There is a considerable period in the life of George Borrow for which his biographers have been absolutely unable to account. To this day where Borrow spent those lost years is either unknown or untold. There is a similar period in the life of Peter Whiffle, the period including the years 1907-1913. In the summer of the former year I left him at Paris in the arms of Clara Barnes, so to speak, and I did not see him again until February, 1913. Subsequently, when I knew him better, I inquired about these phantom years but I never elicited a satisfactory reply. He answered me, to be sure, but his answer consisted of two words, I lived.
Our next meeting took place in New York, where I was a musical reporter on the New York Times, the assistant to Mr. Richard Aldrich. One night, having dropped Fania Marinoff at the theatre where she was playing, I walked south-east until I came to the Bowery. I strolled down that decaying thoroughfare, which has lost much of its ancient glory—even the thugs and the belles of Avenue A have deserted it—to Canal Street, where the Manhattan Bridge invites the East Side to adventure through its splendid portal, but the East Side ignores the invitation and stays at home. It is the upper West Side that accepts the invitation and regiments of motor-cars from Riverside Drive, in continuous procession, pass over the bridge. For a time I stood and watched the ugly black scarabs with their acetylene eyes crawl up the approach and disappear through the great arch and then, walking a few steps, I stopped before the Thalia Theatre, as I have stopped so many times, to admire the noble façade with its flight of steps and its tall columns, for this is one of my dream theatres. Often have I sat in the first row of the dress circle, which is really a circle, leaning over the balustrade, gazing into the pit a few feet below, and imagining the horseshoe as it might appear were it again frequented by the fashion of the town. This is a theatre, in which, and before which, it has often amused me to fancy myself a man of wealth, when my first diversion would be a complete renovation—without any reconstruction or vandalism—of this playhouse, and the production of some play by Shakespeare, for to me, no other theatre in New York, unless it be the Academy of Music, lends itself so readily to a production of Shakespeare as the Thalia. As I write these lines, I recall that the old New York theatres are fast disappearing: Wallack's is gone; Daly's is no more; even Weber and Fields's has been demolished. Cannot something be done to save the Thalia, which is much older than any of these? Cannot this proud auditorium be reconsecrated to the best in the drama? On this night I paused for a moment, musing before the portal, somewhat after this manner—for I have always found that things rather than people awaken any latent sentiment and sympathy in my heart—and then again I passed on.
Soon I came to a tiny Chinese shop, although I was still several blocks above Chinatown. The window was stacked with curious crisp waffles or wafers in the shape of lotus flowers, for the religious and sexual symbolism of the Chinese extends even to their culinary functions, and a Chinaman, just inside, was dexterously transferring the rice batter to the irons, which were placed over the fire, turned a few moments, and a wafer removed and sprinkled with dry rice powder, as Richelieu, lacking a blotter, sprinkled pounce on his wet signature. But the shop was not consecrated solely to the manufacture of waffles; there were tea-sets and puppy-cats, all the paraphernalia of a Chinese shop in New York—on the shelves and tables. It was the waffles, and the peanut cakes, however, which tempted me to enter.
Once inside, I became aware of the presence of a Chinese woman at the back of the shop, holding in her arms an exquisite Chinese baby, for all Chinese babies, with their flat porcelain faces, their straight black hair, and their ivory hands, are exquisite. This baby, in green-blue trousers fashioned of some soft silk brocade, a pink jacket of the same material, and a head-dress prankt with ribbons into which ornaments of scarlet worsted and blue-bird feathers were twisted, was smiling silently and gracefully waving her tiny ivory hands towards the face of an outcast of the streets who stood beside her mother. I caught the rough workman's suit, the soiled, torn boots, the filthy cap, and the unkempt hair in my glance, which reverted to the baby. Then, as I approached the odd group, ahd spoke to the mother, the derelict turned.
Carl! he ejaculated, for, of course, it was Peter.
I was too much astonished to speak at all, as I stared at this ragged figure without a collar or a tie, with several days growth of beard on his usually glabrous cheeks, and dirty finger-nails. I had only wit enough left to shake his hand. At this time I knew nothing of his early life, nothing of the fortune he had inherited, and the man in front of me, save for something curiously inconsistent in the expression of the face, was a tramp. Certainly the face was puzzling: it positively exuded happiness. Perhaps, I thought, it was because he was glad to see me. I was glad to see him, even in this guise.
Carl, he repeated, dear old Carl! How silly of me not to remember that you would be in New York. He caught my glance. Somewhat of a change, eh? No move ruffles and frills. That life, and everything connected with it, is finished. Luckily, you've caught me near home. Come with me; there's liquor there.
So we walked out. I had not yet spoken a word. I was choking with an emotion IJ usually reserve for old theatres, but Peter did not appear to be aware of it. He chattered on gaily.
Have you been to Paris recently? Where have you been? What have you been doing? Are you writing? Isn't New York lovely? Don't you think Chinese babies are the kind to have, if you are going to become a father at all? Wasn't that an adorable one? He waited for no answers. Look at the lights on the bridge. I live in the shadow of the span. I think I live somewhere near the old Five Points that used to turn up in all the old melodramas; you know. The Streets of New York. It's a wonderful neighbourhood. Everybody, absolutely everybody, is interesting. There's nobody you can't talk to, and very few that can't talk. They all have something to say. They are all either disappointed and discouraged or hopeful. They all have emotions and they are not afraid to show them. They all talk about the REVOLUTION. It may come this winter. No, I don't mean the Russian revolution. Nobody expects a revolution in Russia. Nobody down here is interested in Russia; the Russian Jews especially are not. They have forgotten Russia. I mean the American REVOLUTION. The Second American REVOLUTION, I suppose it will be called. Labour against Capital. The Workman against the Leisure Class. The Proletariat against the Idler. Did you ever hear of Piet Vlag? Do you read The Masses? I go to meetings, union meetings, Socialist meetings, I. W. W. meetings, Syndicalist meetings, Anarchist meetings. Iegg them on. It may come this winter, I tell you! There will be barricades on Fifth Avenue. Vanderbilt and Rockefeller will be besieged in their houses with the windows shuttered and the doors barred and the butler standing guard with a machine-gun at some gazebo or turret. It will be a real siege, lasting, perhaps, months. How long will the food hold out? In the end, they'll have to eat the canary and the Pekinese, and, no, not the cat, I hope. The cat will be clever and escape, go over to the enemy where he can get his meals. But boots, boot soup! Just like the siege of Paris; each robber baron locked up in his stronghold. Sometimes, the housemaid will desert; sometimes, the cook. The millionaires will be obliged to make their own beds and cook their own dogs and, at last, to man their own machine-guns!
The mob will be barricaded, too, behind barriers hastily thrown up in the street, formed of old moving-vans, Rolls-Royces and Steinway grands, covered with Gobelin tapestries and Lilihan, Mosul, Sarouk, and Khorassan rugs, the spoils of the denuded houses. With a red handkerchief bound around my brow, I will wave a red flag and shriek on the top of such a barricade. My face will be streaked with blood. We will all yell and if we don't sing the Ça Ira and the Carmagnole, we will at least sing Alexander's Ragtime Band and My Wife's Gone to the Country.
Eventually, Fifth Avenue will fall and the Astors and the Goulds will be brought before the Tribunal of the People, and if you know any better spot for a guillotine than the very square in which we stood just now, in that vast open space before the Manhattan Bridge, over which they all drive off for Long Island, I wish you'd tell me. There are those who would like to see the killing done in Washington or Madison Square, or the Plaza or Columbus Circle, which, of course, has a sentimeutal interest for the Italians, but think of the joy it would give the East Side mothers, suckling their babies, and the pushcart vendors, and all the others who never find time to go up town to have the show right here. Right here it shall be, if I have my way, and just now I have a good deal of influence.
We had stopped before one of those charming old brick houses with marble steps and ancient handwrought iron railings which still remain on East Broadway to remind us of the day when stately landaus drove up to deposit crinolined ladies before their portals. We ascended the steps and Peter opened the door with his key. The hallway was dark but Peter struck matches to light us up the stairs and we only ceased climbing when we reached the top landing. He unlocked another door which opened on a spacious chamber, a lovely old room with a chaste marble fire-place in the Dorian mode, and faded wall-paper of rose and grey, depicting Victorian Greek females, taller than the damsels drawn by Du Maurier and C. D. Gibson, languishing in the shadows of broken columns and weeping willow trees. Upon this paper were fastened with pins a number of covers from radical periodicals, native and foreign, some in vivid colours, the cover of The Masses for March, 1912, Charles A. Winter's Enlightenment versus Violence, the handsome head of a workman, his right hand bearing a torch, printed in green, several cartoons by Art Young, usually depicting the rich man as an octopus or hog, and posters announcing meetings of various radical groups. Gigantic letters, cut from sheets of newspaper, formed the legend, I. W. W., over the door.
The room was almost devoid of furniture. There was an iron bed, with tossed bed-clothing, a table on which lay a few books, including, I noted, one by Karl Marx, another by English Walling, Frank Harris's The Bomb, together with a number of copies of Piet Vlag's new journal. The Masses, and Jack Marinoff's Yiddish comic weekly, The Big Stick. There was also a pail on the table, such a pail as that in which a workman carries his mid-day meal. There were exactly two chairs and a wardrobe of polished oak in the best Grand Rapids manner stood in one corner. All this was sufficiently bewildering but I must confess that the appearance of the lovely head of a Persian cat, issuing from under the bed-covers, made me doubt my reason. I recognized George Moore. Presently I made out another puss, sitting beside a basket full of kittens in the corner near the wardrobe.
I must introduce you, explained Peter, to the mother of George Moore's progeny. This is George Sand.
By this time I was a fit subject for the asylum. Even the Persian cats did not set me right. Happy or not, the man was evidently poor.
I suppose I would insult you if I offered you a job, I stuttered at last.
A job! Carl, don't you know that I simply will not work?
Well, and I found this even more difficult than my first proposal, I hope you won't misunderstand. . . . I haven't much. . . but you must permit me to give you some money.
Money! What for?
Why, for you. . . .
Comprehending at last, Peter threw back his head and began to laugh.
But I don't need money. . . I never had so little use for it. Do you'realize what it costs me to live here? About $15 a week. That includes every item, even fresh beef for my cats, I was about to tell you, if you had given me time—you always interrupt—that I simply don't know what to do with my money. Stocks have gone up. The labourers in the factories at Little Falls are working overtime to make me more prosperous. Indeed, one of the reasons I was so glad to see you was that I thought, perhaps, you could help me to spend some money.
The line about the interruptions, I should explain, was simply a fabrication of Peter's. If I have set our conversations down as monologues on his part, that is just how they occurred. Aside from Philip Moeller and Arnold Daly, I have never known any one to talk so much, and my rôle with Peter, as with them, was that of listener. To continue, I should have known enough, even so early in our acquaintance, not to be astonished by anything he might do, but if there had been a mirror in the room, which there was not, I fancy I might have looked into the most exasperatingly astonished face I had ever seen up to that time. I managed, however, to laugh. Peter laughed, too, and sat down. George Moore leaped to his knee and George Sand to his shoulder, rubbing her magnificent orange brush across his face.
And how about your book? I asked.
It's coming . . . coming fast.
Are you still collecting notes?
Notes? . . . O! you are remembering what I was doing in Paris. That was only an experiment. . . . I was on the wrong track. . . . I threw them all away! I couldn't do anything with that. . . . I'm done with such nonsense.
I couldn't be astonished any more.
What are you doing now?
I've told you. I'm living. O! I'm full of it: I know what art is now; I know what real literature is. It has nothing to do with style or form or man-: ner. George Moore, not my cat but the other one, has said that Christianity is not a stranger religion than the cult of the inevitable word. The matter is what counts. I think it was Theodore Dreiser. . . .
Here I did interrupt:
I know him. When I first came to New York in 1906, I wrote a paper about Richard Strauss's Salome for the Broadway Magazine. He was the editor.
You know Theodore Dreiser!
There was awe in his tone.
Very slightly. I saw something of him then. Principally, I remember his habit, when he was talking, of folding his handkerchief into small squares, then unfolding it. He repeated this process indefinitely.
Show me.
I showed him.
Well, I'm glad I met you tonight. . . . It was Sister Carrie that set me right; at least I think it was Sister Carrie. What a book! What a masterpiece! No style, no form, just subject. The devils flogged St. Jerome in the fifth century because he was rather a Ciceronian than a Christian in his beautiful writing, but they never will flog Theodore Dreiser! He had an idea, he knew life, and he just wrote what he felt. He wasn't thinking of how to write it; he had something to write. Have you read Sister Carrie?
I explained that Edna Kenton had given me the book to read when it first appeared.
Strange as it may appear to you, for my way is not, perhaps, Dreiser's, that book explains why I am here and why I dress in this manner. It explains why I wander about the streets and talk with the people. It explains why I am hoping for the REVOLUTION (Peter on this occasion invariably pronounced this word in capitals). It explains why I am an I. W. W. I would even join the Elks, if necessary. I think Dreiser at one time must have been an Elk; else how could he describe Hurstwood so perfectly?
It is amusing, however, that you who won't work should become an international worker!
I dare say it is, drawled Peter, stroking George Moore's back, as the superb cat lay purring on his knee. I dare say it is but I'd go a good deal farther to get what I want; I'd even seek employment in a department store or a Chinese laundry. However, it's coming without that, it's coming fast. I found my heroine the other day, a little Jewish girl, who works in a sweatshop. She has one blue eye and one black one. She has a club-foot, a hare-lip, and she is a hunch-back. I nearly cried for joy when I discovered her. I met her on Rivington Street walking with a stack of men's overcoats three feet high poised on her head. She was limping under her burden. I followed her to the shop and made some inquiries. Her name is Rosie Levenstein. I shall leave in the deformities, but I shall change her name.
Isn't she just a trifle unpleasant, a little unsympathetic, for a heroine?
My book, replied Peter, is going to be very unpleasant. It is about life and because you and I enjoy life is little enough reason for us to consider it other than a dirty business. Life for the average person, for Rosie, for instance, simply will not do. It's bloody awful and, if anything, I shall make it worse than it is. Now, if the comrades succeed in starting the REVOLUTION, I am going through with it, straight through, breaking into drawing-rooms with the others. I'm going to pound up a Steinway grand with a hammer. Here Peter, with a suitable gesture, brought his hand down rather heavily on George Moore's head and that one, indignant, immediately rose and jumped down from his lap, subsequently stretched himself on the floor, catching his claws in the carpet, and after yawning once or twice, retreated under the bed. George Sand now left, Peter's shoulder to fill the vacant place on his knee. As I told you, I'm going to wear a red handkerchief round my brow and my face will be bloody. Then, all I have to do is to transfer the whole experience, everything I have done and felt, the thrill, the BOOM, to Rosie. Can't you see the picture in my last chapter of the little, lame, harelipped hunch-back, with one blue eye and one black one, marching up Fifth Avenue with the comrades, wrapped in the red flag, her face stained with blood, humbling the Guggenheimers and the Morgans, disturbing the sleep of Henry Clay Frick, casting art treasures, bought with the blood of the poor, out to the pavement, breaking windows, shooting, torturing, devastating? Then the triumphant return to the East Side, Rosie on the men's shoulders. Everybody tired and sweaty, satiated and bloody. Now, all the realism of the interiors, gefillte fish and schnaps. But Rosie will sit down to her dinner in a Bendel evening gown, raped from one of the Kahn closets. The men come back for her. Another procession down Canal Street. The police charge the mob. Shots. The Vanderbilts and the Astors and the Schwabs in their Rolls-Royces and their Pierce-Arrows, fitted with machine-guns, charge the mob. Terrible slaughter. Rosie dead, a horrid mess, fully described, lying on the pavement. Everything lost. Everything worse than it was before. Deportation. Exile. Tenements razed. Old women, their sheitels awry, wrapped in half a dozen petticoats and thick shawls, bearing the sacred candlesticks, fleeing in all directions. Cries of Weh is mir! Moans. Groans. Desolation. And, at the end, a lone figure standing just where you and I were standing a little while ago, philosophizing, pointing the dread moral, accenting the horror. The lights go out. Darkness. In the distance, a band is heard playing The Star Spangled Banner. Finis.
Peter's excitement became so great that he almost shrieked; he waved his arms and he half rose out of his chair. George Sand, too, found it expedient to retreat under the bed. The kittens, tumbling mewing out of their baskets, their little tails, like Christmas trees, straight in the air, followed her, and soon were pushing their paws valiantly against her belly and drinking greedily from her dugs.
It's wonderful, I said when Peter, at last, was silent. Then, as it seemed, rather inconsequentially, Do you know Edith Dale?
Who is Edith Dale?
Well, she's a woman, but a new kind of woman, or else the oldest kind; I'm not sure which. I'm going to take you there. Bill Haywood goes there. So does Doris Keane. Everybody goes there. Everything is all mixed up. Everybody talks his own kind of talk and Edith, inscrutable Edith, sits back and listens. You can listen too.
Is she writing a book?
No, she never does anything like that. She spends her energy in living, in watching other people live, in watching them make their silly mistakes, in helping them make their silly mistakes. She is a dynamo. She will give you a good deal. At least, these gatherings will give you a good deal. I think you might carry a chapter or two of your novel through one of Edith Dale's evenings.
Must I change my clothes?
No, you are right just as you are. She will like you the better for them.
That's good. I couldn't change my clothes. My friends, the comrades, wouldn't understand if they saw me. But you must have a drink. I had nearly forgotten that I had promised you one:
Peter opened the polished oak wardrobe and extracted therefrom a bottle of Christopher's Finest Old White Scotch Whisky and he began to speak of the advantage of allowing spirits to retain their natural colour, which rarely happens in the case of whisky, although gin is ordinarily to be distinguished in this manner.