Part 11 (1/2)
CHAPTER VI
_Pages of Romance_
In the resolute spirit of another Andor Andorra, the Village of Greenwich maintains its independence in the very midst of the city of New York--submitting to no more of a compromise in the matter of its autonomy than is evolved in the Procrustean sort of splicing which has. .h.i.tched fast the extremities of its tangled streets to the most readily available streets in the City Plan. The flippant carelessness with which this apparent union has been effected only serves to emphasise the actual separation. In almost every case these ill-advised couplings are productive of anomalous disorder, which in the case of the numbered streets they openly travesty the requirements of communal propriety and of common-sense: as may be inferred from the fact that within this disjointed region Fourth Street crosses Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth streets very nearly at right angles--to the permanent bewilderment of nations and to the perennial confusion of mankind.--THOMAS JANVIER.
It seems a far cry from the Greenwich of the last century to the Greenwich of this; from such quaint, garden-enclosed houses as the Warren homestead and Richmond Hill, from the alternately adventurous and tranquil lives of the great men who used to walk its crooked streets long and long ago, to the Studio quarter of today. What tie between the Grapevine, Vauxhall, Ranelagh, Brannan's, and all the ancient hostelries and mead houses and the modern French and Italian restaurants and little tea shops which are part and parcel of the present Village? So big did the gap appear to your servant, the author, so incongruous the notion of uniting the old and the new Greenwich harmoniously that she was close to giving the problem up in despair and writing her story of Greenwich Village in two books instead of one. But--whether accidentally or by inspiration, who knows?--three sovereign bonds became accidentally plain to her. May they be as plain to you who read--bonds between the Green Village of an older day and the Bohemian Village of this our own day, points that the old and the new settlements have in common--more--points that show the soul and spirit of the Village to be one and the same, unchanged in the past, unchanged in the present, probably to be unchanged for all time. The first of these points I have already touched upon in an earlier chapter--the deathless element of romance that has always had its headquarters here. Every city, like every brain, should have a corner given over to dreams. Greenwich is the dream-corner of New York. Everyone feels it. I found an old article in the _Tribune_ written by Vincent Pepe which shows how the romance of the neighbourhood has crept into bricks and stone and even the uncompromising prose of real estate.
”Each one of these houses in the Village is from seventy-five to one hundred years old,” writes Mr. Pepe (he might have said a hundred and fifty with equal accuracy in a few cases), ”and each one of them has a history of its own, individually, as being one of the houses occupied by someone who has made American history and some of these houses have produced some of our present great men.
”New York has nothing of the old, with the exception of those old Colonial houses and for this reason we are trying to preserve them.... This is the great advantage and distinction of Was.h.i.+ngton Square and Greenwich Village and this is what has made it popular and it will be greater as the years go by. It will improve more and more with age, like an old wine.
”There is only one old section of New York and that is Greenwich Village and Was.h.i.+ngton Square, and the public are also going to preserve this little part of old New York.”
Then there is that curious quality about Greenwich so endearing to those who know it, the quality of a haven, a refuge, a place of protected freedom.
”It's a good thing,” said a certain brilliant young writer-man to me, ”that there's one place where you can be yourself, live as you will and work out your scheme of life without a lot of criticism and convention to keep tripping you up. The point of view of the average mortal--out in the city--is that if you don't do exactly as everyone else does there's something the matter with you, morally or mentally.
In the Village they leave you in peace, and take it for granted that you're decent until you've blatantly proven yourself the opposite. I'd have lost my nerve or my wits or my balance or something if I hadn't had the Village to come and _breathe_ in!”
Not so different from the reputation of Old Greenwich, is it?--a place where the rich would be healed, the weary rest and the sorrowful gain comfort. Not so different from the lure that drew Sir. Peter out to the Green Village between his spectacular and hazardous voyages; that gave Thomas Paine his ”seven serene months” before death came to him; that filled the gra.s.sy lanes with a mushroom business-life which had fled before the scourge of yellow fever; not so different from the refres.h.i.+ng ease of heart that came to Abigail Adams and Theodosia Alston when they came there from less comforting atmospheres.
Greenwich, you see, maintains its old and honourable repute--that of being a resort and shelter and refuge for those upon whom the world outside would have pressed too heavily.
There is no one who has caught the inconsequent, yet perfectly sincere spirit of the Village better than John Reed. In reckless, scholarly rhyme he has imprisoned something of the reckless idealism of the Artists' Quarter--that haven for unconventional souls.
_”Yet we are free who live in Was.h.i.+ngton Square, We dare to think as uptown wouldn't dare, Blazing our nights with arguments uproarious; What care we for a dull old world censorious, When each is sure he'll fas.h.i.+on something glorious?”_
So we find that the romance of Colonial days still blooms freshly below Fourteenth Street and that people still rush to the Village to escape the world and its ways as eagerly as they fled a hundred years ago. But the third and last point of unity is perhaps the most striking. Always, we know, Greenwich has refused rebelliously to conform to any rule of thumb. We know that when the Commissioners checker-boarded off the town they found they couldn't checker-board Greenwich. It was too independent and too set in its ways. It had its lanes and trails and cow-paths and nothing could induce it to become resigned to straight streets and measured avenues. It would not conform, and it never has conformed. And even more strenuously has its mental development defied the draughtsman's compa.s.s and triangle.
Greenwich will not straighten its streets nor conventionalise its views. Its intellectual conclusions will always be just as unexpected as the squares and street angles that one stumbles on head first. Its habit of life will be just as weirdly individual as its tangled blocks. It asks nothing better than to be let alone. It does not welcome tourists, though it is hospitality itself to wayfarers seeking an open door. It is the Village, and it will never, never, no _never_ be anything else--the Village of the streets that wouldn't be straight!
Janvier, who has already been quoted extensively, but who has written of Greenwich so well that his quotations can't be avoided, says: ”In addition to being hopelessly at odds with the surrounding city, Greenwich is handsomely at variance with itself.”
New York, and especially Greenwich, grew by curious and indirect means, as we have seen. This fact and a lively and sympathetic consciousness of it, leads often to seemingly irrelevant digressions.
Yet, is it not worth a moment's pause to find out that the stately site of Was.h.i.+ngton Square North, as well as other adjacent and select territory, was originally the property of two visionary seamen; and that the present erratic deflection of Broadway came from one obstinate Dutchman's affection for his own grounds and his uncompromising determination to use a gun to defend them, even against a city?
So, lest what follows appears to be a digression or an irrelevance, let me venture to remind you that the Village has always grown not only with picturesque results but by picturesque methods and through picturesque mediums. It is frankly, incurably romantic. Sir. Peter Warren's estates, or part of them, were sold off in parcels by the fine old custom of dice-throwing. Here is the official record of that episode, by the bye:
”In pursuance of the powers given in the said antenuptial deeds the trustees therein named, on March 31, 1787, agreed upon a part.i.tion of the said lands, which agreement was with the approbation and consent of the cestui que trusts, to wit: Earl and Lady Abingdon, and Charles Fitsroy and Ann his wife, the said Susannah Skinner the second not then having arrived at age. In making the part.i.tion, the premises were divided into three parts on a survey made thereof and marked A, B and C; and it was agreed that such part.i.tion should be made by each of the trustees naming a person to throw dice for and in behalf of their respective cestui que trusts, and that the person who should throw the highest number should have parcel A; the one who should throw the next highest number parcel B; and the one who should throw the lowest number, parcel C,--for the persons whom they respectively represented; and the premises were part.i.tioned accordingly.”
Eleventh Street was never cut through because old Burgher Brevoort did not want his trees cut down and argued conclusively with a blunderbuss to that effect--a final effect. It never has been cut through, as a matter of fact, to this day. And by way of evening things up, Grace Church, which stands almost on the disputed site, had for architect one James Renwick, who married the only daughter of Henry Brevoort himself. So by a queer twisted sort of law of compensation, the city gained rather than lost by what a certain disgruntled historian calls the ”obstinacy of one Dutch householder.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BREVOORT HOUSE. ”... The atmosphere of chivalry to women, friendliness to men, and courtesy to everyone, which is, after all, just the air of France.”]
These things are all true; the most amazing thing about Greenwich Village is that the most unlikely things that you can find out about it are true. The obvious, every-day things that are easily believed are much the most likely to be untenable reports or the day dreams of imaginative chroniclers. You are safe if you believe all the quaint and romantic and inconsistent and impossible things that come to your knowledge concerning the Village. That is its special and sacred privilege: to be unexpected and always--yes, always without exception--in the spirit of its irrational and sympathetic role. It needs Kipling's ambiguous ”And when the thing that couldn't has occurred” for a motto. And yet--and yet--like all true nonsense, this nonsense is rooted in a beautiful and disconcerting compromise of truth.
Cities do grow through their romances and their adventures. The commonplaces of life never opened up new worlds nor established them after; the prose of life never served as a song of progress. Never a great onward movement but was called impossible. The things that the sane-and-safe gentleman accepts as good sense are not the things that make for growth, anywhere. And the principle, applied to lesser things, holds good. Who wants to study a city's life through the registries of its civic diseases or cures? We want its romances, its exceptions, its absurdities, its adventures. We not only want them, we must have them. Despite all the wiseacres on earth we care more for the duel that Burr and Hamilton fought than for all their individual achievements, good or bad. It is the theatrical change from the Potter's Field to the centre of fas.h.i.+on that first catches our fancy in the tale of Was.h.i.+ngton Square. In fact, my friend, we are, first and last, children addicted to the mad yet harmless pa.s.sion of story-telling and story-hearing. I do hope that, when you read these pages, you will remember that, and be not too stern in criticism of sundry vastly important historic points which are all forgot and left out of the scheme--asking your pardon!
The Village, old or new, is the home of romance (as we have said, it is to be feared at least once or twice too often ere this) and it is for us to follow those sweet and crazy trails where they may chance to lead.
Since, then, we are concerned chiefly with the spirit of adventure, we can hardly fail to note that this particular element has haunted the neighbourhood of Was.h.i.+ngton Square fairly consistently.