WHERE IS GREENWICH VILLAGE?

A Fruitless Search for the Heart of Bohemia in New York

ANNE O'HAGAN

DEAR VANITY FAIR: During the past two years I have seen numerous articles and sketches in your magazine celebrating the joys of life in Greenwich Village. From these the inference has been that the district combined, in a harmonious way, the dissimilar attractions of Arcadia and the Latin Quarter. In other words, that the inhabitants were celestially childlike in spirit and enthusiastically artistic in occupation.

In the Greenwich Village of your magazine, the residents have lived for Freedom, Love, Art and Verse—or should I say for freedom in love, art and verse? They followed their impulses and miraculously escaped landing in Jefferson Market Police Court, which is, however incongruously, a quite conspicuous edifice in the very heart of the village in question.

TN your Greenwich Village, charming little restaurants abounded, where the food, though superior in flavor to that of the Ritz, was ridiculously moderate in price, and where, after the mere physical appetite had been appeased, man's nobler nature could be sustained by recitations, songs and unpremeditated displays of rhythmic dancing; where a sincere fellowship prevailed, more open-hearted than any since the early Christians shared the conveniences of the Catacombs together; where the restaurateurs were royally indifferent to the matter of payment, and where a sketch upon the wall—say by May Wilson Preston—a vers Ubre trifle on the back of the menu— say by Guido Bruno—or a dance on a table top, was a perfect substitute for cash currency.

These articles of yours have had for me a gripping fascination, as I have been for fifteen years a resident of Greenwich Village.

I assure you, sir, that but for the pen-and-pencil rhapsodies of Vanity Fair and sundry imitations of them in other periodicals, I should never have guessed that I was dwelling in the very spot which the great English poet must have had in mind when he wrote: "How glad, and bad, and mad it was, but then, how it was sweet!"

It had never penetrated my consciousness that I was actually living in a place and period which, for artistic productiveness, made the fifteenth century in Italy look Puritanically meagre, and for openheartedness made the Golden Age of Hesiod seem frigid and calculating. For it has seemed to me, during the aforesaid fifteen years, that in Greenwich Village the rent was as generally collectable on the first of the month, the butcher's account was as promptly and as firmly rendered, the waiters as rapacious, the number of consorts as strictly limited by law and domestic economy; congenial acquaintances as few, and undesirable ones as easy to come by,, as elsewhere in this Valley of Tribulation.

HOWEVER, I am humble-minded. I did ± not pit my fifteen years of humdrum experience against the claims of your ebullient word-painters and sketch-artists. Instead, I said to myself: "Dunderhead! To be reading Murger, when you might be living Murger! Mole! sluggard! Go out and learn to know the thrice-favored spot which you inhabit. Find the Liberal Club, the very spirit of this fair spot. Find the Dutch Oven, find Polly's, find Mazzini's, find Bruno's, find Mrs. Whitney's studio, find William Glackens, the artist, find Polly's restaurant, find Mrs. Lydig's garden parties! Look upon Max Eastman and James L. Ford when they are expressing Greenwich Village!"

I set out. A young man with a brightly, serious countenance and a bundle of books under his arm was hurrying through Waverley Place.

"I beg your pardon," I began, and he instinctively lowered his elbow to guard his pockets, "can you direct me to the Liberal Club or to the Dutch Oven ?"

"Never heard of them," he replied briefly. "I'm going to prayer meeting in the Washington Place Methodist-Episcopal Church—sittings free." He passed quickly on and I saw that the books beneath his arm were hymnals.

A young woman with a free, springing tread approached. She had the grace of one who could, at the call of joy, dance lightly upon a table top.

"I beg—" I began; but cut it short, for she seemed in a hurry. "Can you direct me to May Wilson Preston's?"

"Never heard of her. .Ask the policeman. I'm in a hurry—late to my Mothers' Club at Greenwich Settlement"and she was gone.

With diminishing hope, I turned off into Twelfth Street. A gentleman of domestic habits and Brooklyn traditions, as it appeared, was pushing a perambulator along the sidewalk. Judge the feelings with, which I recognized him—Everett Shinn, painter, illustrator, playwright, actor. In Greenwich Village the creator of that deathless character, "The Prune-Hater's Daughter," wheeled a baby carriage!

NEEDING restorative, I stepped into the local drug store. Olivia Dunbar, wife of the poet Ridegley Torrence, herself the author of many subtle tales of the soul, was talking to Jo Davidson, the sculptor, and Ernest Lawson, the painter. This looked promising. I drew near on silence-shod feet. Here I should hear the very voice of the Village.

"Tar-paper bags will answer perfectly, if you put the things away in time," said Mrs. Torrence kindly to Mr. Davidson.

Disheartened I turned to the dispenser of drugs. "Where," I asked him, "is Bruno's, and where is Polly's?"

He blinked at me over a package of toothpowder. "I haven't seen them. When did you miss them? Say, Jim, have you seen anything of Miss O'Hagan's dog and parrot to-day ?"

I tried to set him right, but he shook a puzzled head and turned to put up a paregoric prescription for Mr. Lawson.

I TURNED toward the Glackens' abode. Edith was where no Greenwich Village artist (or artist's wife) is ever supposed to be. She was where Vanity Fair has never yet portrayed her—she was at home. She was teaching the baby to lisp those sweetest and most sacred words in the vocabulary of our sex — "Votes for Women."

She refused to tell me where to find the seething center of life in our village; refused it with contumely, asking: "Do you believe all the stuff that you read in Vanity Fair?"

"Where," I queried hopefully, "is Mr. Glackens?"

"Doing jury duty," replied the fond wife in accents of tender pride. "They're locked up till they reach the verdict. Jim Ford is on the jury with him."

Jury duty! Shades of the teachings of Max Eastman! Ford and Glackens. What a jury. What a picture!

One more effort I would make. I would go to May Preston's—always mirrored in your pages as the center of a bubbling Bohemia. The Prestons were at home! I have not the heart to describe the scene that confronted me there. I have had to content myself by drawing the lifelike sketch which adorns this page.

P.S.—There are four Bohemian ladies who figure as the queens of your revels in Washington Square. They are, by name, Ethel Plummer, Clara Tice, Myrtle Held and Thelma Cudlipp. Life in Greenwich Village centers, you would have us think, around these four artists. I have taken pains to-discover where they live. It may interest you to know that Ethel Plummer lives in Brooklyn, Clara Tice is a resident of Harlem. Myrtle Held inhabits the Bronx, while Thelma Cudlipp has passed her entire life in Staten Island.

Oh, Vanity Fair, how could you?