



Produced by David Widger





AMERICAN SKETCHES

By Charles Whibley

William Blackwood & Sons - 1908




AMERICAN SKETCHES.




NEW YORK.

To land at Hoboken in a quiet drizzle is to sound the depths of
desolation. A raw, half-finished, unkempt street confronts you.
Along the roadway, roughly broken into ruts, crawls a sad tram. The
dishevelled shops bear odd foreign-looking names upon their fronts, and
the dark men who lounge at their doors suggest neither the spirit of
hustling nor the grandeur of democracy. It is, in truth, not a street,
but the awkward sketch of a street, in which all the colours are blurred
and the lines drawn awry. And the sense of desolation is heightened by
the memory of the immediate past. You have not yet forgotten the pomp of
a great steamship. The gracious harbour of New York is still shining
in your mind's eye. If the sentiment of freedom be dear to you, you are
fresh from apostrophising the statue of Liberty, and you may have just
whispered to yourself that you are breathing a clearer, larger air.
Even the exquisite courtesy of the officer who has invited you in the
blandest terms to declare that you have no contraband, has belied the
voice of rumour and imparted a glow of satisfaction. And then you are
thrown miserably into the leaden despair of Hoboken, and the vision of
Liberty herself is effaced.

But Hoboken is an easy place where-from to escape, and the traveller
may pass through it the more cheerfully, because it prepares him for
the manifold and bewildering contrasts of New York. The towns of the
old world have alternations of penury and affluence. In them also
picturesque squalor obtrudes itself upon an ugly splendour. But New
York, above all other cities, is the city of contrasts. As America is
less a country than a collection of countries, so New York is not a
city--it is a collection of cities. Here, on the narrow rock which
sustains the real metropolis of the United States, is room or men and
women of every faith and every race. The advertisements which glitter
in the windows or are plastered upon the hoardings suggest that all
nationalities meet with an equal and a flattering acceptance. The German
regrets his fatherland the less when he finds a brilliant Bier-Halle
waiting for his delight. The Scot no doubt finds the "domestic" cigar
sweeter to his taste if a portrait of Robert Burns adorns the box
from which he takes it. The Jew may be supposed to lose the sense of
homesickness when he can read the news of every day in his familiar
Yiddish. And it is not only in the contrast of nationalities that New
York proves its variety. Though Germans, Italians, and Irish inhabit
their own separate quarters and frequent their own separate haunts,
there are many other lines of division. Nowhere in the world are there
sharper, crueller distinctions of riches and poverty, of intelligence
and boorish-ness, of beauty and ugliness. How, indeed, shall you find
a formula for a city which contains within its larger boundaries Fifth
Avenue and the Bowery, the Riverside Drive and Brooklyn, Central Park
and Coney Island?

And this contrast of race and character is matched by the diversity of
the city's aspect. Its architecture is as various as its inhabitants.
In spite of demolition and utility, the history of New York is written
brokenly upon its walls. Here and there you may detect an ancient
frame-house which has escaped the shocks of time and chance, and still
holds its own against its sturdier neighbours. Nor is the memory of
England wholly obliterated. Is there not a homely sound in Maiden Lane,
a modest thoroughfare not far from Wall Street? What Englishman can feel
wholly abroad if he walk out to the Battery, or gaze upon the austere
houses of Washington Square? And do not the two churches of Broadway
recall the city of London, where the masterpieces of Wren are still
hedged about by overshadowing office and frowning warehouse? St Paul's
Chapel, indeed, is English both in style and origin. It might have been
built in accord with Sir Christopher's own design; and, flanked by the
thirty-two storeys of the Park Row Building, it has the look of a small
and dainty toy. Though Trinity Church, dedicated to the glory of God
and the Astors, stands in an equally strange environment, it is less
incongruous, as it is less elegant, than St Paul's. Its spire falls not
more than a hundred feet below the surrounding sky-scrapers, and were it
not for its graveyard it might escape notice. Now its graveyard is one
of the wonders of America. Rich in memories of colonial days, it is as
lucid a piece of history as survives within the boundaries of New York.
The busy mob of cosmopolitans, intent upon trusts and monopolies, which
passes its time-worn stones day after day, may find no meaning in its
tranquillity. The wayfarer who is careless of the hours will obey the
ancient counsel and stay a while. The inscriptions carry him back to the
days before the Revolution, or even into the seventeenth century. Here
lies one Richard Churcher, who died in 1681, at the tender age of five.
And there is buried William Bradford, who printed the first newspaper
that ever New York saw, the forefather in a long line of the Yellowest
Press on earth. And there is inscribed the name of John Watts, the last
Royal Recorder of New York. Thus the wayfarer may step from Broadway
into the graveyard of a British colony, and forget, in contemplating
the familiar examples of a lapidary style, that there was a tea-party at
Boston.

These contrasts are wayward and accidental. The hand of chance has been
merciful, that is all; and if you would fully understand New York's
self-conscious love of incongruity it is elsewhere that you must
look. Walk along the Riverside Drive, framed by nature to be, what an
enthusiast has called it, "the finest residential avenue in the world."
Turn your back to the houses, and contemplate the noble beauty of the
Hudson River. Look from the terrace of Claremont upon the sunlit scene,
and ask yourself whether Paris herself offers a gayer prospect. And then
face the "high-class residences," and humble your heart. Nowhere else
will you get a clearer vision of the inappropriateness which is the most
devoutly worshipped of New York's idols. The human mind cannot imagine
anything less like "residences" than these vast blocks of vulgarity. The
styles of all ages and all countries have been recklessly imitated.
The homes of the millionaires are disguised as churches, as mosques, as
medieval castles. Here you may find a stronghold of feudalism cheek
by jowl with the quiet mansion of a colonial gentleman. There Touraine
jostles Constantinople; and the climax is reached by Mr Schwab, who has
decreed for himself a lofty pleasure-dome, which is said to resemble
Chambord, and which takes its place in a long line of villas, without
so much as a turnip-field to give it an air of seclusion or security.
In this vainglorious craving for discomfort there is a kind of naivete
which is not without its pathos. One proud lady, whose husband, in
the words of a dithyrambic guide-book, "made a fortune from a patent
glove-hook," boasts that her mansion has a glass-room on the second
floor. Another vain householder deems it sufficient to proclaim that
he spent two million dollars upon the villa which shelters him from
the storm. In brief, there is scarcely a single palace on the Riverside
which may not be described as an antic of wealth, and one wonders what
sort of a life is lived within these gloomy walls. Do the inhabitants
dress their parts with conscientious gravity, and sit down to dine with
the trappings of costume and furniture which belong to their
houses? Suppose they did, and, suppose in obedience to a signal they
precipitated themselves upon the highway, there would be such a
masquerade of fancy dress as the world has never seen. The Riverside
Drive, then, is a sermon in stones, whose text is the uselessness of
uncultured dollars. If we judged New York by this orgie of tasteless
extravagance, we might condemn it for a parvenu among cities, careless
of millions and sparing of discretion. We may not thus judge it New
York, if it be a parvenu, is often a parvenu of taste, and has given
many a proof of intelligence and refinement. The home of great luxury,
it does not always, as on the Riverside, mistake display for beauty.
There are houses in the neighbourhood of Fifth Avenue which are perfect
in reticence and suitability. The clubs of New York are a splendid
example even to London, the first home of clubs. In Central Park the
people of New York possesses a place of amenity and recreation which
Europe cannot surpass; and when you are tired of watching the antics of
the leisurely chipmunk, who gambols without haste and without fear, you
may delight in a collection of pictures which wealth and good management
will make the despair and admiration of the world. Much, of course,
remains to do, and therein New York is fortunate. Her growing interest
in sculpture and architecture is matched by a magnificent opportunity.
In the Old World all has been accomplished. Our buildings are set up,
our memorials dedicated, our pictures gathered into galleries. America
starts, so to say, from scratch; there is no limit to her ambition; and
she has infinite money. If the past is ours, the future is hers, and we
may look forward to it with curiosity and with hope.

The architects of America have not only composed works in accordance
with the old traditions and in obedience to ancient models; they have
devised a new style and a new method of their own. To pack a vast
metropolis within a narrow space, they have made mountains of houses.
When the rock upon which their city stands proved insufficient for their
ambition, they conquered another kingdom in the air. The skyscrapers
which lift their lofty turrets to the heaven are the pride of New York.
It is upon them that the returning traveller gazes most eagerly, as he
nears the shore. They hold a firmer place in his heart than even the
Statue of Liberty, and the vague sentiment which it inspires. With a
proper vanity he points out to the poor Briton, who shudders at
five storeys, the size and grandeur of his imposing palaces. And his
arrogance is just. The sky-scraper presents a new view of architecture.
It is original, characteristic, and beautiful. Suggested and enforced,
as I have said, by the narrowness of the rock, it is suitable to its
atmosphere and environment. New York is a southern, sunlit city, which
needs protection from the heat and need not fear obscurity. Even where
the buildings are highest, the wayfarer does not feel that he is walking
at the bottom of a well. But, let it be said at once, the sky-scraper
would be intolerable in our grey and murky land. London demands a
broad thoroughfare and low houses. These are its only defence against a
covered sky and an enveloping fog, and the patriotic Americans who would
transplant their sky-scrapers to England merely prove that they do not
appreciate the logic and beauty of their own design.

What, then, is a sky-s