Chapter 11
Downstairs, the space behind the arena is a fascinating jostle of odd sights. The elephants come swaying up the runway from the basement and stand in line waiting their turn. Here is a cage of trained bears. In the background stands the dogcatcher's cart, attached to the famous kicking mule. From the ladies' dressing quarters come the aerial human butterflies in their wings and gauzy draperies. On the wall is a list of names, _Mail Uncalled For_. One of the names is "Toby Hamilton." That must mean old Toby, and we fear the letter will never be called for now, for Toby Hamilton, the famous old Barnum and Bailey press agent, who cleaned up more "free space" than any man who ever lived, died in 1916. Suddenly appears a person clad in flesh tights and a barrel, carrying a label announcing himself as _The Common People_. Someone thrusts a large sign into the hands of one of the amateur clowns, and he is thrust upon the arena, to precede the barrelled Common People round the sawdust circuit. He has hardly time to see what the sign says--something about "On Strike Against $100 Suits." The amateur clown is somewhat aghast at the huge display of friendly faces. Is he to try to be funny? Here is the flag-hung box, and he tries to see who is in it. He doesn't see either Wood, Pershing, or Mrs. Astor, who are not there; but a lot of wounded soldiers, who smile at him encouragingly. He feels better and proceeds, finding himself, with a start, just beneath some flying acrobats who are soaring in air, hanging by their teeth. Common People shouts to him to keep the sign facing toward the audience. The tour is made without palpable dishonour.
Things are now moving so fast it is hard to keep up with them. Pat Valdo is dressed as a prudish old lady with an enormous bustle. Escorted by the clown policeman and the two amateurs, Pat sets out, fanning himself demurely. Hullo! the bustle has detached itself from the old lady, but she proceeds, unconscious. The audience shouts with glee. Finally the cop sees what has happened and screams. The amateur clowns scream, too, and one of them, in a burst of inspiration, takes off his absurd hat to the bustle, which is now left yards behind. But Pat is undismayed, turns and beckons with his hand. The bustle immediately runs forward of its own accord and reattaches itself to the rear of the skirt. You see, there is a dwarf inside it. The two amateur clowns are getting excited by this time and execute some impromptu tumbling. One tackles the other and they roll over and over desperately. In the scuffle one loses both his hat and skull-cap and flees shamefast from the scene. It is asserted by our partner that "this went big." He swears it got a laugh. Pat Valdo hurries off to prepare for his boomerang throwing. Pat is a busy man, for he is not only a clown, but he and Mrs. Valdo also do wonderful stunts of their own on Ring Number One.
And there are moments of sheer poetry, too. Into the darkened arena, crossed by dazzling shafts of light, speeds a big white motor car. Bird Millman descends, tossing aside her cloak. "A fairy on a cobweb" the press agents call her, and as two humble clowns watch entranced through the peepholes in the big doors the phrase seems none too extravagant. See her, in a foam of short fluffy green skirts, twirl and tiptoe on the glittering wire, all grace and slenderness and agile enchantment. She bows in the dazzle of light and kisses her hands to the crowd. Then she hops into the big car and is borne back behind the scenes. Once behind the doors her gay vivacity ceases. She sits, wearily, several minutes, before getting out of the car. And then, later, comes Mlle. Leitzel. She, like all the other stars, is said to have "amazed all Europe." We don't know whether Europe is harder to amaze than America. Certainly no one could be more admiringly astounded than the amateur clowns gazing entranced through the crack of the doorway. To that nerve-tightening roll of drums she spins deliriously high up in giddy air, floating, a tiny human pin-wheel, in a shining cone of light. One can hear the crowd catch its breath. She walks back, all smiles, while her maid trots ahead saying something unintelligible. Her tall husband is waiting for her at the doorway. He catches her up like a child and carries her off, limp and exhausted. One of the clowns (irreverent creature) makes a piteous squawk and begs us to carry him to his dressing room.
A trained pig, trotting cheerfully round in search of tidbits, is retrieved from under the hooves of Mrs. Curtis's horse, which is about to go out and dance. The dogcatcher's wagon is drawn up ready to rush forth, and the trained terrier which accompanies it is leaping with excitement. He regards it as a huge lark, and knows his cue perfectly. When the right time comes he makes a dash for a clown dressed as an elderly lady and tears off her skirt. One of the amateurs was allowed to ride behind the kicking mule, but to his great chagrin the mule did not kick as well as usual. Here are Charley Chaplin and some others throwing enormous dice from a barrel. No matter how the dice are thrown they always turn up seven. Into this animated gamble the amateur clown enters with enjoyment. All round him the wildest capers are proceeding. The double-ended flivver is prancing about. John Barleycorn's funeral procession is going its way. "Give me plenty of space," says Charley Chaplin to us, "so the people can watch me." We do so, reverently, for Charley's antics are worth watching. We make a wild dash, and plan to do a tumble in imitation of Charley's. To our disappointment we find that instead of sliding our feet dig into the soft sawdust, and the projected collapse does not arrive. Intoxicated by the rich spice of circus odours, the booming calliope, the galloping horses, we hardly know what we are doing half the time. We hear Miss May Wirth, the Wonder Rider of the World, complaining bitterly that someone got in front of her when she was doing her particularly special stunt. We wonder dubiously whether we were the guilty one. Alas, it is all over but the washing up. Pat Valdo, gentlest of hosts, is taking off his trick hat with the water cistern concealed in it. He has a clean towel ready for his grateful pupils.
The band is playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," and all the clowns, in various stages of undress, stand at attention. Our little peep into the gay, good-hearted, courageous, and extraordinary world of the circus is over. Pat and his fellows will go on, twice a day, for the next six months. It takes patience and endurance. But it must be some consolation to know that nothing else in the world gives half as much pleasure to so many people.
HOUSE-HUNTING
A curious vertigo afflicts the mind of the house-hunter. In the first place, it is sufficiently maddening to see the settled homes of other happier souls, all apparently so firmly rooted in a warm soil of contentment while he floats, an unhappy sea-urchin, in an ocean of indecision. Furthermore, how confusing (to one who likes to feel himself somewhat securely established in a familiar spot) the startling panorama of possible places in which he visualizes himself. One day it is Great Neck, the next it is Nutley; one day Hollis, the next Englewood; one day Bronxville, and then Garden City. As the telephone rings, or the suasive accents of friendly realtors expound the joys and glories of various regions, his uneasy imagination flits hoppingly about the compass, conceiving his now vanished household goods reassembled and implanted in these contrasting scenes.
Startling scenarios are filmed in his reeling mind while he listens, over the tinkling wire, to the enumeration of rooms, baths, pantries, mortgages, commuting schedules, commodious closets, open fireplaces, and what not. In the flash and coruscation of thought he has transported his helpless family to Yonkers, or to Manhasset, or to Forest Hills, or wherever it may be, and tries to focus and clarify his vision of what it would all be like. He sees himself (in a momentary close-up) commuting on the bland and persevering Erie, or hastening hotly for a Liberty Street ferry, or changing at Jamaica (that mystic ritual of the Long Island brotherhood). For an instant he is settled again, with a modest hearth to return to at dusk ... and then the sorrowful compliment is paid him and he wonders how the impression got abroad that he is a millionaire.
There is one consoling aspect of his perplexity, however, and that is the friendly intercourse he has with high-spirited envoys who represent real estate firms and take him voyaging to see "properties" in the country. For these amiable souls he expresses his candid admiration. Just as when one contemplates the existence of the doctors one knows, one can never imagine them ill, so one cannot conceive of the friendly realtor as in any wise distressed or grieved by the problems of the home. There is something Olympian about them, happy creatures! They deal only in severely "restricted" tracts. They have a stalwart and serene optimism. Odd as it seems, one of these friends told us that some people are so malign as to waste the time of real estate men by going out to look at houses in the country without the slightest intention of "acting." As a kind of amusement, indeed! A harmless way of passing an afternoon, of getting perhaps a free motor ride and enjoying the novelty of seeing what other people's houses look like inside. But our friend was convinced of one humble inquirer's passionate sincerity when he saw him gayly tread the ice floes of rustic Long Island in these days of slush and slither.
How do these friends of ours, who see humanity in its most painful and distressing gesture (i.e., when it is making up its mind to part with some money), manage to retain their fine serenity and blitheness of spirit? They have to contemplate all the pathetic struggles of mortality, for what is more pathetic than the spectacle of a man trying to convince a real estate agent that he is not really a wealthy creature masking millions behind an eccentric pose of humility? Our genial adviser Grenville Kleiser, who has been showering his works upon us, has classified all possible mental defects as follows:
(_a_) _Too easy acquiescence_
(_b_) _A mental attitude of contradiction_
(_c_) _Undue skepticism_
(_d_) _A dogmatic spirit_
(_e_) _Lack of firmness of mind_
(_f_) _A tendency to take extreme views_
(_g_) _Love of novelty; that is, of what is foreign, ancient, unusual, or mysterious._
All these serious weaknesses of judgment may be discerned, in rapid rotation, in the mind of the house-hunter. It would be only natural, we think, if the real estate man were to tell him to go away and study Mr. Kleiser's "How to Build Mental Power." In the meantime, the vision of the home he had dreamed of becomes fainter and fainter in the seeker's mind--like the air of a popular song he has heard whistled about the streets, but does not know well enough to reproduce. How he envies the light-hearted robins, whose house-hunting consists merely in a gay flitting from twig to twig. Yet, even in his disturbance and nostalgia of spirit, he comforts himself with the common consolation of his cronies--"Oh, well, one always finds something"--and thus (in the words of good Sir Thomas Browne) teaches his haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoop unto the lure of Faith.
LONG ISLAND REVISITED
The anfractuosities of legal procedure having caused us to wonder whether there really were any such place as the home we have just bought, we thought we would go out to Salamis, L. I., and have a look at it. Of course we knew it had been there a few weeks ago, but the title companies do confuse one so. We had been sitting for several days in the office of the most delightful lawyer in the world (and if we did not fear that all the other harassed and beset creatures in these parts would instantly rush to lay their troubles in his shrewd and friendly bosom we would mention his name right here and do a little metrical pirouette in his honour)--we had been sitting there, we say, watching the proceedings, without the slightest comprehension of what was happening. It is really quite surprising, let us add, to find how many people are suddenly interested in some quiet, innocent-looking shebang nestling off in a quiet dingle in the country, and how, when it is to be sold, they all bob up from their coverts in Flushing, Brooklyn, or Long Island City, and have to be "satisfied." What floods of papers go crackling across the table, drawn out from those mysterious brown cardboard wallets; what quaint little jests pass between the emissaries of the title company and the legal counsel of the seller, jests that seem to bear upon the infirmity of human affairs and cause the well-wishing adventurer to wonder whether he had ever sufficiently pondered the strange tissue of mortal uncertainties that hides behind every earthly venture ... there was, for instance, occasional reference to a vanished gentleman who had once crossed the apparently innocent proscenium of our estate and had skipped, leaving someone six thousand dollars to the bad; this ingenious buccaneer was, apparently, the only one who did not have to be "satisfied." At any rate, we thought that we, who entered so modestly and obscurely into this whole affair, being only the purchaser, would finally satisfy ourself, too, by seeing if the property was still there.
Long Island and spring--the conjunction gives us a particular thrill. There are more beautiful places than the Long Island flats, but it was there that we earned our first pay envelope, and it was there that we first set up housekeeping; and as long as we live the station platform of Jamaica will move us strangely--not merely from one train to another, but also inwardly. There is no soil that receives a more brimming benison of sunshine than Long Island in late April. As the train moves across the plain it seems to swim in a golden tide of light. Billboards have been freshly painted and announce the glories of phonographs in screaming scarlets and purples, or the number of miles that divide you from a Brooklyn department store. Out at Hillside the stones that demarcate the territory of an old-fashioned house are new and snowily whitewashed. At Hollis the trees are a cloud of violent mustard-yellow (the colour of a safety-matchbox label). Magnolias (if that is what they are) are creamy pink. Moving vans are bustling along the road. Across the wide fields of Bellaire there is a view of the brown woods on the ridge, turning a faint olive as the leaves gain strength. Gus Wuest's roadhouse at Queens looks inviting as of old, and the red-brown of the copper beeches reminds one of the tall amber beakers. Here is the little park by the station in Queens, the flag on the staff, the forsythia bushes the colour of scrambled eggs.
Is it the influence of the Belmont Park race track? There seem to be, in the smoking cars, a number of men having the air of those accustomed to associate (in a not unprofitable way) with horses. Here is one, a handsome person, who holds our eye as a bright flower might. He wears a flowing overcoat of fleecy fawn colour and a derby of biscuit brown. He has a gray suit and joyful socks of heavy wool, yellow and black and green in patterned squares which are so vivid they seem cubes rather than squares. He has a close-cut dark moustache, his shaven cheeks are a magnificent sirloin tint, his chin splendidly blue by the ministration of the razor. His shirt is blue with a stripe of sunrise pink, and the collar to match. He talks briskly and humorously to two others, leaning over in the seat behind them. As he argues, we see his brown low shoe tapping on the floor. One can almost see his foot think. It pivots gently on the heel, the toe wagging in air, as he approaches the climax of each sentence. Every time he drives home a point in his talk down comes the whole foot, softly, but firmly. He relights his cigar in the professional manner, not by inhaling as he applies the match, but by holding the burned portion in the flame, away from his mouth, until it has caught. His gold watch has a hunting case; when he has examined it, it shuts again with a fine rich snap, which we can hear even above the noise of the car.
On this early morning train there are others voyaging for amusement. Here are two golfing zealots, puffing pipes and discussing with amazing persistence the minutiæ of their sport. Their remarks are addressed to a very fashionable-looking curate, whose manners are superb. Whether he is going to play golf we know not; at any rate, he smiles mildly and politely to all they say. Perhaps he is going round the course with them, in the hope of springing some ecclesiastical strategy while they are softened and chastened by the glee of the game. The name of their Maker, it is only fair to suspect, has more than once been mentioned on the putting green; and if it should slip out, the curate will seize the cue and develop it. In the meantime, one of the enthusiasts (while his companion is silenced in the act of lighting his pipe) is explaining to the cloth how his friend plays golf. "I'll tell you how he plays," he says. "Imagine him sitting down in a low chair and swinging a club. Then take the chair away and he still keeps the same position. That's what he looks like when he drives." The curate smiles at this and prepares his face to smile with equal gentleness when the other retorts.
After Floral Park the prospect becomes more plainly rural. The Mineola trolley zooms along, between wide fields of tilled brown earth. There is an occasional cow; here and there a really old barn and farmhouse standing, incongruously, among the settlements of modern kindling-wood cottages; and a mysterious agricultural engine at work with a spinning fly-wheel. Against the bright horizon stand the profiles of Garden City: the thin cathedral spire, the bulk of St. Paul's school, the white cupola of the hotel. The tree-lined vistas of Mineola are placidly simmering in the morning sun. A white dog with erect and curly tail trots very purposefully round the corner of the First National Bank. We think that we see the spreading leaves of some rhubarb plants in a garden; and there are some of those (to us very enigmatic, as we are no gardener) little glass window frames set in the soil, as though a whole house, shamed by the rent the owner wanted to charge, had sunk out of sight, leaving only a skylight.
As we leave East Williston we approach more interesting country, with a semblance of hills, and wooded thickets still brownly tapestried with the dry funeral of last year's leaves. On the trees the new foliage sways in little clusters, catching the light like the wings of perching green butterflies. Some of the buds are a coppery green, some a burning red, but the prevailing colour is the characteristic sulphur yellow of early spring. And now we are set down at Salamis, where the first and most surprising impression is of the unexpected abundance of competitive taxicabs. Having reached the terminus of our space, we can only add that we found our estate still there--and there are a few stalks of rhubarb surviving from an earlier plantation.
ON BEING IN A HURRY
New York is a perplexing city to loaf in. (Walt Whitman if he came back to Mannahatta would soon get brain fever.) During the middle hours of the day, at any rate, it is almost impossible to idle with the proper spirit and completeness. There is a prevailing bustle and skirmish that "exerts a compulsion," as President Wilson would say. The air is electric and nervous. We have often tried to dawdle gently about the neighbourhood of the City Hall in the lunch hour, to let the general form and spirit of that clearing among the cliffs sink into our mind, so that we could get some picture of it. We have sat under a big brown umbrella, to have our shoes shined, when we had nothing more important to do than go to the doughnut foundry on Park Row and try some of those delectable combinations of foods they have there, such as sponge cake with whipped cream and chocolate fudge. And in a few seconds we have found ourself getting all stirred up and crying loudly to the artist that we only wanted a once-over, as we had an important appointment. You have to put a very heavy brake on your spirit in downtown New York or you find yourself dashing about in a prickle of excitement, gloriously happy just to be in a hurry, without particularly caring whither you are hastening, or why.
One of the odd things about being in a hurry is that it seems so fiercely important when you yourself are the hurrier and so comically ludicrous when it is someone else. We see our friend Artaxerxes scorching up Church Street and we scream with laughter at him, because we know perfectly well that there is absolutely not one of his affairs important enough to cause him to buzz along like that. We look after him with a sort of mild and affectionate pity for a deluded creature who thinks that his concerns are of such glorious magnitude. And then, a few hours later, we find ourself on a subway car with only ten minutes to catch the train for Salamis at Atlantic Avenue. And what is our state of mind? We stand, gritting our teeth (we are too excited to sit, even if there were a seat) and holding our watch. The whole train, it seems to us, is occupied by invalids, tottering souls and lumbago cripples, who creep off at the stations as though five seconds made not the slightest difference. We glare and fume and could gladly see them all maced in sunder with battle-axes. Nothing, it seems to us, could soothe our bitter hunger for haste but to have a brilliant Lexington Avenue express draw up at the platform with not a soul in it. Out would step a polite guard, looking at his watch. "You want to catch a train at 5:27?" he asks. "Yes, sir, yes, sir; step aboard." All the other competitors are beaten back with knotted thongs and we are ushered to a seat. The bells go chiming in quick sequence up the length of the train and we are off at top speed, flying wildly past massed platforms of indignant people. We draw up at Atlantic Avenue, and the solitary passenger, somewhat appeased, steps off. "Compliments of the Interborough, sir," says the guard.
The commuter, urgently posting toward the 5:27, misses the finest flavour of the city's life, for it is in the two or three hours after office work is over that the town is at her best. What a spry and smiling mood is shown along the pavements, particularly on these clear, warm evenings when the dropping sun pours a glowing tide of soft rosy light along the cross-town streets. There is a cool lightness in the air; restaurants are not yet crowded (it is, let us say, a little after six) and beside snowy tablecloths the waiters stand indulgently with folded arms. Everybody seems in a blithe and spirited humour. Work is over for the day, and now what shall we do for amusement? This is the very peak of living, it seems to us, as we sally cheerily along the street. It is like the beginning of an O. Henry story. The streets are fluttering with beautiful women; light summer frocks are twinkling in the busy frolic air. Oh, to be turned loose at the corner of Broadway and Thirty-second Street at 6:15 o'clock of a June evening, with nothing to do but follow the smile of adventure to the utmost! Thirty-second, we might add, is our favourite street in New York. It saddens us to think that the old boarding house on the corner of Madison Avenue is vanished now and all those quaint and humorous persons dispersed. We can still remember the creak of the long stairs and the clink of a broken slab in the tiled flooring of the hall as one walked down to the dining room.