Part 18 (1/2)
So the traveller dipped his quill in ink once more and started writing his book. It is not yet known how successful he was.
Travellers make terrible errors, and yet at times they bring back fragments of truth that the natives of the land have left unheeded scattered on the soil of the countryside. Sometimes their fragments prove to be useless and without value, for there are travellers and travellers, and some will be as stupid and as blind as the rest are clever. If this book turns out to be written by one of the stupid travellers--try to be generous, you Villagers--but then the Village is always generous!
The studio life of Greenwich is really and truly as primitive, as picturesque, as poverty-stricken and as gaily adventurous as the story-tellers say. People really do live in big, quaint, bare rooms with scarcely enough to buy the necessaries of life; and they are undoubtedly gay in the doing of it. There is a sort of _camaraderie_ among the ”Bohemians” of the world below Fourteenth Street which the more restricted uptowners find it hard to believe in. It is difficult for those uptowners to understand a condition of mind which makes it possible for a number of ambitious young people in a studio building to go fireless and supperless one day and feast gloriously the next; to share their rare windfalls without thought of obligation on any side; to burn candles instead of kerosene in order to dine at ”Polly's”; to borrow each other's last pennies for books or pictures or drawing materials, knowing that they will all go without b.u.t.ter or milk for tomorrow's breakfast.
If one is hard up, one expects to be offered a share in someone's good fortune; if one has had luck oneself, one expects, as a matter of course, to share it. Such is the code of the studios.
Anabel, for example, is sitting up typing her newest poem at 1 A.M. when a knock comes on the studio door. She opens it to confront the man who lives on the top floor and whom she has never met. She hasn't the least idea what his name is. He carries a tea caddy, a teapot and a teacup.
”Sorry,” he explains casually, ”but I saw your light, and I thought you'd let me use your gas stove to make some tea. Mine is out of commission. Just go ahead with your work, while I fuss about. Maybe you'd take a cup when it's ready?”
Anabel does, and he retires, cheerfully unconscious of anything unconventional in the episode.
”Jimmy,” calls Louise, the fas.h.i.+on ill.u.s.trator, from the front door, one day, ”I have to have two dollars to pay my gas bill. Got any?”
”One-sixty,” floats down a voice from upstairs.
”Chuck it down, please. I'll be getting some pay tomorrow, and we can blow it in.”
So Jimmy chucks it down. Louise is a nice girl, and would merrily ”chuck” him the same amount if she happened to have it. That's all there is to it.
There is a great deal of nonsense talked about the wickedness or at least the impropriety of Greenwich Village--and some of the talk is by people who ought to know better. The Village is, to be sure, entirely unconventional and incurably romantic and dramatic in its tastes. It is appallingly honest, dangerously young in spirit and it is rather too intense sometimes, keyed up unduly with ambition and emotion and the eagerness of living. But wicked? Not a bit of it!
And the heavenly, inconsequent, infectious, absurd gaiety of it!
The Lady Who Owns the Parrot (Pollypet is the bird's name) appears in a new hat; a gorgeous, new hat, with a band of scarlet and green feathers.
”Whence the more than Oriental splendour?” demands in surprise the Poet from the Third Floor, who knows that the Lady is not patronising Fifth Avenue shops at present.
”Pollypet is moulting!” explains the Lady of the Parrot, with a laugh.
Dear, merry, kindly, pitiful life of the studios!--irresponsible, perhaps, and not of vast economic importance, but so human and so enchanting; so warm when it is bitter cold, so rich when the larder is empty, so gay when disappointment and failure are sitting wolf-like at the door.
A rich woman who loves the Village and often-times goes down there to buy her gifts rather than get them from the more conservative places uptown, told me that once when she went to a Village gift-shop to purchase a number of presents, she found the proprietor away. She was asked to pick out what she wanted, and make a list. She did. n.o.body even questioned her accuracy. The next time she went she had a friend with her, who was, I imagine, more or less thrilled by the notion of approaching the bad, bold city,--she was from out of town. The shopkeeper was out in the back garden dressed in blue overalls and s.h.i.+rt, hoeing vigorously.
”Is this the heart of Bohemia?” demanded the astonished provincial.
After their purchases were made and done up, they wanted twine. Don't forget, please, that this was a shop.
”Twine?” murmured the picturesque proprietor gently. ”Of course I should have some; I must remember to get some twine!”
The sympathies are always ready there, the pennies too, when there are any! A lame man, a sick woman, a little child, a forlorn dog or cat,--they have only to go and sit on the steps of one of those blessed studio buildings, to receive pity, help and cheer. And--ye G.o.ds!--isn't the fact well known! And isn't it taken advantage of, just! The swift, unreasoning charity of these Bohemians is so well recognised that it is a regular graft for the unscrupulous.
But they keep right on being cheated right and left; thank heaven, they will never learn to be wiser!
This difference between the Village view and the conventional standpoint is very difficult to a.n.a.lyse. It really can only be made clear by examples. As, for instance:
It is fairly late in the evening. In one of the little tea shops is a group of girls and men smoking. To them enters a youth, who is hailed with ”How is d.i.c.key's neuralgia?”
The newcomer grins and answers: ”Better, I guess. He's had six drinks, and is now asleep upstairs on Eleanore's couch. He'll be all right when he wakes up.”
They laugh, but quite sympathetically, and the subject is dismissed.