notice it."
Considine nodded.
"I lay fully one-half of it to the incessant noises which prey upon
even strong nerves for nine months of the year without our realizing
them," he said, "and these so work upon the nervous system that it only
takes a slight shock to bring about a collapse, and then no weeks in
the country, no physic, no tonics can avail. It means a rest cure or
the insane ward. It is typical of our American civilization. New
Yorkers are the most nervous people I ever saw. The children are
nervous; little street urchins, who should not know what nerves are,
tremble with nervous tension, while the exodus to the country on Friday
nights fairly empties the town. Everybody wants to 'get away from the
noise,' and it is an undisputed fact that men who have no right to
allow themselves the luxury take every Saturday as a holiday, so that
in many lines of business so many men are known to be out of town on
Saturdays that business is practically suspended on that day except for
routine work. This is true to such an extent in no other city that I
know of, and why? It is the noise. Distracted nature clamours for a
cessation of it, and the unfortunate who cannot afford the luxury must
pay the penalty. It is a question for the Board of Health."
"Poor old chap!" said Jimmie. "It comes hard enough on us common
people, but how writing chaps like you and Aubrey stand it, I can't
see. I should think you'd find New York the very devil to write in."
"In some ways we do," said the Angel, "but it has its compensations.
For example, not even Paris is so beautifully situated as New York.
The tall office buildings in the lower end of town look down upon river
sights and shipping with a broad expanse of blue water and green shores
which a man would cross the ocean to see on the other side. The Hudson
beautifies the West Side. Central Park is in my eyes the most
beautiful park I ever saw. With its rocks and rolling greens, its
trees and wild flowers, it forms a spot of loveliness that makes in the
midst of the hot, rushing, busy city a dream of soothing repose.
Washington Heights is a crowning wilderness looking down upon the city
from Fort George, while the Sound and a glimpse of the village beyond
seen through the faint blue haze of distance lend a touch of fairylike
enchantment. The Jersey shore and the Palisades are one long drawn out
joy, so that, turn where you will, you find New York beautiful."
"Then, too," said Mrs. Jimmie, speaking for the first time, "New York
is old, and say what you will you feel the charm of the established,
and it gives you a sense of satisfaction to realize that you can't
detect the odour of varnish and new paint. New York has got beyond it,
and has begun to take on the gray of age."
"The churches show this," I cut in. "They are beautiful
stepping-places in the rush of city life. They cool and steady, and
their history and traditions form a restful contrast to the bustle of
the marketplace."
"But as to those who worship in these beautiful spots," said Considine,
"it is safe to say that church parade in Fifth Avenue is an even
smarter spectacle than church parade in Hyde Park, for American women
have an air, a carriage, and a taste in dress which English women as a
race can never acquire. In Hyde Park on Sunday morning, during the
season, one will see half a dozen beauties whose clothes are Parisian
and the loveliness of whose whole effect almost takes the breath away,
but the general run of the other women makes one want to close one's
eyes. In America the average woman is lovely enough to make each one
worth looking at, while the word 'frump,' which is continually useful
in England, might almost be dropped from the American language.
"As to manners in New York," he went on, "well, patriotic as I am,
American manners in public in any city almost make me long for the
outward politeness and inward insincerity of the Gallic nations.
Russians and Poles are the only ones I have observed to be alike both
in public and in private. In New York street-car etiquette or the
etiquette of any public conveyance is something highly interesting from
its variety of selfishness and rudeness."
"That is true," I said, "New York manners are seldom aggressively rude,
except on the elevated trains. In other cities you are pushed about,
walked over, elbowed aside, and often bodily hurt in crowds of their
own selfish making. Not so in New York. Civilization has gone a step
further here. In surface cars men never step on you, but they gently
step ahead of you and take the seat you are aiming for, and if they can
sit sidewise and occupy one and a half seats, and if you beg two of
them to move closer together and let you have the remaining space, the
two men may rise, one nearly always does and takes off his hat and begs
you to have his place. Then all the eyes in the car are fixed on
you--not reprovingly, or smilingly, or in derision or reproach, but
earnestly, as if you form a social study which it might be worth their
while to investigate. Never once during a year's observance of
surface-car phenomena have I seen a row of luxuriously seated people
make a movement to give place to a new-comer, no matter how old or how
well gowned she may be. Even ladies will sometimes give their seats to
each other. But they won't 'move up.'"
"In Denver," said Jimmie, "I once heard a conductor call out 'The gents
will please step forward and the ladies set closter.' If I knew where
that man was I would try to get him a position with the Metropolitan,
for most of them feel as a conductor said here in New York when I
jumped on him for not obeying my signal, 'Schmall bit do _I_ care!'"
"Then the cars themselves," I cried, "Aren't they the most awful
things! I can earnestly commend the surface cars of New York as the
most awkward and uncomfortable to climb in and out of that I have ever
seen. I use the word 'climb' advisedly, as the step is so high that
one must take both hands to hoist oneself, while the conductor is
generally obliged to reach down and seize the ambitious woman by the
arm to assist her. The bell rings while you are still on the lower
step; the conductor says, 'Step lively, please;' the car attains its
maximum of speed at one jump; the conductor puts his dirty hand on your
white silk back and gives you a forward shove, and you plunge into the
nearest seat, apologizing to the people on each side of you for having
sat in their laps. Then comes a cry, 'Hold fast,' and around a curve
you go at a speed which throws people down, and on one occasion I saw a
woman pitched from her seat.
"The Boston street railway system is the most perfect of any American
city that I know of. There they pursue such a leisurely course that a
Boston woman never rises from her seat until the car has come to a full
stop. In fact, Bee and I were identified as strangers in town by the
husband of our friend who met us at the terminus of one of the
street-car lines, with his carriage. His never having seen us, and
approaching us without hesitation, naturally led us to ask how he knew
us. He answered:
"'Oh, I saw you walking through the car before it reached the corner
and standing on the platform when it stopped, so I said to myself,
"There they are!"'"
"I can easily believe you," said Considine, "but in saying that the
etiquette of any public conveyance in New York is interesting from its
varieties of selfishness, oughtn't you to confine your statement to
surface-cars, elevated roads, and ferry-boats, and oughtn't you to make
an exception of that dignified relic of antiquity, the Fifth Avenue
stage? The most uncomfortable vehicle going, yet let me give the angel
his due--in a stage people do move up; everybody waits on everybody
else; hands fare; rings for change, and pays all of the old-fashioned
courtesies which went from a busy city life with the advent of the
conductor, the autocrat of ill manners and indifference."
"Superstition evidently does not obtain in New York on one subject at
least," said Aubrey, "and that is the bad luck supposing to accrue from
crossing a funeral procession. Never in any other city in the world
have I seen such rudeness exhibited toward the following of the dead to
their last resting-place as I have seen in New York. The beautiful
custom in Catholic countries not only of giving them the right of way,
but of the men removing their hats while the procession passes, has
resolved itself into a funeral procession going on the run; the driver
of the hearse watching his chance and fairly ducking between trucks and
surface-cars, jolting the casket over the tracks until I myself have
seen the wreaths slip from their places, and sometimes for five or ten
minutes the hearse separated from its following carriages by a
procession of vehicles which the policeman at the crossing had
permitted to interfere. Such a proceeding is a disgrace to our boasted
civilization. We are not yet too busy nor too poor to allow our
business to pause for a moment to let the solemn procession of the dead
pass uninterrupted and in dignity to its last resting-place. Such
consideration would permit the hearse to be driven at a reasonably slow
pace in keeping with the mournful feelings of its followers. As it is
now, New York funerals go at almost the pace of automobiles."
"My brother once told me," I said, "that I was so slow that some day I
would get run over by a hearse. Not being an acrobat, that fate may
yet overtake me in New York and yet be no disgrace to my activity."
"I am more afraid of automobiles," said Considine, shaking his head,
"than I am of what I shall get in the next world. I wouldn't own one
or even ride in one to save myself from hanging. I always 'screech,'
as Faith says, when my cab meets one."
"You don't know how quickly they can be stopped, Considine," said
Jimmie.
"That may be," retorted Considine, "but are you going to pad your
broughams and put fenders on your cab horses?"
"I was in an electric cab not long ago," I said, "and a bicyclist rode
daringly in front of us. In crossing the trolley-tracks, his bicycle
naturally slackened a little, and my careful chauffeur brought the
machine to a dead stop. Result that I was pitched out over the
dashboard and barely saved myself from landing on my head.
"When I was gathered up and put back I asked the man why he stopped so
suddenly (I admit that it was a foolish question, but as I am always
one who asks the grocer if his eggs are fresh, I may be pardoned for
this one), and he answered: 'Well, did you want me to kill that man?'
I replied that of the two alternatives I would infinitely have
preferred to kill the man to being killed myself,--a reply which so
offended the dignity of my Jehu that he charged me double. I never did
get on very well with cab-drivers."
Jimmie laughed. He was remembering the time I knocked a Paris cabman's
hat off with my parasol to make him stop his cab. My methods are
inclined to be a little forceful if I am frightened.
"But New York is a city of resources," I continued. "There is always
somewhere to go! New York only wakes up at night and the streets
present as brilliant a spectacle as Paris, for until the gray dawn
breaks in the sky the streets are full of pleasure-seekers; cabs and
private carriages flit to and fro; the clubs, restaurants, and
supper-rooms are full to overflowing, the lights flare, and the
ceaseless whirl of America's greatest city goes on and on. And nobody
ever looks bored or tired as they do in England. We are all having a
good time, and we don't care who knows it. I love New York when it is
time to play."
"Well, we've about done up the old town to-night," said Jimmie, as they
prepared to leave. "She has hardly a leg to stand on."
"She deserves it," said Considine, gloomily. "I'm off. I'm about to
desert and go back to my cabbages. New York won't let you work. She
won't help you. She won't protect you. She mocks you. She laughs in
your face. I'd rather die than try to work here!"
During every word of this impassioned speech the Angel and I had been
growing colder and colder. We could see ourselves just where Considine
had found himself--driven out of New York by reason of its abominable
noise.
"And the worst of it is," went on Considine, "is that most of this
noise is so unnecessary. It comes from--"
A terrific crash came from down-stairs. Three doors slammed. Then
some one screamed shrilly. Considine gazed with starting eyes at the
jingling globes and glasses and actually lost a little colour.
"What is it?" he whispered.
"It is nothing," said the Angel, with a wave of the hand, "but our
little friends below stairs. Our neighbour is blessed with five
charming little olive-branches, who have versatile tastes in athletics,
and are bubbling over with animal spirits. We think privately that
they are the meanest little devils that ever cursed an apartment-house,
but their noise is dear to their parents, and they would not allow it
when we fain would boil the children alive or beat them with bed-slats."
Jimmie laughed heartlessly, but Considine took his head between his
hands.
"They have just illustrated what I was going to say. Nobody has any
regard for the rights of others. Peddlers are allowed horns, and
cornets, and strings of bells. Why not allow them to send up poisoned
balloons to explode in your open windows, and thus call attention to
their wares? I wouldn't object a bit more! Why do parents allow such
noises? Have you ever remonstrated with the mother?"
"Oh, yes," said the Angel. "One day Faith called and apologized to
Mrs. Gottlieb, but begged to know if she might not take the children
out herself in order to let me finish a chapter. But Mrs. Gottlieb was
justly incensed at any one daring to object to the healthful sports of
her little brood, and said: 'Mrs. Jardine, my children are in their own
apartment, and I shall allow them to make all the noise they wish.'"
"And the next day," I broke in, excitedly, "she bought the three girls
tin horns and the boys drums!"
Considine ground his teeth.
"If our wicked ways of life demanded that each of us should bear some
horrible affliction, but Providence had mitigated the sentence by
allowing us to choose our own form of mutilation," he said, slowly,
"instead of giving up an arm or a leg or an eye, I would give up both
ears and say, 'Lord, make me deaf!' For, much as I love music and the
sound of my friends' voices, I believe that I could give up all
conversation, and for ever deny myself to Grieg and Beethoven and
Wagner rather than stand the daily, hourly torture of the street sounds
of a great city."
He looked around at us and real tears stood in his eyes.
"Do you know," said the Angel, answering the look in his friend's eyes,
"I believe no one on earth understands the anguish those of us who
compose suffer from noise. It is not nervousness which causes us this
anguish. It is the creating spirit,--the power of the man who brings
words to life in literature or who brings tones to life in music. It
is part of the artistic temperament, and if I ever saw a child start
and shake and go white at a sudden noise, I should lay my hand on the
little chap's head and say to his mother: 'Take care of that child's
brain, for in it lies the power of the creator of something great.
Teach him above everything self-expression that he may not labour as
too many do, yet labour in vain.'"