Part 19 (1/2)
There are Villagers who while scarcely celebrities are characters so well known, locally, as to stand out in bizarre relief even against that variegated background of personalities. There is Doris, the dancer, slim, strange, agile, with a genius for the centre of the Bohemian stage, an expert, exotic style of dancing, and a singular and touching pa.s.sion for her only child. At the Greenwich masquerades she used to s.h.i.+ne resplendent, her beautiful, lithe body glorious with stage-jewels, and not much else; for the time being she has flitted away, but some day she will surely return like a darkly brilliant b.u.t.terfly, and the Village will again thrill to her dancing. There is Hyppolite, the anarchist, dark and fervid; there is ”Bobby” Edwards, the Village troubadour, with his self-made and self-decorated _ukelele_, and his cat, Dirty Joe; there is Charlie-immortal barber!--whose trade is plied in sublime accordance with Village standards, and whose ”ad” runs as follows:
”The only barber shop in the Village where work is done conforming to its ideals.... Four barbers in attendance supervised by the popular boy-proprietor--CHARLIE.”
There is Peggy, the artist's model, who has posed for almost every artist of note, and who is as pretty as a pink carnation.
There is Tiny Tim--of immense proportions--who keeps the Tiny Tim Candy Shop; an impressive person who carries trays of candy about the Village, and who swears that he has sweets to match your every mood.
”If they don't express your character, I'll take them back!” he declares. Though how he could take them back.... However, in the Village you need not be too exact. There is ”Ted” Peck's Treasure Box.
Here all manner of charming things are sold; and here Florence Beales exhibits her most exquisite studies in photography.
There is the strong-minded young woman, who is always starting clubs; there is the Osage Indian who speaks eight languages and draws like a G.o.d; there are a hundred and one familiar spirits of the Village, eccentric, inasmuch as they are unlike the rest of the world, but oh, believe me, a goodly company to have as neighbours.
People have three mouthpieces, three vehicles of expression, besides their own lips. We are not talking now about that self-expression which is to be found in individual act or word in any form. We are speaking in a more practical and also a more social sense. In this sense we may cite three distinct ways in which a community may become articulate: through its press; through its clubs or a.s.sociations; through its entertainments and social life. Greenwich has a number of magazines, an even larger number of clubs and an unconscionable number of ways of entertaining itself--from theatrical companies to b.a.l.l.s!
Of course the best known of the Greenwich magazines is _The Ma.s.ses_, owned by Max Eastman and edited by Floyd Dell. It has, in a sense, grown beyond the Village, inasmuch as it now circulates all over the country, wherever socialistic or anarchistic tendencies are to be found. But its inception was in Greenwich Village, and in its infant days it strongly reflected the radical, young, insurgent spirit which was just beginning to ferment in the world below Fourteenth Street. In those days it was poor and struggling too (as is altogether fitting in a Village paper) and lost nothing in freshness and spontaneity and vigour from that fact.
”You might tell,” said Floyd Dell, with a twinkle, ”of the days when _The Ma.s.ses_ was in Greenwich Avenue, and the editor, the business manager and the stenographer played ball in the street all day long!”
It is, perhaps, symbolic that _The Ma.s.ses_ in moving uptown stopped at Fourteenth Street, the traditional and permanent boundary line. There it may reach out and touch the great world, yet still remain part of the Village where it was born.
Here is one man's views of the Liberal Club. I am half afraid to quote them, they sound so heretical, but I wish to emphasise the fact that they are quoted. They might be the snapping of the fox at the sour grapes for all I know! Though this particular man seemed calm and dispa.s.sionate. ”The Liberal Club Board,” he said, ”is a purely autocratic inst.i.tution. It is collectively a trained poodle, though composed of nine members. The procedure is to make a few long speeches, praise the club, and re-elect the Board. Perfectly simple.
But--did you say _Liberal_ Club?” He used to sit on the Board himself, too!
A visiting Scotch socialist proclaimed it, without pa.s.sion, a ”h.e.l.l of a place,” and some of its most striking anarchistic leaders, ”vera interestin' but terrible d.a.m.n fools”! But he was, doubtless, an eccentric though an experienced and dyed-in-the-wool socialist who had lectured over half the globe. It is recorded of him that once when a certain young and energetic Village editor had been holding forth uninterruptedly and dramatically for an hour on the rights of the working-man, etc., etc., the visiting socialist, who had been watching his fervent gesticulations with absorbed attention, suddenly leaned forward and seized the lapel of his coat.
”Mon!” he exclaimed earnesly, ”do ye play tennis?”
Just what is the Liberal Club?
You may have contradictory answers commensurate with the number of members you interrogate. One will tell you that it is a fake; one that it is the only vehicle of free speech; Arthur Moss says it is ”the most _il_-liberal club in the world”! Floyd Dell says it is paramountly a medium for entertainment, and that it is ”not so much a clearing house of new ideas as of new people”!
The Liberal Club goes up, and the Liberal Club goes down. It has its good seasons and its bad, its fluctuations as to standards and favour, its share in the curious and inevitable tides that swing all a.s.sociations back and forth like pendulums.
There is a real pa.s.sion for dancing in the Village, and it is beautiful dancing that shows practice and a natural sense of rhythm.
The music may be only from a victrola or a piano in need of tuning, but the spirit is, most surely, the vital spirit of the dance. At the Liberal Club everyone dances. After you have pa.s.sed through the lounge room--the conventional outpost of the club, with desks and tables and chairs and prints and so on--you find yourself in a corridor with long seats, and windows opening on to Nora Van Leuwen's big, bare, picturesque Dutch Oven downstairs. On the other side of the corridor is the dance room--also the latest exhibition. Some of the pictures are very queer indeed. The last lot I saw were compositions in deadly tones of magenta and purple. The artist was a tall young man, the son of a famous ill.u.s.trator. He strolled in quite tranquilly for a dance,--with those things of his in full view! All the courage is not on battlefields.
Said a girl, who, Village-like, would not perjure her soul to be polite:
”Why so much magenta?”
And said he quite sweetly:
”Why not? I can paint people green if I like, can't I?”
With which he glided imperturbably off in a fox trot with a girl in an ”art sweater.”
Harry Kemp says: ”They make us sick with their scurrilous, ignorant stories of the Village. Pose? Sure!--it's two-thirds pose. But the rest is beautiful. And even the pose is beautiful in its way. Life is rotten and beautiful both at once. So is the Village. The Village is big in idea and it's growing. They talk of its being a dead letter.
It's just beginning. First it--the Village, as it is now--was really a sort of off-shoot of London and Paris. Now it's itself and I tell you it's beautiful, and more remarkable than people know.