Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (III)

Through the rest of the winter and into the spring Matilda modeled at least twice a week. There were classes every weeknight, but she was only one of several young women who alternated at the sessions, in order to provide what the academy described as "practice in capturing the variability of the human form" but which Matilda suspected was merely a ploy to keep the students from losing interest. From the end of March on, however, she was asked back at least three times a week, and on occasion even four, so she gathered that either some of the models had dropped out or her appearances were having a favorable effect on turnout. There was some turnover among the students -- the young women who had attended her first session had long since disappeared, to be replaced by others of their sex -- but several regulars continued to come nearly every week, and with two or three Matilda had developed a nodding, if silent, familiarity, though one that was strictly confined to the premises of the academy.

Her earnings for this activity were not substantial, but supplemented by a few odd jobs they were sufficient to cover her daily expenses, if not her rent, which her father continued to provide. Her parents displayed no curiosity about the source of her income -- like many persons of wealth they had long since lost any idea what it cost ordinary people to live or how difficult work was to come by -- and she didn't trouble to enlighten them. She visited at home once or twice a month for Sunday dinners, and now and then her mother breezed into town and brought her, and Isabel if she was at home, out to tea at a fashionable restaurant on lower Fifth Avenue.

In the evenings, if they had no other plans, Isabel and Friedrich would often invite Matilda out for drinks at one of the busy little cafés on Eighth Street or Bleecker. Neither young woman had acquired much of a taste for liquor -- Matilda's mother, in spite of her reputation for being modern in all things, never touched anything stronger than wine -- but it seemed to amuse Friedrich, who himself drank only beer, to order the latest and most potent novelty cocktails for his companions to sample, and this manner Matilda and Isabel partook of -- or at least sipped at -- a bewildering succession of highballs, manhattans, daiquiris, rickeys, slings, and fizzes, none of which were terribly much to their liking, although they did admire the ones that had pretty colors.

It was on one of these evenings, about ten o'clock, that a man in his middle twenties, exiting the dark recesses of the inner barroom and squeezing by their table, hesitated politely for a moment while Isabel pulled in her chair to allow him passage. As he thanked her Matilda looked up from the other side of the table and happened to catch his eye. For a brief moment she didn't remember where she knew him from, and by the time she did it was too late; she had already smiled and greeted him. He was one of her regulars, a quiet young man who sat in the back and wore a weathered corduroy suit that did not quite fit him and which she suspected had been purchased second-hand. The young man seemed momentarily befuddled, as if he couldn't place her either, or simply from the shock of seeing her in an unfamiliar setting. In a reflex of manners he raised his grey fedora -- that at least seemed new -- smiled, and returned her greeting, and before he had a chance to collect himself and take his leave Friedrich, who was flush with cash that evening and in high spirits, had risen from his chair, extended a hand, and insisted that he join them. He of course declined and began to withdraw, but Friedrich waved away his objections and grabbed another chair with such authority that, short of seeming ungrateful and boorish, retreat would have been impossible. The man reluctantly took the proffered chair and Friedrich at once summoned the waiter. He stood the man a drink and himself one at the same time, and would have replenished the ladies' glasses as well had they not only just barely begun their previous round of cocktails.

As introductions were now inevitable the man said that his name was Sullivan. He had a given name of course, but he had either misplaced it or didn't care for it; on the masthead of the several, mostly insolvent, little magazines with which he was nominally affiliated he was listed only as T. Sullivan. His friends, or better acquaintances as he had no intimate friends to speak of, sometimes called him Sully, but if they were observant they noticed that this made him quietly cross and did not repeat the mistake. He scratched out a living writing articles and reviews, generally of a political or artistic bent; as such work generally paid little -- or sometimes not at all -- he was forced to do a great deal of it, and to supplement his income by selling off review copies, when he had them, on Fourth Avenue. He was soft-featured and slightly built -- noticeably so next to the robust Friedrich -- but Isabel decided that he was not disagreeable to look at and indicated as much with a surreptitious wink to her roommate, though without suspecting the source of their acquaintanceship. She failed to notice that Matilda herself, though maintaining an outwardly pleasant expression, had suddenly become quite tense, and while Friedrich buttonholed the newcomer she was stirring and sipping her drink with an almost physically painful precision.

The man -- Sullivan -- stayed only long enough to finish his drink, them made his excuses, a trifle abruptly, barely making eye contact with Matilda before leaving. Later that evening, after Matilda had revealed to Isabel how she knew him, the pair giggled themselves into exhaustion before retiring to bed.

To be continued.

Death at the Five Points

(In the 1850s, fired by missionary zeal, the ladies of the Five Points Mission in Manhattan bravely battled poverty, squalor, intemperance, competing missionaries, the Roman Catholic Church, and that most alarming of heathenish practices: an Irish wake.)

During the hot weather in August, many died from the intense heat, and one death from this cause occurred in our building. Dr. McNaire called upon me to visit the dying woman, whom I found lying on the floor with her head slightly elevated on a chair, turned down on the face — her mouth filled with foam, and her pulse quick and thready. A number of Irish, newly arrived, were sitting around, or lying on the boxes in the room. It was a solemn scene. I knelt and poured out my soul in prayer to God; but, oh! how fearful to pray at such an hour — when life is ebbing away, and every moment may decide the destiny of the soul "quivering on the ridge of life."

Just as I had ended the prayer, Mrs. F., who rented the room where the sick woman lay, came running in, and seeing that she was dying, went immediately for a priest, to perform extreme unction, and as I came out, I met him going in. The woman soon died.

Then commenced the preparations for a wake. I gave orders that it should not be; but my orders were disregarded. At midnight, I heard that wild wail rolling upon the air, and I was reminded of that ancient cry at midnight in the land of Egypt, when Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians, and there was not a house where there was not one dead. I thought, too, of the startling summons sounding out at midnight: "Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him." I waited awhile, and while it was still dark, I went up to the room of death. There stood two rows of women, with their left hands around each other's waists, and their right beating upon their lips, making, as they shouted, a most horrible noise. Most of the women had never known the deceased until they saw her in her dying agonies, and yet the tears rolled down their cheeks in torrents. I succeeded at last, much to my joy, in breaking up this strange wild scene of frantic wo.

From The Old Brewery and the New Mission House at the Five Points, by the Ladies of the Mission; New York, Stringer & Townsend, 1854.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (II)

When the term ended Matilda carried her finished compositions back to her apartment, and as soon as Isabel went out on an errand she opened her portfolio and spread the drawings and her few tentative essays in painting around the rooms, propping them up on chairs and bureaus in order to give the collection a considered look in the afternoon sunlight. She was not impressed. Matilda was not in the habit of harboring false illusions, about herself or about anything else, and in the end it pained her very little to come to the unshakable conclusion that she would never make an artist. Before she had a chance to put her work away Isabel returned; she sized up the situation immediately and silently withdrew to her bedroom. By the time she emerged, her roommate had completely reconciled herself to her failed vocation and announced her firm intention of withdrawing from the school before classes resumed in January. Isabel asked her what she would do and Matilda said that she would have to think.

When she returned home for the holiday break her parents accepted her decision without objection. Her mother seemed to assume that her dropping out would have no bearing on her continued occupancy of her Village apartment, and Matilda, though she did not at bottom doubt her mother's fondness for her, suspected that she considered the stage of her daughter's life in which she lived at home to have come to an end. Matilda decided, on reflection, that this suited her as well, provided that her father continued to pick up the tab for her rent, which he was evidently amenable to doing.

After the New Year she filled a trunk with some additional clothes and a few keepsakes from her old bedroom and returned to the Village. Isabel was thrilled and immediately began to plan outings for the pair in the environs, including some rather seedy districts in which her beau would have to be enlisted as escort. For two weeks Matilda uncomplainingly allowed herself to be squired around town, ranging as far as Staten Island and the Jersey shore on one occasion, but once classes resumed Isabel's days were again largely occupied, and Matilda found herself left to make her own amusement. This was not unpleasant for her -- she had never really been much of a social butterfly -- but after spending the latter part of a rather grim and rainy January window-shopping and walking down cobblestone backstreets she decided that she would need to find an occupation. She did not, in the end, want to be an ongoing burden on her father's finances, though she suspected that the amount he expended on her rent was well within his means.

There were a number of small clothing manufacturers in the neighborhood, most of whom had signs advertising for seamstresses in their windows, but Matilda's mother had not set high store on such homely occupations as sewing, and as a result Matilda's skills in that regard were negligible. After a little looking around she found employment in a little bookshop off Fourth Avenue, but she was evidently ill-suited for this as well, as she had never heard of most of the titles the customers were seeking and could not seem to learn the system -- a rather eccentric and arbitrary one, it seemed to her -- by which the books were shelved. After a week of having to come to her rescue for even the simplest requests, the manager gently sacked her. Isabel told Matilda that Friedrich had offered to find her employment as a waitress in a club whose owner he knew through some connection or other, but she said it in such a way, raising an eyebrow and looking altogether rather doubtful about the matter, that Matilda deduced that even Isabel, who was liberal-minded in most things, thought that the establishment in question was probably not suitable.

Her search for gainful employment frustrated, but unwilling to be idle, Matilda at last hit upon the idea of offering her services to her old school. Isabel had mentioned, without any implied allusion to Matilda's situation, that some of the academy's models had recently departed, but when Matilda applied to the directress she was told quite firmly that there were no positions open. (Only afterwards did it occur to her that the school's reputation might be damaged if word got around that a student -- even a former student -- had disrobed in class.) Undeterred, she located a less fastidious institution, a night school whose sign she had spotted in the window of the upper storey of a building on McDougall, and was instantly accepted.

The students at the academy were mostly men; the handful of women, most of whom Matilda took for recent immigrants, seemed to have enrolled there by mistake. It was quickly evident that the level of instruction was rudimentary -- the sole instructor, though apparently legitimate, seemed quite befuddled about how to go about teaching pupils who demonstrated neither aptitude nor the ability to concentrate on their task -- and that the men had, in fact, come only for the view. Matilda, who might have been offended by the scam, took it with equanimity; she regarded her presence in the studio as a commercial transaction, an exchange from which both parties derived benefit with no apparent harm done to either. She did not, it was true, inform her parents of her modeling activities, but she did not conceal them from Isabel, who, when she was admitted to the secret, seemed filled with newfound admiration for the resourcefulness and daring of her roommate.

It was sleeting and a fierce wind was ricocheting between the rows of low buildings as Matilda arrived at her first evening session. She ascended the stairs and was ushered by a severe, middle-aged matron (whose presence was one of the academy's outward concessions to propriety) into a tiny windowless changing room that served double duty as a supply cabinet. By the light of a single overhead bulb she removed her overcoat and simple blue frock, and donned a rather dingy and threadbare robe that was several sizes too large for her. As soon as she had a chance to compose herself she stepped into the studio. To a man the presumptive artists looked up, lowering their pencils or brushes as they took the newcomer's measure. She was shown to a stool in one corner; the room was a bit drafty but not uncomfortably cool, and as soon as she had a chance to settle herself comfortably the matron give her a silent nod.

Matilda reached up to the collar of the robe and slowly pulled it loose, then straightened her shoulders slightly as it slid to her waist. The room was utterly, uncannily, silent as every pair of eyes was fixed upon her. She felt herself blush furiously and for a moment was certain that she was going to pass out, but after a moment she collected herself and began to breathe again. She folded her hands and shifted her spine, only once, to gain a better perch, and then sat quite still.

Some seconds passed before the men took up their implements again and began their halfhearted efforts at capturing her form. The matron strolled between the rows of easels, silently prompting the laggards with a raised eyebrow if necessary, and after a moment the instructor's voice could be heard mumbling advice to a student in the second row, who made a show of receiving it. The men scratched with their pencils, lifted their gaze, scratched again, all without a word. Matilda found that, after her initial discomposure had passed, she felt quite normal, in fact, that all her task demanded of her was to remain absolutely motionless and empty her thoughts, two things that she was more than usually good at. She didn't steal a look at the faces of the men as they worked, but neither did she cast her eyes downwards. Through a flyspecked window she could see an illuminated clock on the building opposite, and she stared out at it through the flakes of snow that had begun to fall and focused her eyes on the minute hand as it slowly circled the dial.

To be continued.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (I)

Matilda Eberle was eighteen years old. She was a little taller than other girls her age and passably pretty, though she was resigned to the idea that she would never be as pretty or as interesting as her mother, who though nearly fifty was said by nearly everyone who met her to be one of the most fascinating women they had ever met.

Matilda's father was in business. She wasn't sure exactly what that entailed -- whether he made things or owned things, or a little of both -- although one of her school chums who possibly was in a position to know had once made an offhand remark that implied that he owned a skyscraper, or perhaps more than one, on lower Broadway. He knew a lot of people, mostly of what seemed to Matilda a fairly dull sort -- bankers, lawyers, people with political connections -- and traveled quite often, ostensibly on business, though when he did so he nearly always called home once a day and spoke to his wife, or to Matilda if her mother was not at home. She had two older brothers, both still bachelors. They worked with their father but lived in an apartment in the city that the family had owned since her father was little. She saw them infrequently and when she did they were pleasant to her but made no effort to include her in their conversation.

Her mother had a reputation as a bit of a rad. She was friendly with artists and theatre people and subscribed to illustrated periodicals that Matilda never saw in any of her friends' homes, though Matilda wasn't sure that she had ever seen her mother read them. She went into town several evenings a week in the company of a variety of acquaintances, both male and female, and Matilda found it frustrating that she was never able to decide which -- if any -- of these might be her mother's lovers. Her father did not seem particularly put out by these comings and goings, and Matilda took this as a sign that he had arrangements of his own. Though her mother's activities never quite crossed the line into outward scandal she made it clear that she considered herself unbound by social convention and free to do as she pleased.

The fiercest term of opprobrium her mother could wield was "stingy"; "thrifty," spoken with a tone of withering sarcasm, was a distant second. She could be quite blunt about declaring to anyone within earshot that she and her family were New Yorkers, citizens of the most modern and sophisticated metropolis in the world, and not a bunch of grim, bottled-up, buttoned-down, penny-pinching New Englanders. (That the family actually resided in a mansion in New Rochelle within sight of the Sound she would have considered one of those petty objections that only the small-minded would raise.) She was adamant in her contempt for half-measures of any kind, whether it involved saving money by buying oysters of inferior quality for a dinner party or diving too tentatively off the dock at the lakefront resort where the family spent part of each summer.

There had been a German governess when Matilda was small, but her mother had found her too stern and after several quarrels had sacked her, and after that Matilda was left ungoverned until it was time for her to be sent to boarding school. She disliked the school but managed to survive it, proving herself at best a middling student, though she demonstrated a modest aptitude for foreign languages which was set down as her governess's one positive legacy. Upon graduation her mother raised the issue of college, but Matilda wasn't interested in becoming a teacher and had no particular desire to spend a further two or four years in the company of young woman of her set. She made a vague comment about possibly taking some art classes -- though her accomplishments in that direction to date were entirely unremarkable -- and her mother characteristically seized upon this, promptly enrolling her in an art academy in Greenwich Village. The idea of commuting having been waved off as impractical, suitable lodgings in the neighborhood were found through some connection of her mother's. She was to share the small but tidy second-floor apartment with another student two years her senior, whose name was Isabel.

To her surprise, she found herself quite liking Isabel, once they became well-acquainted enough to share each other's confidences. Matilda, for her part, had no secrets to speak of to confide, but Isabel, on the other hand, had a beau named Friedrich, and she left little doubt about the nature of their relationship, though her young man was not permitted by the landlord to call on her on the premises. He was said to be some sort of gangster, which if true Matilda regarded as a great disappointment and a poor reflection on the species, since he proved, when she eventually met him, to be outwardly as ordinary as a goldfish, a creature to which he bore as well more than a passing physical resemblance. His income seemed to fluctuate wildly. On some occasions he would be quite out of pocket and Isabel had to content herself with accompanying him for a cocktail or two at a nearby cafe; at other times he would show up flush with cash and had once even whisked her off for a weekend at Niagara Falls, at her suggestion to be sure.

Matilda purchased a smock at a store on West Fourth Street and for three months dutifully attended her lessons, though she considered that she was making scant progress in either the techniques her teachers attempted to impart to her or in discovering her vocation as a creative artist. The academy accepted only female students, mostly of means, and though there seemed at least to be a greater variety of type than she had encountered at boarding school she found that she had little interest in socializing with her fellow pupils. She instead went out evenings with Isabel and Friedrich, if she were invited, and otherwise occupied herself exploring the shops and alleys in the vicinity of Washington Square Park. When all else failed or if it rained she would retreat to the solitude of her room and leaf through magazines.

It was the unstated philosophy of the academy that any previous artistic instruction the students might have was of no value, an assumption that in Matilda's case was not far off the mark. As a consequence the pupils were first taught to copy simple two-dimensional forms in black-and-white, and were gradually exposed to a series of simple and rather generic artworks that they were expected to duplicate before they attempted to draw from life. Matilda's first still-life assignment consisted of a pineapple, which she found very daunting, and a shallow bowl that she made a complete muck of, though her instructress seemed pleased with her progress. For the next several weeks she executed a number of what seemed to her entirely unconvincing drawings, all of which involved a combination of utilitarian household objects and some variety of fruit, though thankfully never again a pineapple. Having almost mastered this process to her satisfaction, she was rather dumbfounded when she came to class one day and found herself presented with a live model, in the person of a comely young woman dressed in a simple white robe, the folds of which Matilda had no end of trouble with.

After an hour or so of this the young woman was allowed a break. When she returned to her stool, at a signal from the instructress she undid the top of the robe and let it drop to her waist, exposing her bare torso beneath. Matilda had not expected this, though she did not find it shocking, as her mother had never shown any particular concern for modesty; in fact she found it a relief to outline the simpler contours of the model's body rather than struggle with the awkward bunching of her robe. After another hour the young woman covered herself and withdrew into an adjoining room. As she did not re-emerge Matilda assumed that she had exited via another door after, presumably, changing into her street clothes.

The model, or another, as it was not always the same young woman, returned every session for two weeks. She would be instructed to assume various poses for the benefit of the class, and Matilda soon learned to sketch her from every conceivable angle, but she never entirely removed her robe. She maintained a uniformly pleasant if distant expression, and Matilda never heard her once speak a syllable. Isabel, who had taken the life drawing course the previous year, at first told Matilda that the models were prostitutes, but later admitted that she had only been teasing and in fact knew nothing about them, though she had heard that they were paid rather well for the sessions and that there was no shortage of prospective models. Most of them appeared to be in their late twenties or even in their thirties, and Matilda wondered if they had jobs or husbands -- she doubted the latter -- and whether their families knew and approved of their unusual line of employment.

To be continued.

Death of a salesman

This will be a bit of an extended gloss on my previous post, which I devoted to an excerpt from Samuel H. Hadley's Down in Hadley Street, a record of his activities as the successor to Jerry McAuley's work at the Water Street Mission in lower Manhattan. In the excerpt, Hadley related the story of one James D. Underwood, commercial traveler and reformed drunkard, who met his end in a St. Louis jewelry store in 1898 as the result of inadvertently (or so it was said) drinking a glass of potassium cyanide.

Hadley made it clear that he considered Underwood's death to have been a horrible accident, and so it may have been; I am not particularly invested in proving otherwise. But the Underwood incident is a bit of a loose cannon, the one detail in Hadley's enjoyable but largely predictable volume that doesn't quite fit in comfortably with the rest. In chapter after chapter the book describes the redeeming work performed at the mission, how one desperate inebriate or career criminal after another was transformed into a useful and upright citizen. James D. Underwood's life had seemingly followed the same course; at one time a successful salesman for a jewelry company, he had fallen prey to alcoholism, lost his job, and had been repeatedly imprisoned for vagrancy. Set on his feet and shown the true Christian path by the mission, he had turned his life around, resumed his commercial travels (possibly for his old employer), and become a reliable provider for his sister and elderly mother. The stinger in the story was at the very end:

One hot day, May 21, 1898, he went into the jewelry store of F. H. Niehaus and Company, No. 312 North 6th Street, St. Louis, Mo., and in some unaccountable manner plunged a glass into a two-gallon crock of cyanide potassium, supposing it was water, and was dead in fifteen minutes.

Hadley's apparent defensiveness about the incident is reflected in the phrases in some unaccountable manner, supposing it was water; remove those words and the story takes on a very different color. Had Underwood fallen off the wagon again and killed himself in a fit of remorse, or succumbed to depression and the lonely life of a traveler? If so, his story would obviously not have suited Hadley's uplifting purpose, nor would it have reflected as positively on the mission's work.

I honestly don't know how plausible it is that one could drink a lethal solution of potassium cyanide without realizing it, or that a two-gallon crock of the poison would be so carelessly labeled and stored that a visiting salesman might accidentally serve himself a draught of it. (The chemical was in fact regularly used by jewelers, so its presence on the premises of Niehaus and Company is not remarkable.) I don't expect to find the answer, and as I said, I don't really care. Underwood appears to have been a good man, at bottom, and his end was ghastly whether he intended it or not. But because his life took such an unusual twist I decided to take a closer look at the circumstances of his end, and as it happens the life and death of this long forgotten man have left a few fleeting traces beyond what we know of him from Hadley's memoir.

First of all, there is the brief account in The New York Times of June 1, 1898:

ST. LOUIS, May 31. James Underwood, a traveling salesman for the Champenois Jewelry Company of Newark, N. J., drank a quantity of cyanide of potassium by mistake at the jewelry store of F. H. Niehaus, thinking it was water. He fell to the floor immediately and lived but ten minutes.

Except for the address of the store and the detail of the two-gallon crock, all of the essential elements of Hadley's account are already established; the date is different, but the article may have been posted some time after the accident. The language in some points is so similar ("thinking it was water") that Hadley may well have referred to the clipping when he wrote.

In the years when Underwood was making his rounds there was a trade journal called The Jewelers' Circular and Horological Review, which among other things of interest to the jewelry business contained reports of the visits of commercial travelers to the various cities where they had customers. And sure enough, we find Underwood's name in those reports. In the issue of May 4, 1898, he is in Louisville, Kentucky. On May 11, 1898 -- just days before the poisoning -- he is already in Missouri, approaching his appointment with death:

The travelers in Kansas City, Mo., last week were: Thos. E. Rogers, Riker Bros.; S. W. Abbey, E. Ira Richards & Co.; Paul Fuesline, Bawo & Dotter; J. D. Underwood, Champenois & Co.; E. A. Reed, Reed & Barton.

Further along in the same column he is listed among the travelers visiting St. Louis, but after that the next mention of him is a posthumous one:

St. Louis, Mo., June 24.—At a meeting of the jewelers of St. Louis, held on Wednesday, June 1, the resolutions below were adopted. Publicity, however, was not given them until this week, when they were beautifully engrossed:

Whereas, it has pleased Almighty God to remove from our midst by death our most esteemed friend, Jas. D. Underwood, and, whereas, in his death we deplore the loss of a real friend, his mother and sister a true and affectionate son and brother. Therefore, be it resolved. That we tender our heartfelt sympathy to the bereaved mother and sister in their hour of grief for their irreparable loss; and be it further resolved, that a copy of these resolutions, suitably engrossed, be tendered to the bereaved mother and sister, and a copy thereof be published in the jewelry trade journals. F. W. Baier, F. W. Drosten, W. F. Kemper, committee.

But the eeriest notices in The Jewelers' Circular and Horological Review don't concern Underwood at all, at least directly. In this single volume of the periodical there are no less than half a dozen mentions of suicides or attempted suicides involving members of the jewelry trade. (From a cursory glance through other volumes it seems that suicide may have been endemic to the profession.) Several of the incidents involve self-poisonings with chemicals used by jewelers, and in one case in particular the details are all too familiar:

William Lucas, a man well advanced in years, who was a jeweler by trade and employed in one of the shops in the Lederer building [in Providence, R. I.] some time during the night committed suicide last week by drinking cyanide of potassium.

Lucas's suicide was reported in the issue of June 28, 1898, meaning that his death followed Underwood's by only a matter of weeks. Had he heard of the latter's end and been inspired to imitate him? Or was death by cyanide poisoning the professional jeweler's little secret, something that everyone in the trade -- craftsmen and seasoned travelers alike -- knew was always at hand?

Supposing it was water

Call me a cynic if you like, but I can't help wondering whether there wasn't more to the following story, which can be found in Samuel H. Hadley's Down in Water Street, Fleming H. Revell, 1902.

James D. Underwood had been a drunkard for years. He came from Providence, R. I., and was arrested many times there. He then located here. At one time he had been a successful jewelry salesman for a large house in Maiden Lane, but finally became so addicted to drink he could not secure employment.

Many times in the early missionary labours of the writer along the Bowery, long after midnight, he has been approached by "Jim" with a request for a nickel, or "Won't you buy some court-plaster so I can get my lodging?" He had often been to Water Street, and had been helped repeatedly.

One night, when the invitation hymn was being sung, the writer was passing down the aisle, asking the poor drunkards here and there to come up to our mercy-seat, when on the last seat near the door sat Jim Underwood. He had come down from the Island that evening for the sixteenth time, having been committed for drunkenness and vagrancy. I took him by the hand and said:

"Jim, aren't you tired of this life? Won't you come ?"

"Yes," he said, "I will come;" and picking up his old cap, he walked up the aisle. He was saved that very night. He worked one week in a restaurant. We helped him to clothing, lodging and food when he needed it, and before long he found employment at his old business, selling jewelry.

When his first anniversary rolled around, he went up and down Maiden Lane, John Street and all over the jewelry district and told everybody, Christian, Heathen, Turk and Jew, that he was going to celebrate his first year in the Christian life. He not only invited them to come, but said he wanted to raise a good sum for the Mission. Nearly all of these people had been pestered sorely by Jim in his old life for nickels and dimes, which always went for whiskey: but how different now! Some well-known Jews said:

"Yes, I'll gladly give to any cause that can make a man of such a drunkard as Jim Underwood."

After Jim had read the lesson and given his testimony, he presented the superintendent with a large envelope containing three hundred and ten dollars for the Mission. The largest gift was ten dollars, and the smallest, one dollar. About one hundred jewelers contributed, probably two-thirds of whom were not professors of Christ.

He traveled for a large house in Maiden Lane, the Champenois Jewelry Manufacturing Company, for about ten years, and supported his aged mother and sister. He laid up a snug sum of money also.

One hot day, May 21, 1898, he went into the jewelry store of F. H. Niehaus and Company, No. 312 North 6th Street, St. Louis, Mo., and in some unaccountable manner plunged a glass into a two-gallon crock of cyanide potassium, supposing it was water, and was dead in fifteen minutes.

We present his picture here to show how this handsome, smart business man was changed from a tramp and a nuisance to a useful Christian gentleman.

A Map of Bohemia

Luther Emanuel Widen alias Lew Ney likely rates barely a footnote in American literary history, but there was a time during the 1920s and '30s when he had a certain notoriety in Bohemian circles, and a New York Times article, back in the day, even referred to him, perhaps generously, as "the Mayor of Greenwich Village." His most durable contribution to letters was probably as a letterpress printer responsible for such curiosities as Christopher Morley's Rubaiyat of Account Overdue, which was dedicated to Frances Steloff of the Gotham Book Mart, but he also garnered attention for such tepid publicity stunts as baptising a baby in the company of the entertainer Texas Guinan and paying for the marriage license for his wedding to Ruth Willis Thompson with 200 copper pennies donated by 100 friends. (Instead of receiving wedding gifts, Thompson, a poet, gave her guests copies of her latest book.) As a correspondent for Variety, Ney reportedly once concocted an item about an upcoming raid on an unnamed adulterous couple's Washington Square love nest, leading to widespread panic and hasty decamping on the part of any number of local philanderers who assumed that they were the parties in question.

I haven't been able to find a single online trace of the existence of this leaflet periodical, The Greenwich Village Saturday Night, which was written, illustrated, and distributed by Ney, and consequently I'm posting it in its entirety. It does say Volume II, No. 3, so presumably there were other issues, but on the other hand it also says "perhaps there will be a series of Saturday Nights similar to this issue in size and tone," so the numbering may have been a fiction.






For this issue, at least, Ney evidently had only one advertiser, the Smock Shop (smocks were big in Greenwich Village, apparently), but the effusiveness of his praise for the Little Quakeress restaurant suggests he might have been slipped a few coppers by that establishment as well. As a money-making scheme The Greenwich Village Saturday Night probably didn't go very far, but Ney's annotated map has a certain charm as a record of the Village's bygone amenities.

Update (2013): Julie Melby, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University's Firestone Library, has posted some examples of Wyden's printing work on the Graphic Arts Collection blog. The Princeton University Library holds one other number of The Greenwich Village Saturday Night in addition to the one shown here.

The Conversion

It was his second morning in the city. He had spent the night in a flophouse and when dawn came collected his things and went out in search of work or breakfast, or failing that a deep, fast-moving river he could throw himself into. The morning air was grey, metallic, and saturated with dust. There was a ruckus coming from a tavern but his pockets were empty and anyway he didn't want company.

He stepped into the flow of pedestrians. Their faces were downcast and ashen, and they were treading forward, anonymous and expressionless, at a uniform mechanical pace. He let himself be carried along until he came to the corner of the avenue, across from the El line heading uptown. He crossed and stood beneath one of the cast iron supports that held the tracks aloft. A train was screeching to a halt above him and the column shuddered with the vibration. He watched the passengers disembark and begin their descent, then stepped away.

All at once, without the slightest premonition, he felt like he had been struck by lightning. He staggered forward a few steps, then sank to his knees; for a brief moment he blacked out entirely. He felt a man's trouser leg graze his shoulder and keep going, but he couldn't raise his head to see who it might be. The sidewalk no longer seemed solid beneath him, and a deep chill quickly spread through his limbs. For several minutes he knelt there without moving, then at last he opened his eyes, swaying and blinking at the harsh glare reflected from the pavement and feeling the blood slowly return to his extremities. He slid one shoe forward, then pushed up with the other leg until he stood once more with his feet solidly planted on the ground.

He took a few steps and was surprised as he did so that his feet appeared to meet so little resistance. His body seemed unimaginably light, as if it were not tethered to the earth at all. He quickened his pace, then shortened his stride and began to run uptown, underneath the tracks, slowly at first in a kind of wayward lunge, then faster and faster as he felt his strength increase until he seemed to be propelled forward by the sheer momentum of his flight. Block after block he dashed across intersections with no regard for traffic, jostling one puzzled stranger after another. He ran ten blocks, then twenty, then forty, until when he came to the end of the overhead line and emerged from its mottled shadow he stopped suddenly, gasping for breath, and stood looking in awe from left to right at the great concrete edifices soaring around him. Through a gap between buildings the sun fell across his face and seared his skin like a brand.

Notes for a Commonplace Book (4)

Luc Sante:

At night sometimes in certain parts of the city, usually in those remaining streets that are left deserted, usually in winter, but sometimes in other seasons if the streets are sufficiently forsaken, the past can be seen as if through a smeared window. Sometimes this effect occurs only for an instant: when you’re walking back from someplace with a head crammed with company and music and sensations, to a point where all new sensations dissipate, on some dead street in the middle West Side lined with jobbers and import showrooms and loading docks and shuttered luncheonettes, or on a street on the Lower East Side where the intersections have no stoplights and everything is nailed down and dark and the only people to be seen dart by as furtively as wraiths. There will be no traffic, and the streetlights will seem to shrink back into their globes, drawing their skirts of illumination into tight circles, and the rutted streets reveal the cobbles under a thin membrane of asphalt, and the buildings all around are masses of unpointed blackened brick or cacophonies of terra-cotta bric-a-brac or yawning cast-iron gravestones six or eight stories tall. This is the sepulcher of New York, the city as a living ruin.

From Low Life: Lures & Snares of Old New York (1989)

1944

From her fourth-story window, open to the breeze, she looks out over the green and silent square. Overnight, without notice, the soldiers have decamped. In the hours before dawn she had heard the sound of their engines, the rattling of trucks and artillery pieces as they lumbered through the streets, but hadn't bothered to get out of bed. She knew what it meant; it wasn't, after all, unexpected. Now there's an uneasy stillness in the city; nobody's celebrating or settling scores, not just yet. The leaves of the lindens quiver in the morning haze, but no one strolls beneath their shade. A stray dog crosses the avenue, nosing among the benches and windblown pages of yesterday's news for something to eat.

From the other room, behind her, she hears the baby stirring awake. She doesn't call to him but only lifts her hand from where it had rested among the folds of her thin white curtains, turns her back on the square, and goes inside, not thinking if she can avoid it about the fates of things left undefended: cities, nations, fatherless children.

The Madonna of Cherry Hill (postscript)

Thanks to a tip from the New York City Fire Museum, I have a tentative identification for Captain Michael E. Graham, whose promotion to Battalion Chief and subsequent death in the line of duty were mentioned in a manuscript account by William Siemes or Siemis. A Battalion Chief Michael Graham of Whitestone NY was fatally injured while fighting a major fire at a Standard Oil Company warehouse in Brooklyn in February 1909. The manuscript states that Graham's "aged mother" outlived him, though not by much, and in fact the obituary of Michael Graham's mother Marcella appears in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on June 2, 1910. The author of the manuscript had worked with Capt. Michael E. Graham at Manhattan's Engine Company 12, but the Graham who perished was assigned to a Brooklyn battalion, so he may have been transferred at the time he was promoted.

The fire at the Standard Oil facility, which was also known as the Pratt Oil Works, was one of a series that occurred around the same period. Eventually a teenager, William Reddy, was arrested and charged with arson. He confessed to setting several of the fires, telling police that he had hoped to win promotion at the company by reporting them. When asked about the incident that killed Graham he refused to answer.

The report of Reddy's fate, in the New York Times, suggests a different motive, and is worth quoting in full:

William Reddy, the eighteen-year-old pyromaniac, who confessed to having set fire to the Standard Oil Company's sheds at North Twelfth Street, Williamsburg, was sentenced yesterday to the Elmira Reformatory by Judge Fawcett, in the County Court, Brooklyn. After he was arrested for the crime, he said he had started the fire simply to see the flames. He admitted smoking 100 cigarettes a day. Judge Fawcett said he would be kept at Elmira long enough to be cured of that habit.

An account of the fire can be found in the New York Times for February 15, 1909. Reddy's sentencing was reported on April 6, 1909.

(Postscript backdated from January 2011)

The Madonna of Cherry Hill

I don't do it that much anymore, but for many years I made a point of going to as many used book sales as I could get to, and over time I suppose I bought hundreds of books -- maybe more than a thousand -- that way, some of which I still own, most of which I read once or twice and then culled out of my shelves years ago.

The thing about buying second-hand books is that as a rule you generally don't know anything about their previous owner or owners. Once in a while there might be a name scrawled on the endpapers, but outside of a handful of occasions when I bought a copy that had coincidentally belonged to someone I knew or had heard of, the books came to me with their past histories and prior associations stripped away, just as the volumes in my own library, should they escape the dumpsters and landfills that are fated to be the last resting places of countless millions of other forgotten books and go on to live a further life, will likely tell no stories of me.


This book is an exception. When I bought it, some two decades ago, I didn't just purchase a fairly ordinary volume about a turn of the century mission in lower Manhattan, I became the guardian of a memory as well. For one of its previous owners -- perhaps the original owner from the time it was published in 1903 -- had filled the endpapers and available blank pages of the book with his own recollections of the neighborhood in which the mission was located. Though it appears that he was never as badly off as the indigents and alcoholics who made up the majority of those who were fed and ministered to there, he often attended services at the mission, almost certainly in this room:


According to an 1897 notice in The New York Times, "the mission was established by Jerry McAuley, ex-convict, river pirate, and desperado, for religious work especially among the lowest class of outcast men and women of the city." It stood at 316 Water Street, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. Down in Water Street, written by one of McAuley's successors, contains more than two dozen illustrations, but sadly most are rather uninteresting portraits of the worthies who were active in the running of the mission. The photo below is a notable exception. The mission is the building at the extreme left, with the large white sign on its side; the building in the center of the frame, ironically, may be a saloon, as it is festooned with signs advertising lager beer.


The creator of the handwritten account in the book's endpapers was named William Siemes or perhaps Siemis, which suggests that his parents may have been among the millions of German immigrants who arrived in New York City in the 19th century, an influx even exceeding that of the Irish. At least one set of grandparents were already resident in the city by 1845, as he mentions their having formerly owned a grocery store in lower Manhattan. Siemes worked as a fireman, assigned to a firehouse just blocks from the McAuley Water Street Mission, but lived in High Bridge, miles away in the Bronx; his father was apparently also a fireman at the same house. New York City firefighting had once been a rough-and-tumble occupation dominated by competing private companies that were little more than gangs, but that had all been done away with by the time of the events he describes.

In the following transcription of Siemes's account I have tidied some of the punctuation and spelling, but have made no effort to form complete sentences where there were none. At a few points, which I have indicated, the handwriting is not legible.

While attached to Engine Co. 12, William St. near Pearl St. 1902-1904 I often attended meeting at the mission, too tired to travel home to the Bronx for a meal I ate in different restaurants in vicinity of Brooklyn Bridge, sometimes in very clean Chinese restaurants also, along the water front for a fish dinner, and in Nassau restaurant famous for its ham, corned beef, and beans, custard cocoanut pie, and delicious coffee — coffee I've supped and sipped and poured it while in firehouse, and at fires in heavy winter weather, an old battered 4 quart tin can, blacked by gas light smoke, was the container, coffee from the bakery looked like spilled gasoline on a wet pavement — all colors of the rainbow, a medical officer of the Department, Dr Ransdale [?] in 1903 said “you firemen should be the healthiest men in the city, the coffee you drink looks like a disinfectant, and just as potent.”

The Water St. mission in the early 1900 [illegible] was crowded with worshippers and often disturbed by hostile groups.

Living in High Bridge [in the Bronx] in the early days, among bright sunshine, green fields, birds, and flowers, it was a revelation to see the contrast — narrow streets, shabby buildings, squalor, poverty, and crime.

To tell of experiences I witnessed would be hard to believe. Of course, girls of all types I came in contact with, some vicious, others victims of ignorance and misfortune. I vividly recall the little 13 year old Cassie Burns first noticed her one bitter winter night rationing strong tea to the grateful firemen, who soaked and chilled, drank with grateful hearts, Cassie was apple cheeked [?], rosy as the dawn, her lovely Irish dark blue eyes looked straight into yours. We called her the madonna of Cherry Hill.

I learned her brother Lawrence was ill, “T.B.,“ so several of us visited him, corner of New Chambers [?] near Cherry St.

I later learned with interest the building was once occupied by my Grandfather's grocery store in 1845.

A 3 story triangle with fire escape hanging from iron straps [in?] the rotted brick mortar of lime. Well we built a large flower box, placed it on the escape, sad to say in violation of law, but who cared. The box filled with colored asters, petunias, and geraniums bloomed all seasons, and concealed in the soil were tulip and hyacinth bulbs taken from my garden. Lawrence died before the tulips bloomed, a year later his mother also T.B. Years later I learned Cassie had married a “foreigner” and was the mother of 9 children. Every time a fire [illegible] in the vicinity Cassie [illegible — “mother”?] brewed a large water pail of tea and Cassie did the rest at all hours, in the snow and cold she could be seen comforting the men with her drinks that “cheers but not inebriates.”

One night in her home building a fire occurred in the bakery in store floor and cellar, wrecking the place. Cassie's old grandmother was bellowing like an East River fog horn as she stood on the fire escape near the flower box, her language was expressive of the neighborhood. A ladder was quickly raised and grandma reached the ground in safety a fireman laughing as he told how he lifted the frail old lady of 80, over the fire escape rail, when she said “I'll slap you if you drop me.”

After the fire apparatus left for quarters, I was in charge of a watch line hose “just in case,“ the weather was cold, and the store [illegible] basement were not pleasably [?] placed [?] to occupy — about 4 AM a salvage patrolman on duty said “Do you hear a noise“ all I heard was the drip of water from charred wood.

Then it happened, little Cassie and a 10 yrs old brother carrying a 4x4 ft apple dumpling pan filled with soggy smoky dumpling; struggling [?] to carry its [?] tray up to their room.

The patrolman laughed and said “come back here wid them [?] dumpling[s?].” They came back all right, one at a time as Cassie and her brother threw them at him, sad to say, the dumplings were apple sauce centres and hits in his neck and face smeared him.


Later, down they came again and carted to the regions above whole ferkins of butter, smoky and charred, then several cases of eggs some cracked, roasted, etc. [?] I was relieved at 6 AM learned later the bakery goods were moved to Cassie's flat for safe keeping or for what ever purpose only the children knew.

We humans have much to account for, I remember an incident at 9 Bowery. A small fire summoned us to the cheap, wooden partitioned floor above the street, found our services were not needed, except for a woman lying on a cot worn and thin she begged our captain Michael E. Graham to take her out, said she had been a prisoner for several years and she had no hope of escape.

Capt. Graham summoned an ambulance to carry her to Bellevue Hospital. Our Captain Graham of Engine Co 12 lived in [illegible], we respected him and admired him greatly. I recall the time he was promoted to Batt. chief, how [?] his last night with us was more like a wake than a time of congratulations. My Dad fried three large top sirloin chunks into steaks first in butter and served on toasted bread. Several months later I attended his funeral, a fireman [?] had fallen and our beloved chief and friend was no more. His aged mother said “he was my first born,“ and she soon found rest beside him.

Pasted inside the volume is a newspaper clipping reporting the demolition of the original mission building (the Water Street Mission relocated and in fact still operates.) The clipping is dated, by hand, July 28, 1948, and the ink and penmanship match the fireman's account, so he must still have been alive at that time. On the title page there is a note in another hand stating that the book was "given to Grandpa M[...] by neighbor Mr. Siemis in Ardsley, NY." There is also another owner's name, which I can't make out, in pencil at the top of the page.

(I have since discovered a Social Security Death Record for a William L. Siemes, b. 27 March 1878, d. October 1971 in Ardsley, NY. I've also found a New York Times entry, dated July 9, 1913, recording the transfer of a William L. Siemes from Engine 82 of the New York City Fire Department to Engine 48. Both departments are located in the Bronx. Federal census records for 1920 show a firefighter named William Siemes, age 42, living with his parents and sister on West 166th Street in the Bronx.)

Also see postscript.

Notes for a Commonplace Book (3)

Luc Sante:

The dead ... are a notoriously perverse and unmanageable lot. They tend not to remain safely buried, and in fact resist all efforts at obliterating their traces. Cultures that glorify and memorialize their dead have simply found a clever way to satisfy and therefore quiet them. When the dead are endlessly represented in monuments, images, memorials, and ceremonies, their vigor passes into these objects and events; it is safely defused, made anodyne. New York, which is founded on forward motion, and is thus loath to acknowledge its dead, merely causes them to walk, endlessly unsatisfied and unburied, to invade the precincts of supposed progress, to lay chill hands on the heedless present, which does not know how to identify the forces that tug at its rationality.

From Low Life: Lures & Snares of Old New York (1989)

The Woman on the Wharf

A number of years ago, before the harbor was dredged and deepened and the entire surrounding district modernized to accommodate container ships, an old man lived in a kind of cramped cabin or shack on one of the long wharves that used to jut out into the bay. He was employed as watchman and fire warden by an import-export firm that held a long-term lease on many of the harborside properties; in lieu of a salary he received free tenancy of the shack and daily meals and as much acrid coffee as he could drink in the firm's commissary. The work was undemanding -- walking the docks several times a night, keeping a lookout for suspicious activity -- and he found it preferable to life in a mission or the poor house. As he made his nightly circuit he carried a kind of staff or cudgel that he would, if necessary, wave in the air to persuade straying drunks to move on, as well as a switchblade in his pocket should real trouble arise, but the waterside was generally deserted once night fell, and it was no longer certain that much of value was passing through the wharves in any case.

Even in the fairest weather it was cold and misty by the water in the evenings, and the old man never left his lodgings without an ancient leather coat, a snug felt cap, and a pair of heavy work gloves. Though a series of pale electric lights had been strung overhead along the length of his route he carried a kerosene lantern with him at all times; his vision was beginning to fail and he held a particular loathing for the formidable rats that sometimes scuttled in front of him as he walked. He did not drink -- had never done so, even in all his travels in his younger days -- never mentioned family and had not been known to be ill or to request a day off. When he had occasion to engage in conversation, which was infrequently, it was noted that he spoke with a faint trace of an accent, though one that was hard to place. It was rumored that he might have been born in Norway or perhaps Orkney or the Hebrides, but no one knew for sure and no one ever took the trouble to inquire.

One particular October evening, after eating his supper in the half-deserted mess and catching a brief twilight nap in his cabin, the watchman dressed, collected his staff and lantern, and stepped out into the night air to begin his rounds. The moon was two nights past full, and its light was diffused by a thin, lingering mist. There were few ships moored at the docks that night, only a listing German freighter -- the Marut -- whose crew had made themselves scarce a few days before, as well as a pair of dark barges piled with scrap iron. Out on the water a long low coaler was steaming further up the harbor, guided by a pair of tugs, and its wake was rocking up against the moorings along shore. It sounded its horn, once, and the muffled echo repeated several times across the bay before dying out.

He passed beneath the dark belly of the freighter, listening to the slapping of the waves against its side, and began walking slowly out towards the end of the wharf. The slanted-roof warehouses that had been constructed along most of its length were now largely empty and stood in need of a coat of paint and more than a few fresh boards. Here and there a window had been broken and boarded up; the rest were dull with salt spray. Between the buildings lay collections of abandoned things: empty barrels and rusting coils of cable, a broken block-and-tackle and an old propeller.

As he approached the opening of the alley between the two outermost buildings he heard an unfamiliar sound that he thought for a second might have been a footfall. He was not alarmed; there was nothing out this far on the wharf to interest a prowler and he suspected it was really just the breaking of the surf, but almost immediately he heard it a second time -- it was unmistakable now -- and then once more again. It didn't sound like the solid tread of a booted workman -- more the light slap of a bare foot on wet wood -- and he wondered if a dog had gotten lost or had wandered out in search of a refuse pail to knock over for scraps. He turned and passed through the narrow alley, and just as he emerged and started for the end of the wharf he caught a fleeting glimpse of a slight figure, dressed in light-colored clothing, who was moving steadily ahead of him.

He called out, but the figure had already disappeared around the corner. He hastily adjusted his lantern, widening its pale glow, and followed, quickening his step. As he came to the end of the warehouse he saw that the fugitive had once again crossed to the opposite side of the wharf and was now heading outwards along the twenty yards of empty deck that remained at its tip. When he called again the figure turned, just for a moment, and to his considerable surprise he saw that it was a woman, whose long, light brown hair flowed down the back of a plain white dress that was not nearly warm enough for the season. In the instant before she turned her back to him again and resumed her course she gave him a frank stare unmarked by either fear or evident curiosity, and as she did so he observed that she was quite strikingly pretty but also not nearly as young as her stride would suggest -- a woman, to all appearances, well into her middle years.

He knew at once that there could be only one explanation for her presence at such an hour, and with more annoyance at her for trespassing on his domain than concern for her welfare he immediately resolved to frustrate her intent. He hurried forward -- not at a run, as the surface of the wharf was slick and treacherous, but as quickly as he could walk -- but she was moving swiftly herself and the distance was too great. When she reached the end of the wharf, just a few yards ahead of him, he nearly caught up with her and lunged for her arm, but it was too late. She did not jump into the bay but instead simply continued walking until the last metal girder was no longer beneath her feet and she plunged downwards and out of sight, making a hollow sound as she broke the surface. The watchman held his lantern up and looked out. A few yards out, the woman had begun to swim calmly and purposefully into the bay; he ordered her to return but she either didn't hear or chose not to heed. He hesitated; there was a dinghy hauled up at the shore end of the wharf but he knew that the oars were locked in a shed and he would have had to find the key. Deciding there was no time, he set the lantern down on the end of the wharf, hurriedly shed his coat and cap, then unbuckled and drew off his boots. Before he leapt he yelled as loud as he could for help, knowing there was little chance that anyone would be within earshot.

As he hit the water the shock of the cold convulsed him and it was a moment before he could regain control of his limbs. Treading water until he had caught his breath, he drew a bead on the woman, illuminated by the moonlight now some thirty yards offshore, and began his pursuit.

He was an experienced swimmer, though no longer as strong as he had once been, and though he quickly drew up to within a few yards of the woman he could not overtake her. Even as he was appalled by her recklessness he could not help but marvel at her practiced stroke. He had never known a woman to swim so well, certainly not in the cold and powerful currents of the bay. She looked over her shoulder briefly and caught sight of him, but gave no indication that his presence affected her or would alter her plan. There were lights on the far shore and on the boats pulled up alongside, casting shining trails across the water, but they were too far away for anyone there to be able make out the two swimmers, even had someone chanced to look, and at that distance the chopping of the waves would muffle even the loudest cry for help. There was nothing for it but to follow the woman until she began to tire, and then hope to persuade her to return with him to shore, assuming his own strength did not give out first.

As she reached the midpoint between the near and far shore, where the channel was cut the deepest, she began to change her course, swinging around until she was parallel to the current, bearing outwards towards the mouth of the bay. For a moment he persuaded himself, with relief, that she was about to make a full circle and return to the wharf and that her madness had, after all, some limit, but all too soon it was clear that that was not at all her purpose. She kept to the center of the bay and even seemed to redouble her pace. He felt fury rising in him at her perverseness and obstinacy, but fascination as well, as he wondered about the mettle of a woman whose strength and determination were more than a match for his own.

They continued swimming and soon had left the busiest part of the harbor behind. The surface of the water was darker here, lit only by the haze-shrouded moon, and the waves began to pick up and slap around him and into his face, but still he maintained a fixed eye on the woman ahead. He could not fathom what purpose she might have in acting as she did; if it were to drown herself she could have done so simply and far closer to shore, unless perhaps his unexpected interference had spoiled her design.

By now, he was no longer swimming to save her -- at this point he no longer thought he could -- nor even to save himself, but still he followed her without knowing why, as if, having already pursued her so far, he had surrendered his will and forfeited the right to turn back. Curiously, he felt no fear. As the cold penetrated his muscles his limbs began to tire and the water felt heavier and darker around him. The steady pull of the falling tide was taking hold, drawing him out into the widest part of the bay. He had begun to swim more slowly now; she seemed to sense this and relaxed her pace as well, turning her head every few strokes as if to gauge where he was. He called to her and for once he thought he saw her listen and consider his words, but still she swam outward, outward...

At last he was exhausted and could do nothing but float. As the current bore him along the woman swam in time with it, still showing no sign of feeling either cold or fatigue. The waves began to break over his head and he gasped for breath, unable to move. The figure ahead of him stopped swimming and turned towards him one last time, treading water, observing him silently, intently, without emotion. As he felt himself being drawn down into the dense, deep water her face was the last thing he saw.

Two days later the crew of a fishing boat spied the watchman's body drifting a few yards offshore at the outermost point of the bay. They notified the harbor patrol, who gaffed him out of the water and brought him to the city morgue. He was buried in an unmarked grave.

A Girl's Diary (1898)

This hardbound German-language "Golden Jubilee Calendar" was issued in New York in 1898. An item in Publisher's Weekly (December 4, 1897) announced its publication:

Lemcke & Buechner in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the firm of B. Westermann & Co., to which they have succeeded, have issued in book form "Meyer's Historisch-Geographischer Kalender" for 1898. This calendar, which contains useful historical and geographical information, was formerly issued in the shape of a pad, and so had only ephemeral value. In book form it will no doubt be acceptable to a wider circle than heretofore.

Each day of the year is decorated with an engraving or other illustration, mostly of points of interest although there are vignettes of such worthies as Martin Luther and Walter Scott as well. The calendar's pages are extremely brittle and the binding is in a ruinous state, though enough of it remains intact to make it difficult to get undistorted scans of a few sample pages:





The versos and endpapers of this copy were used as a diary and scrapbook by an American girl in her teens who lived in New York City. She was not from a German-speaking family but was apparently learning German from a governess, as the entries occasionally mention someone referred to only as "Fräulein." I've been able to identify the diarist, who belonged to a fairly well-to-do Manhattan family with military and political connections. Though her diary has no great literary merit, it preserves interesting glimpses of her daily round of social and educational activities, including visits to West Point, Warwick (New York), and other locations.

Monday Dec 27 I packed my trunk and Tuesday I went to West Point & Mama and Papa went to Washington. I took an early train, arrived at twelve and found Bus (?) waiting for me. After lunch she & I went to see the yearlings drill. Capt. Parker had hurt himself the day before and another man drilled them. Later we met the Jackson kids Maud & Evelyn and we had a short talk with their brother. Wed. afternoon we had a tea at the Parkers & I met about 35 - 40 cadets....

On several pages she sketches and describes the designs of dresses she was making by hand:



Though the handwriting in the above pages is sometimes difficult to make out, it is often far worse elsewhere in the diary. Confined as she was to a single page per day, when she had a particularly busy day she simply wrote smaller. On a couple of occasions she filled the page, rotated the book 90 degrees, and wrote over what she had already written. It was as if she despaired of leaving anything out, as if she realized all too well that in time her words would be all that remained.

The young diarist later married, had children, and eventually died at an advanced age. I have no way of knowing whether she ever kept a diary again.

Water Street

Evening has come. I have lit my lamp and shut out the night. My Bible lies close at hand on the table by the bed, and in a few moments -- as soon as I finish these lines -- I will set down my pen and close my desk, turn down the covers and retire to bed. I will read a few chapters, beginning at the place I marked when I finished last evening, then I will extinguish the lamp and let my head fall back in the absolute darkness and stillness of my room. Sleep will come swiftly, as it always does, like a silent phantom.

Elsewhere in the city, well away from the harbor, the crowds move through restless streets. Along the broad promenades of the wealthy and in the tubercular quarters of the destitute they spill from houses and workplaces and fan out into cafés and dives, into theatres, brothels, gin mills and social halls. They laugh and they shout, they gorge themselves and drink themselves to stupefaction, they defile their bodies without shame or cosh each other for coin or sport. But not here. On the narrow street that winds below my window every last door is drawn tight and locked, every shutter secured. The shop windows are dark, the displays of haberdashery gloomy and crestfallen. And nothing moves, no hansom rattling through these alleys, no horse's hoof striking against the cobblestones -- not at this hour. A few blocks away, around the mission at the edge of the water district, a handful of stragglers -- inebriates and syphilitic sailors -- still skulk in the shadows, drawn outwards by the magnetic pull of madness or impossible cravings, but that is the limit, the border that nothing marks and that no one will cross once night falls.

As a young man I went to sea but I will never leave this city again. I was married once -- it was far from here -- but the woman died and the child with her. During the day I work quietly at my desk until I am summoned. There is much business to be done here, though you would not suspect it at this hour of the night. On Sundays I sit in a pew in the rear of the church and slip quietly out the door before the rest of the congregation has begun to rise.

My material needs are few and my means commensurate. As for the rest, I know that I am damned. I read my Bible faithfully, but I know that the mark is on me and on this district. One day I will no longer fear it and that is when I will be taken, as in time the city will be taken in its turn, all the gaudy palaces of sin, and there will be nothing left but smoke and darkness.

Not Fade Away

These images -- I believe they're chromolithographs, but don't quote me on it -- are souvenir or advertising cards commemorating the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. They've been enclosed in a scrapbook, probably for well over a century, and thus their paleness is not the result of exposure to the sun but is either due to the natural deterioration of the ink or to the fact that they simply were made to look as they now appear. (None of the other material in the album shows significant fading.) Scanning them hasn't really helped matters; the horizontal stripes, for example, in some of the scans are real but far less noticeable in the originals.


Main Exhibition Building

Machinery Hall

Art Gallery

German Government Building

Arkansa State Building (sic)

New York Tate Building (sic)

Agricultural Hall
I'm afraid the uncanniness of these cards -- especially the first three above -- doesn't quite come across in the scans (the delicate blue skies definitely don't). The aqua color in the windows of the Art Gallery produces an eerie, almost three-dimensional depth, which may have been the intent but also may just be due to the limitations of the process employed. The tiny figures in the foreground, and the vastness and isolation of the buildings, seem all out of scale for a crowded 19th-century metropolis -- in fact they don't seem to belong to our world at all. They're faint echoes of a time no one living now remembers, dwindling ghosts growing every more distant from their corporeal origins.

These pictures must have been endlessly reproduced and copied and either given away or sold cheaply. I've seen barely distinguishable versions online, and in The Illustrated History of the Centennial Exhibition published in the year of the fair there are numerous black-and-white engravings depicting similar or identical scenes. Because the cards are pasted onto the pages of the album I can't tell what if anything may be on the other side.

Truth in Advertising

The remarkable properties of everyday products, from 19th-century advertising cards.