One of the most desperate characters in the City

Over the years I've devoted several posts to the colorful early history of Manhattan's Water Street Mission, an institution that was founded in 1872 by reformed convict Jerry McAuley (and which still exists, though under a different name). Above is a little handout card from the mission that can be fairly precisely dated to 1882-84, after McAuley had moved on to start a second mission further uptown.

According to Samuel Hadley's Down in Water Street, McAuley's immediate successor or co-successor was the John O'Neil whose name appears on the card, but O'Neil was only in charge briefly before giving up the helm to one J. F. Shorey, who was already in place as superintendent by November 1884. Hadley himself took charge in 1886. Below is the floral design on the other side of the card.

There doesn't seem to be much other information available on the O'Neils. The only significant source I've found is the New York Times obituary from 1879 (below) for a Mrs. John O'Neil "who identified herself for years with Jerry McAuley's Water-Street Mission." Here we learn that her husband John, who apparently survived her, had been a career criminal and "one of the most desperate characters in the City" before his eventual reformation. He might not have been cut out for the task of superintending the mission, but he seems to have settled down to a productive life.

Around the same time there was another John O'Neil in New York City who was notorious for criminal activities, specifically burglary, but whose very recognizable modus operandi was a clever con involving pawn shop tickets. One of his arrests came just a few weeks after the death of the Water Street Mrs. O'Neil, but there's no reason to suspect that the two men were one and the same. The website Professional Criminals of America — REVISED, based on an 1886 volume devoted to the topic, has a photo and details of the activities of the unreformed O'Neil.

Previous Water Street Mission posts:

The Madonna of Cherry Hill
Death of a Salesman
A Manhattan Mission
Cassie Burns
The Water Street Mission, Revisited
Tracts (2): Jerry McAuley's Story

Thanksgiving in the Five Points (1852)

In the 1850s, the Five Points area in lower Manhattan, a now obliterated slum occupying the area adjoining what is now the Foley Square district and Chinatown, had the reputation -- no doubt to some extent exaggerated -- as the most squalid and depraved neighborhood in New York. The missionary ladies of the Five Points Mission, when not inveighing against drinking, Roman Catholicism, and other perils, organized an annual feast for the children of the mission school and as many of the other local denizens as they could feed. The following description is from The Old Brewery and the New Mission House, by the Ladies of the Mission; New York, Stringer & Townsend, 1854. The feast was held in a large tent in a park called Paradise Square.

The morning of Thanksgiving dawned in cloudless beauty, and as the day advanced, not a shadow dimmed the horizon. The cool, pure atmosphere, and the glowing sunshine, seemed to inspire every heart with courage.

We met in the office of the Old Brewery, formerly the liquor store of the establishment. This was a low, long room, with cracked and stained walls, its only furniture, besides the Missionary's bookcase, being some benches, and the boxes of clothing supplied by our kind friends from abroad. Provisions began to arrive and soon it presented a most ludicrous aspect. Turkeys, chickens, and meats of every kind mingled in sweet confusion with cakes, pies, fruits, &c. — evergreens on the floor, crockery on the window-sills and benches, huge piles of clothing waiting for distribution, visitors pouring in, childish faces peeping through every window and open door — commands, opinions, directions issuing from every quarter.

The tent is sixty feet in diameter, and very lofty. It is circular in form, and around it were tiers of seats, meeting at a small platform, where the speakers stood, at the temperance meetings, and on the Sabbath, to preach.

Eleven o'clock arrived, and notice was given that the tables in the tent were ready for the ladies. The seats had all been removed, and four tables, nearly the length of the tent, and about three feet wide, had been arranged, two on either side of the furnace, leaving wide passages between for the visitors. Soon the evergreens were festooned around by the gentlemen, then the floor was strewed with clean straw, and table-cloths of white muslin laid over the tables. By this time, hundreds of ragged, dirty children, had collected around the tent and Brewery. The food, all gathered in the Brewery, had to be removed to the tent. A door-keeper was stationed at each place, a passage-way cleared, and then ladies and gentlemen were transformed into carriers and waiters, (we could not trust any of the little rebels to help, though we had plenty of offers.) As they passed through rank and file of the hungry watchers, loud cheers were given for each successive turkey, and three long and loud for a whole pig with a lemon in his mouth, and it was difficult to conclude whether it was most appropriate to cry over the want displayed, or laugh over the temporary plenty provided.

During the time of these preparations, others of a different character were transpiring. The ladies were trying to select, first our Sunday school children, and next any who seemed hopeful. These were washed and dressed, and then each received a ticket which admitted them to the Mission-room, where friends received and entertained them. In the tent was a scene of activity — gentlemen carving the meats, ladies cutting the pies and cakes, and forming them in towering pyramids, the younger girls filling paper bags with candies and fruit, workmen hanging the lamps, others filling a large wicker-stand with dolls and toys of various kinds. At half past four all was ready. On our tables were sixty turkeys, with beef, ham and tongue, in proportion, and sundry chickens, geese, &c. Pies, cakes, bread, and biscuit, celery and fruit, and candy pyramids filled the slight intervals, and the whole presented an appearance inviting to the most fastidious appetites. Plates and cups were arranged around for more than three hundred; the lamps were lighted, and the signal given. Hundreds of visitors stood in silent expectation, and in a moment the sound of childish voices was heard, and they entered in regular procession singing —

"The morn of hope is breaking,
All doubt now disappears,
For the Five Points are waking
To penitential tears; [..]"

They took the circuit of the tent, and were then arranged, standing around the tables. They stood, with folded hands, while all sang the doxology, and the Missionary asked a blessing upon the occasion. Not a hand was raised, not a voice was heard, until the ladies and gentlemen who had charge of the tables supplied their hungry visitors with food. Then all was glad commotion, and then was the time for joyous tears. Three hundred and seventy poor, neglected, hapless children, placed for an hour in an atmosphere of love and gladness, practically taught the meaning of Christian kindness, wooed and won to cling to those whose inmost hearts were struggling in earnest prayer for grace and wisdom to lead them unto God. [...] They ate and drank without restraint until all were satisfied, then again formed and commenced singing. In the central aisle was placed the stand containing the toys and cornucopias of candy, and another filled with oranges and apples. By these, two ladies were seated. The children marched by them, in as much order as the dense crowd would permit, singing as they went, "We belong to this band, hallelujah," and in each hand the ladies placed a gift as they passed, until all were supplied. Then all the children left the tent.

There was now an interval of a few moments. The tables were hastily replenished, and then notice was given to the visitors, that the company now about to assemble were the "outsiders," about whom we knew nothing, save that they were poor and wretched, and all were warned to take care of their watches and pocket-books.

They came in scores, nay in hundreds; they rushed in and surrounded the tables, men, women, children, ragged, dirty, forlorn. [...] And the children who accompanied them, miniature likenesses, both physically and morally. Alas! alas!

"It needed no prophetic eye to see
How many yet must the same ruin share."

And we could scarcely hope to snatch these from the vortex. We spoke to them words of kindness and encouragement, and they partook until not a fragment was left, and then quietly left the tent.

More than a half-century later, in 1904, the Five Points Mission was still organizing Thanksgiving dinners, by then for more than a thousand children of the Lower East Side.

Update (2013): Below is a solicitation for donations for the mission's 1867 Thanksgiving Dinner. The return mail envelope is addressed to the Rev. James Newton Shaffer (1811-1901), who served for thirteen years as the organization's superintendent.

Dear Friend : —

We are making arrangements for our usual
THANKSGIVING DINNER
for the Children of this well-known poor neighborhood.

May we ask you to enclose to us in the directed envelope a contribution to this object? If more than enough for the Dinner is received, it shall be faithfully used in providing for the sick and poor as far as it will go, through the winter.

You are cordially invited to visit the Mission, and acquaint yourself with its work and its success.

Respectfully,
J. N. Shaffer,
Superintendent.

(Posted 2010 and at various times since.)

Coming Attractions

What I'll be reading this Fall: Mike Wallace's Greater Gotham, the long-awaited sequel to Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, the definitive history of the city that Wallace (no relation to the CBS correspondent) co-wrote with Edwin G. Burrows and published in 1999. Though slated to be slightly shorter than the first installment (which ran, with index, to nearly 1,400 pages), this follow-up covers a span of a mere twenty-one years — which, as it happens, corresponds fairly exactly to the period in the city's history that interests me most. Good news, even if it does leave one wondering when — if ever — the third installment will appear. A release date of September or October is projected for this one.

Also on the horizon: Harry Mathews's last novel, The Solitary Twin, is scheduled to be published by New Directions in March 2018.

City of Dreams

I would have preferred to write about Tyler Anbinder's superb new book about "immigrant New York" under happier circumstances, and view it as a measured celebration of the way the city has been shaped and enriched (though not without controversy) by successive waves of migrants, but as things stand it may read more like an elegy. But on second hand, I suspect not; whatever the stupidity and vindictiveness of the politics favored by our appalling president-elect and his legions, New York City will no more cease to draw migrants — legal or otherwise — than water will cease to flow downhill.

I don't want to be unfair to Anbinder and suggest that his book is a political tract. In fact, except for a few pages at the end (which strike me as well-reasoned and fair-minded), he doesn't really wade into questions of what US policy towards migrants ought to be. Instead he has done something far more important: he has written a thorough, authoritative, balanced, and readable narrative account of immigration to New York, giving some attention to the circumstances that led people to emigrate from their native countries, but far more to how they lived and how their presence made the city what it was and is, for better and (occasionally, at least) perhaps for worse. I'm sure exception will be taken to some parts of his account, especially by people with a vested interest in denying the truth about the country's past, but I think his accomplishment will stand along side books like Burrows and Wallace's Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (which it supplements and in some ways extends, since the promised sequel to the latter has not appeared).

One of Anbinder's key points is that nativism is nothing new; many of the same anti-immigrant arguments used today were trotted out against Irish Catholics, Eastern European Jews, Italian-Americans, and other now-established groups. Nor was it without its ironies: some of the most principled opponents of slavery were unrelenting anti-Catholic bigots, while immigrants made up much of the violent rabble responsible for the infamous Draft Riots of 1863. Then as now, immigration has been surrounded by controversy, exploitation, and sporadic violence.

Immigration to New York, largely unrestricted for much of the 19th century, dropped sharply in the 1920s due to developments on the national political scene; the evidence seems to suggest that the city suffered as a result of that curtailment. Today the city is vibrant and prosperous (if markedly unequal), in part as a result of new blood. What will happen in the years to come is uncertain, but I suspect that if the city staves off decline it will do so in large measure due to newcomers.

Tyler Anbinder is the author of two previous books, a fine one on New York's much-maligned Five Points neighborhood, and a study (which I plan to read) of the nativist Know Nothing Party of the 1850s.

Death and Doom

Herman Melville:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Moby-Dick

Joseph Mitchell:

Every now and then, seeking to rid my mind of thoughts of death and doom, I get up early and go down to Fulton Fish Market. I usually arrive around five-thirty, and take a walk through the two huge open-fronted market sheds, the Old Market and the New Market, whose fronts rest on South Street and whose backs rest on piles in the East River. At that time, a little while before the trading begins, the stands in the sheds are heaped high and spilling over with forty to sixty kinds of finfish and shellfish from the East Coast, the West Coast, the Gulf Coast, and half a dozen foreign countries. The smoky riverbank dawn, the racket the fishmongers make, the seaweedy smell, and the sight of this plentifulness always give me a feeling of well-being, and sometimes they elate me. I wander among the stands for an hour or so. Then I go into a cheerful market restaurant named Sloppy Louie's and eat a big, inexpensive, invigorating breakfast—a kippered herring and scrambled eggs, or a shad-roe omelet, or split sea scallops and bacon, or some other breakfast specialty of the place.

Up in the Old Hotel

(Images from the South Street Seaport archives.)

The Water Street Mission, Revisited

This little "Manual of the Water Street Mission" in New York City was published in 1880, and seems to have served both as an introduction for prospective clients and as the mission's annual report. The founder of the mission, a onetime "river rat" and reformed alcoholic named Jerry McAuley, was still alive at the time. Following his death in 1884 a number of subsequent publications would keep track of the mission's activities, including the Rev. R. M. Offord's Jerry McAuley: His Life and Work (1885), Samuel H. Hadley's Down in Water Street (1902), and Mrs. S. May Washburn's "But, Until Seventy Times Seven": The Story of the McAuley Water Street Mission (1936).

The image at the top of this post shows the pamphlet's very nice engraved frontispiece; the cover, which sports another engraving, is shown below. Neither image is credited.

Laid inside my copy, but definitely later in date, I found the gatefold photograph below, which bears the caption "This photograph was taken by Mr. Thomas Savage Clay, and shows the class of men from which we get our converts." A cropped version of the same image is reproduced in "But, Until Seventy Times Seven."

Previous Water Street Mission posts:

The Madonna of Cherry Hill
Death of a Salesman
A Manhattan Mission
Cassie Burns

Cassie Burns

The first snows of December haven't yet fallen on the dirty streets of lower Manhattan, but already there's a chill in the air. The photographer, shifting the legs of his tripod and adjusting the camera for just the right view, shudders under his dark frock. It's an overcast morning without much shadow. The little cluster of urchins have observed his preparations, asking him questions and begging him to take their picture. He has waved them off at first but finally agrees, if they will only stand without moving where he tells them to stand, drawing the eye down from that dead expanse of exposed wall. He has other sites to shoot today and can't waste too much time.

A few men, loitering outside the mission or doing business in the shop that pays cash for "old books, newspapers, pamphlets," have been attracted by the commotion and stand in the background, curious but by old habit loath to draw too much attention to themselves. Along the fence there are posters advertising the plebeian entertainments of the week of December 19th — the Windsor, Huber's Museum, the annual ball in honor of John P. Kenney, and Bartholomew's Equine Paradox — but already one of the posters has had patches of paper torn away by the wind or vandals.

The girl lives a few blocks behind where the photographer makes his preparations, at New Chambers and Cherry Streets, an intersection that today no longer exists. Her name is Cassie Burns. She has dark blue eyes and has just turned thirteen, but she's small for her age; there's TB in the family. Wearing an oatmeal skirt, she stands a bit apart from the boys, the usual playmates she watches over almost like a mother. Womanhood is already inexorably separating her fate from theirs. They will be factory workers or soldiers or will join the drunks that haunt the mission; she will have the harder path of motherhood, struggle, lonely old age.

The children, hunched up against the cold in their worn coats, finally settle themselves enough for the photographer to begin. Only after the fact does he notice that two solitary standing figures, one on either side a few yards away, have left ghostly impressions on the glass. The image is issued as a lantern slide bearing the title "N.Y. City — Homes and Ways 62. McAuley Mission, Water St."

✵

The above isn't a "true story," in that I don't know it to be true, but who knows how far it is from the mark? There really was a Cassie Burns in the neighborhood of Water Street and Cherry Hill when this picture was made, in the first decade of the 20th century. It's highly unlikely but not impossible that the girl — if it really even is a girl — is her, but she undoubtedly knew this block well and may well have played with the children shown here. The real Cassie Burns, it is said, would go on to have nine children of her own.

Lost at Sea

Joseph E. Corrigan, the city magistrate who presided over the farcical legal proceedings reported in my last post, was a prominent New York City jurist who later rose to be chief magistrate and, in 1931, was named by Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt to be judge of the Court of General Sessions. The nephew of Archbishop of New York Michael Corrigan, he was born in 1874 and seems to have died in 1935. He presided over a number of celebrated cases, including at least one involving birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, waged a public campaign against crime and municipal corruption, and earned a reputation as an amateur athlete. (The New York Times of February 9, 1913, reports, however, that his baseball team, the Strong Arms, received a "drubbing" from Magistrate J. Frederic Kernochan's Wanderers in an indoor game played on a converted tennis court. Corrigan played third base.)

But more about Joseph Corrigan another time, perhaps. When I first looked up his name, one of the things that immediately turned up was a horrifying story involving the death at sea of his wife, Margaret Stone Corrigan, in January 1916. Mrs. Corrigan, aged 34, had been returning to New York on board the SS Rochambeau after an extended sojourn in Europe. Suffering from what the Times called "an attack of melancholia and continued ill health," she flung herself, unseen, into the waters of the Atlantic. A brief note, accompanied by a small sum of money to be divided among the ship's stewards, was found in her cabin; tellingly or not, the note gave instructions to contact, not her husband, but her parents, "if anything happens." Because of wartime regulations the ship had been prohibited from sending a wireless message ahead of its arrival to report the incident, so Margaret's parents were waiting for her on the dock when they learned of her fate.

The Corrigans' only child, a boy, had died a few years earlier, aged three, after an illness of several months. Margaret Corrigan had gone to Europe "to rest for three months," and was in Paris the day war broke out. She quickly volunteered to serve as a nurse (she had taken a course in nursing at Barnard), and later advised her husband "that she preferred to stay on at the hospital instead of returning to New York." The Times quotes Margaret's mother as saying that "Mr. Corrigan consulted [Margaret's] physician in this city, Dr. Finch, and he said that it would be an excellent thing for her to have something to occupy her mind and keep her from brooding over the loss of her boy." She goes on to say, however, that the strain of nursing wounded soldiers "must have broken her down." It's hard to say what else should be read between the lines of this melancholy story, which can be found in its entirety in the New York Times of January 30, 1916.

An Exterior Disarrangement

My next two posts will revisit two peripherally connected news stories, one comic and one tragic. The first is recorded in The Fourth Estate, a trade periodical devoted to the newspaper business, on February 19, 1921.

EDITOR TO LEAVE GREENWICH VILLAGE.

NEW YORK MAGISTRATE DID NOT QUITE APPROVE OF THE MATERIAL INSERTED IN THE VAGABOND AND SO HE DECIDED TO EXILE ITS EDITOR.

Luther Emmanuel Widen of 148 West Fourth street, New York, editor of the Vagabond and a well known figure in the faddistic [sic] circles of Greenwich Village, was before Magistrate Joseph E. Corrigan in the Jefferson Market Court Wednesday and the magistrate said at first he guessed he would have to send the editor to Bellevue Hospital for observation. After reading an issue of Widen's paper, Magistrate Corrigan expressed the opinion that "no sane man would put out work like this."

In behalf of Widen was Dr. Lindley Kasdy, who said the editor was suffering from exterior but not interior disarrangement.

He also said Widen had been in Bellevue before, but that it did him no good. The magazine was said by the doctor to be published without malice to any one. It is filled with bits of village news and gossip, in which initials are used instead of names. The two gems that brought forth Magistrate Corrigan's comment regarding the editor's sanity were: "Mrs. — has married a man from West Virginia, but she still has her friends," and an article about a woman who "still looked pretty without her paint."

"I am going to send you to Bellevue for examination," said the magistrate. "This is an unusual magazine."

"Why should I go to Bellevue when I can go elsewhere?" asked Widen.

"Where will you go?"

"Astoria," said Widen.

"Well," said the magistrate, "if you will promise to leave Greenwich Village and not publish the Vagabond, and do all that in forty-eight hours, you won't be sent to Bellevue."

"I'll go right now," said Widen. He bowed deeply, and looked sadly from the window. "Never, never, shall I return. Farewell, Greenwich Village."

Better known as Lew Ney and often styled (at least by himself) "the Mayor of Greenwich Village," Luther Emanuel Widen (his middle name is spelled incorrectly in the article) was well-known in New York's bohemian circles in the 1920s and '30s as a writer, publisher, journalist, prankster, and publicity-hound. The straight-faced looniness of the article, which is unsigned, makes me half suspect that he had a hand in writing it himself. The New-York Tribune also ran a story on the incident, much of which corresponds closely to the above, though it adds a few other details, including the fact that The Vagabond had all of forty-eight subscribers (which would explain why I've been able to find no other record of it). It also clarifies — if that's the word — the circumstances that brought Widen before a city magistrate:

He was arrested because of the suspicions which his psychological methods aroused in a detective who was trying to find out who had been stealing gowns and jewelry from Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney's studio at 147 West Fourth Street. Luther's "office" is next door, and in a neighborly way he tried to help the detective, and, in fact, told him the name of the thief, which he discovered psychologically.

The Tribune also reported that Widen said that he might, on second thought, go to "sunny California" instead of Astoria. In any case he remained in Greenwich Village and probably never had any thought of leaving.

The Rotograph Project

I have spun off a separate blog, The Rotograph Project, to serve as a virtual gallery for the display and interpretation of the American view postcards created c.1904-1911 by the Rotograph Co. of New York. This new arrangement should give those images more room of their own without unduly monopolizing the webspace here.

Money home

These receipts from The Williams & Guion steamship company were made out to a young Irish immigrant named Margaret Nagle for sums she sent to her father from New York City in 1866 (or possibly 1868) and 1870. A portion of the correspondence between Margaret and her family also survives, and is the subject of an earlier post.

A contemporary account, John Francis Maguire's The Irish in America (1868), conveys in vivid if occasionally rather florid terms the importance of the widespread practice of sending money home, which served both to maintain emotional ties with distant family and to provide a crucial lifeline for those left behind.

The great ambition of the Irish girl is to send "something" to her people as soon as possible after she has landed in America; and in innumerable instances the first tidings of her arrival in the New World are accompanied with a remittance, the fruits of her first earnings in her first place. Loving a bit of finery dearly, she will resolutely shut her eyes to the attractions of some enticing article of dress, to prove to the loved ones at home that she has not forgotten them; and she will risk the danger of insufficient clothing, or boots not proof against rain or snow, rather than diminish the amount of the little hoard to which she is weekly adding, and which she intends as a delightful surprise to parents who possibly did not altogether approve of her hazardous enterprise. To send money to her people, she will deny herself innocent enjoyments, womanly indulgences, and the gratifications of legitimate vanity; and such is the generous and affectionate nature of these young girls, that they regard the sacrifices they make as the most ordinary matter in the world, for which they merit neither praise nor approval. To assist their relatives, whether parents, or brothers and sisters, is with them a matter of imperative duty, which they do not and cannot think of disobeying, and which, on the contrary, they delight in performing. And the money destined to that purpose is regarded as sacred, and must not be diverted to any object less worthy.

One of the receipts pictured above is dated December 12th (the other date is harder to make out), which corresponds to what Maguire has to say about the seasonal pattern of homeward remittances:

With all banks and offices through which money is sent to Ireland the months of December and March are the busiest portions of the year. The largest amount is then sent; then the offices are full of bustling, eager, indeed clamorous applicants, and then are the clerks hard set in their attempts to satisfy the demands of the impatient senders, who are mostly females, and chiefly "girls in place."

The "girls in place" were domestic servants, the army of Irish "Bridgets" like Margaret Nagle who freed upper- and middle-class women from household duties that conflicted with Victorian ideals of womanhood. At least in urban areas, the daughters were regarded as more reliable remitters:

In populous cities the women send home more money than the men; in small towns and rural districts the men are as constant in their remittances, and perhaps send larger sums. Great cities offer too many temptations to improvidence or to vice, while in small places and rural districts temptations are fewer, and the occasion for spending money recklessly less frequent; hence it is, that the man who, amidst the whirl and excitement of life in a great city, but occasionally sends $10 or $20 to the old people at home, sends frequent and liberal remittances when once he breathes the purer air of the country, and frees himself from the dangerous fascination of the drinking-saloon.

The Williams & Guion steamship company was operated by John S. Williams & Stephen B. Guion. Below are excerpts from the latter's obituary in the New York Times (December 20, 1885), which provides an overview of the company's history.

Stephen Barker Guion was born in New-York June 17, 1820. [...] In 1843, at the age of 23, he entered into partnership with John S. Williams, and founded the firm of Williams & Guion to engage in the ocean-carrying trade. In those days the great bulk of the business of transportation between this country and Europe was done in sailing vessels, and Williams & Guion established a line of fast sailing packets between New-York and Liverpool, known as the "Black Star Line." They carried cabin and steerage passengers as well as freight, and the line soon became popular on account of its speed and the superior accommodations provided for its passengers. The ships were American clippers, and the fleet soon grew to 18 vessels, which did a large and profitable business. The Adelaide, John Bright, Cultivator, Universe, and their sister ships made some remarkably quick passages which old sailors are fond of recalling even in the present day of ocean steamships. In 1858 Mr. Guion went to Liverpool, and while still retaining his connection as junior partner of the New-York house established a new English house under the title of Guion & Co., which acted as agents of the Black Star Line. He had resided there ever since.

In 1868 Williams & Guion determined to abandon sailing-vessels, and the Manhattan was built, the first steamship or the Williams & Guion Line. The old packets were kept running until a sufficient fleet of steamers to accommodate the patrons of the firm was constructed, and then the Black Star Line disappeared from the commercial world. The old flag, with its inky star, was retained, however, and it still floats above the Guion steamers.

Since Margaret Nagle is known to have arrived in New York by August 1866, she may well have taken a Black Star ship on her voyage across the Atlantic and then continued to use the company for her remittances home.

Further reading:

Lynch-Brennan, Margaret The Irish Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service in America, 1840-1930 (Syracuse University Press, 2009)

Miller, Kerby Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (Oxford University Press, 1985)

Stansell, Christine City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (University of Illinois Press, 1987)

The Lost Tower

This postcard of the Brooklyn Bridge and the adjacent waterfront, published by the Rotograph Co., was postmarked in 1905. Offering a view of the bridge at a time before automobile traffic had begun to transform the city, and of the rough-and-tumble district that, considerably scrubbed-up, is now anchored by the South Street Seaport, it's interesting for a number of reasons, but there's one particular detail that leaps out, and that's the curious structure on the far right that appears to be some sort of obelisk or monument, and which hardly seems to belong in the picture at all.

A bit of research soon revealed that the tower was not a ceremonial structure or an observatory for turn-of-the-century sightseers but, in fact, an industrial building constructed to serve a very specific purpose. It was one of two cast-iron "shot towers" designed by the 19th-century architect James Bogardus for use in the manufacture of lead shot. From a vat near the summit of the building, molten metal would be poured through a sieve; as the droplets fell from the heights they would be shaped by surface tension into tiny spheres, which would then harden when they fell into a tank of water at the bottom. This particular tower, which stood at 82 Beekman Street and rose some 215 feet high, was built for Tatham & Brothers around 1856; its construction followed by a year or so that of a similar but shorter structure which Bogardus had built further uptown for the McCullough Shot and Lead Co.

A pioneer of cast-iron construction, which relied on prefabricated elements that could be strikingly ornate, James Bogardus designed a number of important commercial buildings in Manhattan and elsewhere, but only a handful are still standing, including buildings at 75 Murray Street, 63 Nassau Street, and 254 Canal Street. A plaque at City Hall memorializes the McCullough Tower, and in TriBeCa a street sign officially designates James Bogardus Triangle.

The New York Times reported, in 1892, that the formerly dull red Tatham Tower had recently been repainted a yellow so vivid that "you can hardly see anything else as you look off toward the river." The color shown in the Rotograph postcard is not reliable, as it has been layered onto an image taken from a black-and-white original. Over the years the building suffered at least two serious fires, which were reported in the Times on February 8, 1895 and June 28, 1899. The image below depicts the earlier incident, which resulted in one death. Both shot towers were demolished in 1907.


The definitive volume on James Bogardus is Cast-Iron America: The Significance of James Bogardus, by Margot and Carol Gayle.

Mr. Greenawalt's world

This is a moderately interesting postcard view of the City Hall Park in lower Manhattan area looking with the East River and Brooklyn in the background; the long low building pointing across the river just left of center is, I'm told, the terminal for the cable cars of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge Railway. Although it may not be immediately evident in the above scan, the card has been extensively decorated with glitter, which is easiest to spot on the horizontal lines of the tall building in the center of the frame. It was manufactured by the Rotograph Co. in Germany and bears the Sol Art Prints trademark. The stamp on the reverse has been cancelled but there's no date; 1906-1908 would be a good guess.


As interesting as the view itself, perhaps, is the brief message on the front and the person to whom it was addressed. The recipient was Mr. W. G. Greenawalt of 1428 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, and the inscription ("These ought to sell well – With Phila views. J. R. M.") would have been of particular interest to him, for Greenawalt, a pharmacist, was the author of several articles on postcards written from the retailer's point-of-view, articles that appeared in now obscure -- but surprisingly lively -- trade journals. Here, for example, are the beginning paragraphs of an article on "Making Capital of the Post-card Craze," which appeared in May 1908 in the Bulletin of Pharmacy:

Having traveled abroad, and knowing the popularity of picture post-cards, as most foreigners call them, I watched with eager interest their advent into America. I felt that they would become just as popular here, if not more so.

When they were first coming into vogue, I was located up on Broadway in New York. I was one of the pioneers in the post-card business, making some of the first window displays to be seen on Broadway.

Knowing that human nature is much the same in all countries, and feeling sure that Americans would buy postal cards at home, just as the travelers and tourists did abroad, I displayed a few local views. Gradually I added others of a fancy nature — flowers, fruits, dogs, cats, and later scenes from the various cities of the East.

I soon realized that my theory was correct. Americans did buy them, and I was developing quite a nice trade in souvenir cards, when a real estate deal brought a change of location. I came to Philadelphia*, where I located on Chestnut Street.

Here again, with renewed energy and zeal, with my confidence in the souvenir postal cards unshaken, I gave them a conspicuous place in my store and began making window displays. Never shall I forget the comments, the criticisms and sneers which followed: "Picture postal cards, a whole window full, in a drug store on Chestnut Street!"

Some laughed, while others took the matter much more seriously. But many who stopped to scoff remained to admire and came in to buy. Notwithstanding adverse criticisms, I continued to show postals, making occasional window displays. Finally, it became quite the proper thing, for others followed as soon as they saw what was being done.

Incidentally, the American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record of June 13, 1904 records the druggist's move from New York to Philadelphia, in a somewhat mocking tone that suggests there may have been a whiff of disapproval in the industry over the way he ran his business:

William G. Greenawalt, of Chambersburg, Pa., who opened a pharmacy on Broadway, near Twenty-eighth street, Manhattan, about 18 months ago, has either found the pace too swift for him, or the New Yorkers unappreciative of certain innovations to which he tried to accustom them, for he has shut up shop and removed to Philadelphia, most of his stock and fixtures being transferred to his new location in the Y.M.C.A. Building at 1428 Chestnut street, Philadelphia.

The Alumni Report of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy Alumni Association for August 1904 put a more positive spin on the move, declaring that the New York store was "both a sensation and a success," and that its owner "was induced by a handsome offer (owing to the great rise in real estate values) to sell his unexpired lease." The reference to "innovations" in the one account, and "sensation" in the second, makes one wonder whether Greenawalt's display windows of postcards might not have been raising a ruckus.

Not everyone was enthusiastic about the coming of the postcard craze, particularly since "naughty" or "vulgar" comic cards quickly gained a foothold in the market. Greenawalt was reassuring, however. The March issue of the Bulletin of Pharmacy records the druggist's views on the controversial topic of "The Propriety of Selling Souvenir Post-cards":

In a paper read before the Pennsylvania Pharmaceutical Association, W. G. Greenawalt dwelt incidentally on his attitude toward the fitness of carrying postal cards. Mr. Greenawalt said, in part: "As a business bringer the post-card is one of the best we have ever had, and it bids fair to continue. There are post-cards and post-cards. There are those of a high class, which have an educating and refining influence, and their sale adds to the tone and dignity of any establishment in which they are found. There are others much less so, yet still attractive and interesting, and also the cheaper common ones, which are crude, coarse, and often vulgar. These naturally prove a disadvantage, but it is good to know that few pharmacists have taken them up. Generally he prefers better cards, and so long as he does so he will most surely derive profit and pleasure, even though his ethical sensibilities are shocked. However, he has as his defense that he must live, and if the sale of souvenirs and post-cards is creditable, and makes him more comfortable than some other side-lines, it should console him for any injury to his feelings in the matter."

In his own article he declared, perhaps prematurely, that

The sale of the comic postal has fallen off, as most persons have no longer any interest in them. That was a passing fad.

Greenawalt's original base of operations was apparently Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, which may also have been his birthplace, around 1865; it appears that he or his family ran a drugstore there for at least twenty years. In the 1900 federal census a "G. William Greenwalt," age 33, was listed as living in that city with his mother and two siblings; both he and his brother David were pharmacists. The 1910 census shows a druggist with the same name, age 45, boarding on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn, perhaps while traveling on business, and in 1912 the brothers purchased a drugstore in Frederick, Maryland. In 1917, William contributed another article to the Bulletin of Pharmacy, this one recording his experiences with "An Unusual Caller" to his store. Census records for 1920 have him again living with his siblings on Queen Street in Chambersburg. David was still the proprietor of a pharmacy, but William's occupation was now given as "none." David was still living at the same address in 1930 (occupation "none") but there is no further mention of William. It appears neither brother ever married.

Though the postcard would remain popular throughout the 20th century, the great boom itself lasted only a few years. By 1912 the Rotograph Co., one of the most prolific producers and arguably one of the most aesthetically successful, had ceased operations.

Two more Bowery views

Belle époque Paris boasted its arcades and flâneurs; turn-of-the-century Manhattan had strolls under the El. This postcard, which was mailed in 1910, was issued by the firm of Theodor Eismann, which had branches in Leipzig and New York and published cards with the Theocrom brand. It's a lithograph based on a photographic original, with considerable added color, thus neither strictly a photograph nor an artistic "print." The obviously photographic ironwork in the lower righthand corner hardly seems to belong to the same image as the cartoonish buildings in the background in the upper right, yet the whole composition has a distinct liveliness and beauty.

The Bowery was once New York's theatre district, rowdy and open to all classes in a way that Broadway wouldn't come to be. The poster on the sidewalk appears to advertise the London Theatre, founded by the impresario and politician Henry Clay Miner, but the London itself was several blocks away at at 235 Bowery. I haven't been able to find out what the Saranac at 57 Bowery was, but there's a photographic view of the same sign here at Shorpy (you'll have to click through to the enlarged version there to see the sign in the lower righthand corner).


The card above, published by the Rotograph Co. some time in the first decade of the 20th century, looks down the Bowery from where it ends at Cooper Square. It appears to be a collotype rather than a lithograph, but once again the image has been extensively colored. Browning, King & Co., the large building on the right, was a clothing chain with stores in several cities.

Below, a few thoughts which are not meant to provide any kind of rigorous analysis of these hybrid pictures but rather an attempt to come to terms with why I find them particularly interesting.

An image that is entirely one thing or another -- a photograph or a print or a painting -- is an object that purports to be existentially intact and complete, a fulfillment, to the degree that it succeeds, of a single artist's intentions and abilities. (In saying that it only "purports to be" I am, of course, deliberately deferring to another time the issue of how reading the context of an art work affects our understanding of it.)

An image that has originated in one process but which has then been visibly altered by being subjected -- usually by someone else -- to techniques from another process, an image that continues to preserve visible evidence of having been "worked on," is an image that refuses to be complete, refuses to be "flat." When we examine such an picture we see a disjuncture, a clash between multiple processes and multiple creators, and that conflict re-opens the image -- in fact it refuses to allow the image to re-close. Instead of seeing an "artistic statement," we see an unresolved dialogue. An image that may have originally intended to be documentary, to represent what is as closely as possible, takes on a layer in which what will appear is shaped by an entirely different set of aesthetic or market considerations, but without entirely erasing the trace of the original or revoking its documentary claims. There is no way of deciding how much "weight" to give to the claims of one partner in its creation or another.

In some cases retouching may take over an image and conceal the original entirely. When that happens the underlying structure remains but by no longer being apparent on the surface it loses its destabilizing power. It has become fully contained.

Of course photography is never merely documentary; the way in which an image is framed and developed is necessarily guided by the photographer. But we don't see the photographer, at least at first sight; we only see the image. In a hybrid image, on the other hand, we see visible evidence of the ways in which one set of intentions and processes interferes with another.

The Bowery, looking north

This tinted postcard depicts the Bowery in Manhattan, probably between 1901 and 1905. It was published by A. C. Bosselman & Co. of New York but like most better quality postcards at the time it was printed in Germany.

The tinted halftone process added layers of printed color to an original black and white image, and thus represented a kind of hybrid between photomechanical and traditional ink printmaking. The appearance of the finished image would be affected by the skill, the patience, and in some cases the imagination of the printer; details might be added or brushed out as desired. Some of the vehicles and figures shown above appear to have been retouched by the printmaker, and details like the steeple in the distance between the two converging rail lines were probably added as well.

The New York Public Library has a photograph, attributed to John Loeffler and dated 1895, that depicts a similar vista.

(Courtesy the New York Public Library)

John Loeffler died in 1901; the postcard below, which corresponds closely with the Bosselman card, was published by his brother August, who was active until 1905.

(Courtesy the New York Public Library)

Here is yet another version, issued by the Souvenir Post Card Co., which was active from 1905-1914. It uses the relatively crude line block halftone process.

(Courtesy the New York Public Library)

In addition to the coloring, there are a number of differences between the photograph and the postcards. Whether there once existed an alternate photographic original or whether the differences were due to retouching I don't know. The general prospect looking uptown was evidently a popular one, and a number of imitations or variations were marketed. The next image, published by Valentine & Sons (active from 1907-1909), has only one train and a far less busy street, but a bridge has sprouted crosstown in the middle distance.

(Via Wikipedia)

Looking from one image to another, pedestrians who stride by unaware of the photographer's presence or who may never have existed at all appear and disappear, signs leap out or vanish, streetcars and elevated trains advance like the flickering phantoms of early motion pictures. In some images trucks replace trolley cars, day becomes night, yet some of the same figures seem to stroll in the shadows of the elevated rails. Below are a few among many. The first one, by the way, is the only one that clearly depicts the casket factory sign that appears in Loeffler's photo, and thus is probably a direct descendant.





This uncredited photograph, via the Bowery Boys, also shows a roughly similar perspective, though it doesn't seem to match up closely with any of the postcards. The "casket" sign isn't shown, but there seems to be a "coffin" one on the same building.


Here, from the digital collections of Library of Congress, are two photographic views taken by J. S. Johnston in 1895. Either or both may have been retouched a bit.



The card below, published by the prolific Detroit Publishing Co., provides a different angle and a better view of the faces of some of the buildings on the west side of the street, including the Gaiety Musée, a famous vaudeville theatre, whose garish facade, just uptown from Glassman's Hats, is much less obvious in the other pictures. Dominating the scene is the monstrous bulk of the Bowery Savings Bank, designed by Stanford White (and now a registered landmark).

(Via the Georgetown County Digital Library)

One of the things that appeals to me about many of these images (other than their historical content) is that they seem to inhabit a fertile middle ground, staking out various points along a spectrum between the supposedly "documentary" status of photography and the "artificial" methods of painting and drawing. (Later postcards, which fall solidly into one camp or the other, seem as a consequence far less interesting.) The same basic scene could be reshot, or an older original could be adapted, in order to include details that would make the final image more quaint or more contemporary as market tastes might demand. Complete "fidelity" in mass reproduction, at least in regard to color, was as yet impossible in any case. In my next post I'll look at a few more examples of image manipulation.

I am grateful to the phenomenal resources of the Metropolitan Postcard Collectors Club for much of the background information above, but any confusion is my own.

A Manhattan Mission

The Cremorne McAuley Mission, at 104 West 32nd Street near Sixth Avenue, New York. The engraving, which probably dates from around 1883-84, is from Jerry McAuley: His Life and Work (Second Edition), edited by Rev. R. M. Offord. The artist is not credited.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (conclusion)

In the weeks that followed, Matilda returned to the apartment on Bedford Street every Saturday afternoon. She would have come more often, if Mr. Sullivan had asked her to, but she had a suspicion that one session a week was probably as much as he could afford. On her third or fourth visit he asked her -- it was to be honest a little more than a request, though not quite a demand -- if she would disrobe entirely and pose for him lying on his bed. She hesitated for a moment, not sure that she was quite ready for that, but then she remembered her mother's injunction against half-measures and decided that she would either have to comply or leave immediately and never return. She chose the former. She didn't withdraw from the room to undress, but instead crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, draping her robe around her body and eyeing the windows. As soon as Mr. Sullivan turned his back for a moment she slipped off her skirt and undergarments, loosened her robe, and lay down. At first she assumed a position that she thought he would find artistic -- it was something she had seen in a French painting in one of her mother's books -- but when he turned to her and saw this he frowned and told her to just lie naturally, which she did, after a few seconds of awkwardness while she considered what to do with her hands.

He sketched her in silence from across the room, then, perhaps sensing that she was not entirely at ease, broke off after only a few minutes and told her she could get dressed. She resumed her position on the chair and sat for him fully clothed for the rest of the session. The following week, when she returned, she again lay on the bed, and this time he sketched her that way for most of an hour.

She found it rather a relief, a few weeks later, when they became lovers. He was quite gentle about it and wouldn't have persisted if she had objected, but she decided that she was ready for it to happen. At first he continued to offer her money for her time, but she felt quite strongly that it wasn't appropriate anymore. In any case he soon enough gave up on the idea of drawing professionally, and Matilda never posed for him again. Instead of accepting his money she insisted on leading him on a shopping expedition and making him buy himself some better clothes, an activity he consented to with only as much grumbling as he thought he was obliged to make about it. They went out to dinner sometimes -- nothing elaborate, for she quickly discovered that he had overextended himself financially by paying her for her sessions -- but often she just accompanied him on long walks around the squares and parks of the vicinity, sticking to the quiet streets so they could linger at their ease, talking quietly, strolling arm in arm. During one of their afternoons alone he finally revealed to her his given name, which from then on she used exclusively.

As spring arrived Matilda began to suspect that she might be with child; a discreetly arranged visit to a physician in the neighborhood confirmed her suspicion. She went home to New Rochelle for the weekend and to her surprise her mother raised rather a scene about it, at least at first, then she calmed down and said that after all Matilda was old enough to look out for herself, which Matilda didn't think was all that helpful, especially when her mother then almost immediately dashed off for the evening with some friends. Her father never alluded to the subject at all. Matilda didn't know when or how he was told of her condition, but she was fairly sure that her mother had pointedly told him to mind his own affairs and not meddle with women's business, an admonition with which he was no doubt more than happy to comply.

When she told Mr. Sullivan, a few days later, he was quite firm about marrying her, though she hadn't intended to insist. She informed her parents of their plans and from then on her mother largely took over the arrangements for the wedding. They were married in early June; Isabel, who was herself by now engaged to Friedrich, served as maid-of-honor. Her brothers were a little stiff about it, but they minded their manners.

The couple were promptly settled into a brownstone just off of Washington Square. It was a wedding gift from her father, as neither Matilda nor her husband seemed likely to be able to support themselves according to her family's station for quite some time, if ever. Her mother came to get along quite well with her son-in-law, though Matilda was afraid that her father never knew quite what to make of him. After the baby was born -- a boy -- her mother often came into the village to make sure that Matilda swaddled him up warmly enough when she took him out in the carriage for her daily circuit of the square.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (VI)

Mr. Sullivan's lodgings occupied the back half of the top floor of a narrow four-story brick building on Bedford Street. There was a rather pretty fanlight over the street door, though Matilda couldn't help but notice that it needed washing. Inside there was a worn mosaic floor and then a series of steep and warped wooden staircases; on the second floor landing she could smell cooking -- roast chicken and potatoes, she thought -- but otherwise the building's tenants all seemed to be out for the afternoon. She climbed slowly, though she was used to walking and didn't find the effort taxing. She wore a simple peach blouse, a gray skirt, and an expensive burgundy cloche that her mother had insisted on buying for her, though Matilda wasn't sure that it went, and she carried a small handbag and a light sweater over one arm, just in case it became cooler later on.

She knocked on the door and heard a voice respond from within, followed a few moments after by footsteps and the sound of the latch being undone. Mr. Sullivan was in his shirtsleeves and had evidently been washing up in the kitchen, as he had a dish towel slung over one shoulder. He apologized for keeping her waiting and ushered her inside.

The apartment was in truth really nothing more than one sunlit room, with a little alcove for a bed in the back corner and a small cooking and dining area set off to one side. The larger space was dominated by a desk, a bookcase, and two swaybacked tables, all of the available surfaces of which were covered, with the exception of a cramped working space on the desk, by a helter-skelter assortment of books, magazines, manuscripts, and writing accessories. All of this furniture had been shoved rather awkwardly together in one corner, leaving a large open space exposed to windows on two sides, with a view over rooftops and trees in the direction of the river. Set back a bit from the rear windows stood a pair of easels; upon them, and along every available expanse of wall around the room, were a number of charcoal drawings as well as a smaller number of rather tentative pastels. While Mr. Sullivan went to fetch Matilda a glass of lemonade she inspected his creations. She had to admit that he possessed a certain natural gift -- more so than her former fellow pupils or the gentlemen that she had modeled for, she was sure -- but on the other hand even with her untrained eye she could see that his technique was either undeveloped or indifferently applied. Almost all of the drawings were of women, clothed and unclothed, and among them she noted several of herself done at the academy. Though the work showed a measure of expressiveness and a nice vigorous feel for form, he had quite clearly not mastered the intricacies of figure drawing; moreover, she quite suspected, looking around the room, that he in all likelihood never would. The best of the pictures were some pen-and-ink caricatures that he had done, evidently of some friends; these relaxed little sketches were entirely more convincing than the more sober nudes and portraits.

When he returned, bearing a tall glass and noticing her attention to his little gallery, he assured Matilda, in the face of her hasty assertions to the contrary, that he really wasn't much of an artist but that sometimes he tried to pick up a few extra coins by doing sketches for magazines. It wasn't really his trade and he hadn't yet sold very many pictures but every bit helped. He pulled over a chair and asked her to please sit, and Matilda did so and sipped her lemonade while she watched the fronds of a locust tree bowing at her through the rear window. While she sat there he moved some things about and tidied up the room a bit, all the while talking about his work as a writer, about how you could make a living, or a sort of one, if you kept at it and turned your copy in on time and kept an ear out for opportunities that tended to come and go at a moment's notice. Matilda listened, in a fashion, which is to say that she understood what he was saying and nodded or smiled at the appropriate moments but that it also seemed to her that she wasn't really present in the room at all, or maybe she was but he wasn't, he was far away somewhere calling to her but he couldn't see her, or maybe he was speaking to someone else entirely and it was she who was listening in on the wrong line.

After a moment she seemed to lose her train of thought, and she realized that he had stopped talking and was standing over her. He had donned a light smock and was holding a charcoal pencil in one hand, and he asked her if she were all right and said something about how if Matilda was uncomfortable he wouldn't be offended or think anything the less of her if she would rather not stay. Matilda eventually came to herself and took his words in and said rather hazily that she was fine and that everything was fine and that she would make herself ready whenever he wanted to begin, and she found herself thinking that Mr. Sullivan wasn't such a bad sort at that. He handed her a robe -- it was his robe, naturally -- and she withdrew into the bathroom to prepare herself. There was hardly anything on his bathroom shelf, just a bar of shaving soap and a razor and a bottle of witch hazel and a handful of other little things, and while she undressed she thought about her parents' bathrooms which were always stocked with bottles and lineaments and lotions and powders and which it was the maid's responsibility to keep clean and tidy, and she realized that Mr. Sullivan had never had a maid and probably never would.

He had set a chair in the center of the room, leaving the curtains parted so that the afternoon light would fall on her from a side window as she posed. This made her squint, however, so she stood up again while he repositioned the chair slightly. When she let the robe fall her body remained hidden by the back of the chair, while Mr. Sullivan worked off to one side, so that an onlooker from the building opposite would have seen nothing more than the head of a young woman apparently passing the day by herself in her room. He became very serious as soon as he began to work, and said hardly a word for a quarter of an hour. He stopped twice and crumpled his initial sallies into a basket, then worked steadily for several minutes before frowning and tearing off another unsatisfactory attempt. He asked her to move to one side slightly; she obliged and he resumed but he still wasn't satisfied and after a moment asked her to move again. Finally he set down his pencil, stepped softly over to her, and gently but quite firmly took hold of her bare shoulders and shifted them into the position he desired. Matilda might have been offended by this -- it was certainly the first time a man had touched her in such a manner -- but to her surprise she wasn't. In fact she found herself thinking that she would not likely be offended no matter where Mr. Sullivan chose to place his hands.

To be continued.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (V)

Matilda spent the month of July at her family's summer cottage in the Adirondacks. Her parents -- separately -- and her brothers, came and went several times while she was there, but for much of the time she was alone except for a cook who seemed very cross, either at having been displaced to what she seemed to regard as untamed wilderness or at Matilda's indifferent appetite. Her mother twice swept her out the door to evening dances, where several young men of their set managed to persuade her to a few waltzes and attempted to engage her in conversation, but she wasn't interested in bantering with them and slipped away as soon as she had the opportunity. During the day, when no one else was around, she found a quiet path along the lake and followed it into a deep stand of towering pines, where there were no birds and no sound other than the light crunching of her sandals on the carpet of fallen needles. When she became tired she lay down in her white dress on a little knoll and slept for an hour or more in the dappled light, entirely undisturbed, and woke in the stillness half convinced that the rest of the world had ended while she reposed, that she would find nothing but endless forest forever in all directions, but of course it was not so. Back at the cabin the cook was more than usually peeved at her late return, and she and Matilda sulked at each other for the remainder of the evening. At the next opportunity Matilda caught a train going south, and after one melancholy night in her old room in New Rochelle -- a room that now seemed small and unfamiliar -- she returned to the familiar moorings of her apartment in the Village.

Isabel and Friedrich had gone off somewhere for a few days, and the summer heat and dust of Manhattan were oppressive, even around Washington Square. After sweeping up a bit and making herself a ham sandwich Matilda went out to the nearest newsstand and collected a supply of the latest magazines, then settled herself into a wicker armchair and read until nightfall. When hunger got the better of her she went out again. Working her way through the crowds on Eighth Street, she peered into eateries and bars until she found a little Italian restaurant that was emptier than the rest. The waiter, who didn't speak English well and seemed, she thought, rather disapproving, showed her to a table by the window. The table was made of cast iron ornamented with curlicues, surmounted with a glass top; its legs were uneven and rocked when she leaned an elbow on it. She ordered a carafe of red wine and a plate of clams on the half-shell cooked in tomato sauce. The waiter brought out a loaf, and when she had finished the clams she scooped up the remains of the sauce with the bread while she took in the flow of pedestrians on the sidewalk outside.

The next morning was Sunday; a steady rain had begun to fall and the wind was billowing through the canyons, swirling up aggregations of dust, old newspapers, and desiccated horse droppings and redistributing them in the gutters or under the oilcloth-covered tables of sidewalk cafés. The park and its environs were deserted. Gripping her umbrella firmly with both hands, she traversed the park and began to head east along Washington Place. When she reached the corner of Greene Street she turned around, tilted her umbrella back, and looked up at the building that had been, a scant few years before, the site of the terrible fire. She stood gazing upwards at its summit for several minutes, oblivious to the rain. She couldn't say why, for she had passed the building any number of times before, but at that moment she found herself unable to stop thinking about the women who had died in the fire, many of them girls younger than herself, about how their stories had simply ended there, on that March afternoon, without a hint of warning. One by one they had leapt into the air to escape the flames and each in turn had fallen to earth, coming to rest -- if rest it could be called -- on the very spot where she stood. When the day was over and the flames were at last extinguished they didn't gather themselves up and go about the rest of their lives; they didn't marry or have children or move out of the city or die of consumption. Matilda felt a cold desolation sink into her bones; she lowered her umbrella to hide the sight, and began to turn away, and just at that moment the umbrella of a passing pedestrian bumped against hers and broke the spell.

She found work a week later, in an art gallery just south of Union Square. The salary was minimal -- in a week she made less than what she had earned in a night of modeling -- but it was outwardly respectable and the work was undemanding. Her mother, who had visited the very gallery once or twice in the past, seemed to approve, and although her brothers appeared to have given her up for lost, her father continued to cover the rent, which, even more so than before, exceeded her monthly earnings by a considerable margin. She was seeing less and less of Isabel, who, in truth, had now largely settled into Friedrich's quarters and maintained her old address only in order to mislead her parents. Matilda thought that they might get married before too long, if Friedrich could somehow be made presentable, which Matilda thought a bit doubtful.

In the interests of economy -- and since cooking for herself seemed too much of a bother -- Matilda limited herself to a roll and some fruit in the morning, and a bowl of soup in a little diner in the evening. The waiters knew her by now and kept an eye out for her, slipping her a biscuit or a piece of cake on the sly and now and again even a glass of wine, and they called her Miss Matilda and gave her the same table every night, one where she could look out through the glass and watch the traffic streaming by. It was there, one night, just as she was finishing her coffee and preparing to leave, that she caught sight of a man in his twenties as he emerged from the crowd and crossed in front of the window. With his brow gravely inclined beneath his fedora as if deep in thought, just before he disappeared from view he turned, though still barely raising his head, and seized hold of the door to enter the diner. She watched him climb the steps, and only when he paused to wait at the counter and removed his hat did she recognize the familiar visage of Mr. T. Sullivan, whom she had not seen again since the night he had accosted her.

Matilda lowered her head and turned slightly away from him as she fumbled in her purse for the price of her soup. She meant to remain thus until the man had been ushered safely to his table, but there was some delay in the appearance of the host and for a moment he was left standing alone. She stole a glance at him and was quite sure that he had not noticed her. Finally a waiter emerged from the kitchen, apologized, and conducted him to a table within, which Mr. Sullivan took without once looking in Matilda's direction. In later years she was never able to convincingly explain to herself why it was, as she set her coins upon the table and gathered her things, that she was suddenly possessed of the unshakable resolve to follow him to his table, to re-introduce herself and shake his hand, and to tell him that if he was still in need of services on the terms he had proposed she would be happy to put herself at his disposal.

To be continued.