New York—The City of Beauty

ST. JOHN ERVINE

With a Word On Its Gaiety and Its Intense Eagerness

BEFORE I sailed from England to America, I was told that I should dislike New York. "It's so noisy!" people said to me. Things were whispered to me about skyscrapers that would have been unkind if they had been said about the Kaiser. People led me into corners and said, in tones of terror: "Overhead railway! . . ." That was all.

It seemed to them to be enough. Others murmured bitterly: "Broadway at night!" and their bitterness was only exceeded by those who murmured: "Broadway by day!" I began to feel that New York was a city singularly lacking in enchantment, but my deep strain of scepticism prevented me from listening too credulously to those who belittled her.

Americans came to me and said: "Remember New York is not America!" They urged me to visit Peoria or Kalamazoo if I would see the real America. They waved their hands and raised their eyes to Heaven and said, "The Coast!" and seemed to think that those two words were as adequate in expression as the two words "Overhead railway!" had seemed to my English friends. I was told that I must see California; that I must see Florida; that I must see Springfield, Illinois (meaning by Springfield, Illinois, the city not so much of Abraham Lincoln as of Vachel Lindsay); that I must see Chicago; that I must see Henry Cabot Lodge (because, so they said, if I did not see him; I should be unable to believe in him); that I must see St. Louis; that I must see Billy Sunday; that I must see a baseball match, Senator Johnson, and, if possible, a gunman practising his amiable profession which is, I was told, a sort of preparation for politics! ... In short, I was told that I must see everything in America except New York.

The New York That I Found

I CANNOT understand why all these things were said to me, for New York is the loveliest city in the world. People prate to me about Paris, but why should I go to Paris? Is it not inhabited mainly by French people, and is not that an insuperable objection to any city?

I myself haye praised London, and shall many times do so again, but even London has not got that quality of alert loveliness which I found in New York. Paris is like a woman who has exhausted her capacity for cynicism without ever having had the capacity for faith, and is now unable to do more than sneer. London is like a woman who is beginning to. think of beauty specialists. The features are still good, but a little worn, and the pauses in front of the mirror are lengthening because of her anxious dubiety. In a little while, London seems to say to herself, there will be wrinkles! . . . there will be unmistakable, ineradicable wrinkles!

But New York is like a young girl, eager, healthy, vivacious and still full of illusions. New York is still young enough to be gauche, sometimes to be sentimental, occasionally even to be sloppy, but she is also young enough still to feel faith in romance and to participate in new things and to, set out on adventures. I often heard people in America speak of New York as "lil' old New York,"'and I knew that the term was applied to the town in affection. But New York is not old—certainly not in spirit. It is the youngest city in the world, with all the gracious naivete and the charming roughness of youth.

I shall never forget my first view of the city as I sailed up the Harbor. "What's missing?" I said to myself, looking in distracted admiration on the scene before me; and "What's missing?" I kept on saying to myself until I discovered that the missing element was —Smoke! Here was a great city, multitudinously inhabited, with less smoke hanging over it than I should see covering an English village! The sky over New York that January morning—January, mark you!—was as clear and as blue as I imagine skies to be in Italy. And never once, during my stay in the city, did I see it disfigured by smoke.

That in itself was matter for marvelling, but there was more to follow. The skyscraper, which I had been told is an ugly thing is, in fact, a thing of great dignity and beauty. That group of high buildings at Battery Point, rising out of the sea in an effort to pierce the sky, seemed to me to be exquisitely beautiful and gravely beautiful. There they stood confronting a great ocean and in their attitude there was nothing mean or contemptible. The sea did not diminish their stature nor did it cause them to seem puny beside it. When I left America on an April evening, I looked at those tall buildings again, and as I did so I said to myself, "Here is something essentially and beautifully American, something in which Europe cannot claim a share!" and as the ship steamed out to the open sea, I looked and looked again at the skyscrapers until they began to fade into the evening mists—great ladders of light leaning against blue heaven.

Then came my second impression—of immensely bright streets, of light lavishly expended, of crowds of eager people moving rapidly, not with the rapidity of nerve-racked persons, but with the rapidity of people who have enormous energy and are desirous of enjoying all experiences. The motor-car in which I was being driven to my hotel turned suddenly into a place incredibly lit. I looked out on a wilderness of light—blue light, red light, green light, white light, yellow light, light of every colour, light in every shape, light that ran round and round at great speed as if it were chasing itself but could never catch itself, light that seemed solid, everlasting, immovable, and then most unexpectedly vanished and left a great, black emptiness which, as unexpectedly, was filled again with the same solidity of light. "What place is this?" said I, imagining that the reply would be, "One of the inner courts of heaven!" My companion nonchalantly answered, "Oh, this is Broadway!" Unemotionally, without a thrill of pride or a suggestion of boasting, he said, "Oh, this is Broadway!" I suppose that a very old angel, one who has known the mysteries of heaven from the beginning of Time, might say in equally level tones to a newcomer, "Oh, this is Paradise!" but I doubt whether I shall ever acquire sufficient phlegm to say either, "Oh, this is Paradise!" or "Oh, this is Broadway!"

There are people who accuse me of having crude, even vulgar, tastes because I love light and plenty of light and coloured light; but there it is, and crude or vulgar as it may be, it is my taste. Whenever I could contrive to get away by myself to Broadway, I went there and stood, full of wonder and delight, while I contemplated burning, blazing Broadway, beautiful as a dream out of the Arabian Nights. I remember now, most distinctly, a great brown buffalo that seemed to surmount the street, to hang in the sky, to plunge and paw through the heavens, to make great trumpetings, not of sound, but of light, to breathe heavy beams 'of light from its widely-distended nostrils, to flourish a strong tail of light! . . .

Hodgson's "The Bull'

THERE is a great poem by Ralph Hodgson, called "The Bull," in which he describes an old bull dreaming of the days when he was a young and lusty bull:

Dreaming of a day less dim, Dreaming of a time less far, When the faint but certain star Of destiny burned clear for him, And a fierce and wild unrest Broke the quiet of his breast,

And the gristles of his youth Hardened in his comely pow, And he came to fighting growth, Beat his bull and won his cow, And flew his tail and trampled off Past the tallest, vain enough,

And curved about in splendour full And curved again and snuffed the airs As who should say, Come out who dares! And all beheld a bull, a Bull, And knew that here was surely one That backed for no bull, fearing none.

And, standing there in Broadway, feasting my eyes on the kaleidoscopes of light, I thought to myself that that great brown bull hanging in the sky was the very bull of Hodgson's poem, "curved about in splendour full" . . .

There is a picture of New York that will never fade out of my memory. I was lying ill in my hotel, and I recall how I used to long for five o'clock in the evening, because then the air filled with a blue mist and the great high buildings slowly lit up, star by star, until the blue mist became like the Milky. Way. Exquisitely beautiful is New York in the evening. There is a picture by Whistler of "Old Battersea Bridge" in which the sky is full of a blue light that I have never seen in London, but that blue light is commonly seen in New York, and I imagine that when he painted his picture, Whistler painted the sky out of his memory of his own country. I have no room left to tell of other beauties of New York— of the incomparable loveliness of it as seen from the New Jersey side of the Hudson, of its gaiety, of its intense eagerness not to miss an experience—no room to say more than this, that very often do I find my mind returning to it, recalling this delight and that delight, and wishing earnestly to be there again . . . in the loveliest and liveliest city in the world.