“Why not?” Mr. Harris said and closed the book of New York’s splendours he had been showing me, photographs of the gigantic wonders, her skyscrapers, bridges, stations, elevated railways.
“Why not see New York now, while you are on this side of the continent? It is only a step across the line. New York is well worth the effort.”
I protested, “I hate enormous cities cram-jam with humanity. I hate them!”
Mr. Harris said no more about New York. I had been much interested in his telling of his reactions to New York. He was just back from there, had gone to see a big picture exhibition. In spite of myself my curiosity had been aroused. Instead of sleeping that night as I ought to have done, I lay awake thinking, planning a trip to New York. Next day I acted; curiosity had won over fright. As I bought my ticket my heart sank to somewhere around my knees, which shook with its weight; but commonsense came along, took a hand, whispering, “Hasn’t it been your policy all through life to see whenever seeing was good?”
“I’m going,” I said to Mr. Harris. “Can you give me a list of New York’s Art Galleries, the most modern ones?”
“Good,” he said and also gave me introduction to a very modern artist, the President of the “Société Anonyme” (New York’s Modern Art Society).
This lady, Miss Katherine Dreier, was a painter, a lecturer and a writer. Her theme throughout was Modern Art. She had just published Western Art and the New Era, quite a big volume.
A couple of warm friends of mine who used to farm out west had written me when they knew I was coming to Toronto inviting, “Cross the line and visit us.” They now lived on Long Island where the husband had been for some years manager of a millionaire’s estate. I wired my friend asking, “Could you meet me at the station in New York? I’m scared stiff of New York!”
Arrangements made, myself committed, I sat down to quake. I do not know why I dreaded New York. I had faced London and Paris unafraid. Perhaps this fear was because of what they had done to me and the warnings I had been given to “keep away from great cities”. I said to myself, “This is only just a little visit, seeing things, not settling in to hard work.”
Before ever the train started I had an argument with the porter. He insisted that my berth be made up so that I rode head first. I insisted that I would ride facing the engine, in other words feet first.
“If there is a axiden yous sho a dead woman ridin’ dat-a-way.”
“Well, perhaps there won’t be an accident. If I ride head first, I shall be a seasick woman sure, certain, accident or not!”
He grumbled so much that I let him have his way, then remade my bed while he was at the other end of the coach.
I had no sooner fallen asleep than a flashlight, playing across my face, woke me. It was the quota and immigration official. “We are about to cross the line.” He proceeded to ask all sorts of impertinent questions about me and my antecedents. I heard other angry passengers in other berths being put through the same foolish indignity. The dark coach hushed to quiet again except for the steady grind of the train-wheels a few feet below the passengers’ prone bodies and ragged-out tempers. That was not the end.
I was just conscious again when a tobacco-smelling coat sleeve dragged across my face and turned my berth light on. Bump, bump! the porter and the customs were under my berth grappling for my bags. First they rummaged, then they poured everything, shoes, letters, brushes, tooth paste, hairnets, over me.
“Anything to declare?”
“Only that you are a disgusting nuisance!” I snapped, collecting my things back into their bags.
“If folks will cross the line!” he shrugged.
“Drat your old line!” I shouted. “It is as snarly as long hair that has not been brushed for a year!”
No good to try and sleep again! I knew by the feel inside me that we were nearing a great city. The approach to them is always the same.
“New York! New York!” The porter and his ladder bumped into the people, uncomfortably dressing in their berths.
I raised my blind—tall, belching factory chimneys, rows and rows of workmen’s brick houses, square, ugly factories, with millions of windows. Day was only half here, and it was raining.
Noises changed, we were slithering into a great covered station. There on the platform, having paddled through rain at that hour, was my friend, Nell. I nearly broke the window rapping on it. She waved her umbrella and both hands.
The station was about to wake and have its face washed. Sleepy boys were coming with pails and brooms. The breathless hither and thither rush common to all stations had not started as yet. Nell skirted the cleaners amiably. I never remember to have seen her ruffled or provoked. Once out west I went with her to feed the sow. Nell lodged her pail of swill in the crotch of the snake fence while she climbed over. Evangeline the sow stood up and snouted the entire pailful over Nell. There Nell stood, potato peeling in her hair, dripping with swill and all she said was, “Oh, Evangeline!”
Well, I suppose if one’s disposition could take that it could take New York.
The distance from station to station seemed no way at all, we were talking so hard. Suddenly I remembered and said, “Why, Nell, is this New York?” Soon our train began skimming over beautiful green fields. The very up-to-datest farm buildings and fences were here and there, and such beautiful horses were in the pastures.
“Nell, where are we?”
“On Long Island. This is where the millionaires and the multi-millionaires come to recuperate when Society ructions have worn them threadbare. These sumptuous estates are what the millionaires are pleased to call their ‘country cottages’.”
My friends lived on the home farm of their own particular millionaire’s estate, in a large, comfortable farm house.
During my week’s stay on Long Island I never saw or heard a millionaire but I saw the extravagances on which they poured their millions and it amazed me. They had tennis courts glassed over the top so that they could play in all weathers. They had private golf courses, private lakes for fishing, they had stables full of magnificent race horses and every style and shape of motor-cars.
They had gardens and conservatories and, of course, they had armies of servants to keep the places in order and have them in readiness any moment the owners took the whim—“I’m sick of Society, it is such hard work. We will run down to our cottage on Long Island.” Then a string of motor-cars as long as a funeral would tear over the Island roads, endangering dogs and every one else’s life, motors stuffed with the fancy equipment millionaires consider indispensable.
It was nothing, my friends told me, for a New York florist to send in a bill of seventy-five dollars just for providing cut flowers to decorate the house for a single week-end, and there were the rest of us mortals thinking twice before spending one dollar on a plant! The extravagance fairly popped my eyes.
The week of my stay on Long Island happened to be Easter. Our millionaires were giving a week-end party. They kept the manager hopping. My friend’s husband was the very finest type of Englishman. Life had given him some pretty hard knocks and left him strong, fine, honourable. The same applied to his wife. The millionaires thought the world of the pair and gave them complete trust, respect and love.
The beginning of Easter week the manager was bidden to search the Island nursery-gardens catering to the wealthy, till he could locate half a dozen blossoming trees. They must be in full bloom. It seemed that there were to be fishing parties on their private lake. Their stables were close to the lake side. The trees must be as high as the stables and hide the buildings from the fishers’ eyes. But trees would not hurry growth for any old millionaire. They clamped their buds tight as a good parson’s lips clamp on an occasion when only one well-rounded word could express his feelings.
At the last nursery we found six forsythia trees in full bloom. They were as gold as butter and as high as the stables. It took a separate lorry to move each tree. About an acre of dirt had to accompany each tree’s roots. It took a battalion of men to do the job. They did it well. The forsythias did not wilt and the reflection in the lake was lovely. The millionaires were pleased. I have no idea what the performance must have cost!
The manager was also instructed to see that the tennis court was in good shape for play. An expert was called in to inspect.
“Carn’t do nothin’ by Easter,” he said. “Court needs makin’ over from foundation. Best I can do is to patch her so she’ll play ’em over the week-end. Patch’ll cost three hundred dollars.”
The owners said, “Certainly, go ahead.” But the expensive patch was never used once during the Easter holiday.
Our millionaires were childless. Besides this place they had a mansion in New York. Also the wife, who was a millionaire in her own right, had a magnificent estate in Belgium. It was their favourite of the three estates. They frequently visited there.
I heard that the Martha Washington Hotel in New York was a nice place for a lady alone so I went there. It was not as tall or as high priced as many of the newer hotels but it was very comfortable and conveniently situated for everything.
I quaked up to Martha’s desk and asked the clerk, “Have you such a thing as a ground-floor room or at least one on second or third floor that can be reached by the stairway?”
The clerk’s look was scornful and plainly commented “hayseed”. He said, “We have such rooms, Madam; there is little demand for them. Higher the floor, better the light and air.”
“I dislike elevators.”
The clerk led the way to a room half a storey higher than Martha’s lounge. He turned on the light. It was never more than twilight in that room, but I liked it in spite of its dimness. It had a private bath and I thought the price most moderate. My window opened into a well and I was at the very bottom; about a thousand other windows, tier upon tier, opened into my well.
Martha homed many girlish grandmothers, derelicts who had buried their husbands, or divorced them, married off their children and did not quite know what to do with life. They were be-curled, be-powdered and tremendously interested in their food. Martha had glass doors leading from the lounge to the restaurant. These grandmother-girls were always the first to be at the glass doors when the maids unlocked them at meal times. Martha’s food was excellent. There was a door leading direct from the street into the dining room. Men were permitted to lunch at Martha and a tremendous lot of business men came there for lunch. Martha’s food was good and very reasonable.
My Long Island friend came up and took sightseeing tours with me. We went in big buses with bigger megaphones which deafened us when they told us about all the marvels we were passing. First we did the “High-Town” and then we did the “Low-Town” and by that time we were supposed to know New York by heart.
My dread of going around New York alone had completely vanished. I have often wondered what caused that fear, almost terror, of New York before I saw her. I had been raised on this continent and was much more in sympathy with the New than with the Old World. New York was clean, the traffic wonderfully managed and the people courteous.
I hunted up the Art Galleries. Alas, I found them mostly located on top storeys. My heart sank to a corresponding depth under the earth. I kept putting off the visiting of Art Galleries. I did do one on the fifteenth floor (with the exception of Roerich gallery this was about the lowest). Shooting up was fearful but the thought of sinking down again appalled me. It spoiled the pleasure of the pictures.
On the fifteenth floor I stood aside, waiting for the other passengers to enter the elevator. Half in and half out, I paused. The operator got restive. Suddenly I backed out of the cage.
“Where’s the stairs?” I started to run in the direction of his pointing thumb. His scorn followed me.
“Yer won’t get to bottom within a week!”
I knew I ought to be ashamed, and I was. I was sure the cable would break, or that the sink would stop my heart-beat entirely.
The Roerich Museum was on the banks of the river. The building was only half a dozen storeys high. The picture-galleries occupied the three lower floors. Everything in the building was Mr. Roerich. . . . His pictures covered the walls of all the galleries. There was one room stacked to the ceiling with parchment rolls, whether by or about him I do not remember. He was for sale in book form and by photograph at the desk on the ground floor. The attendant lowered her voice to whispering every time she uttered his name. I am afraid I do not yet know just who Roerich was; his museum did not greatly interest me. He seemed to have a large following and everybody knew all about him.
I was not alone while I visited the Roerich Gallery. As I went in the door I met Arthur Lismer of the Toronto Group of Seven and a lady Art Teacher of Toronto. They turned and went back with me. They were up in New York to study the method of Art Teaching in the schools there and also to see the spring Exhibitions. The Art Teaching Lady immediately became a devotee of Roerich. She was voluble as we went through the galleries, Mr. Lismer rather silent. Presently the lady left us to run back to the desk below and secure a few more books and photographs.
I said to Mr. Lismer, “These pictures don’t make me ‘quake’, do they you? They are spectacular enough but . . .”
Mr. Lismer nodded, laid his finger across his lips and rolled his eyes in the direction of the lady from Toronto.
“Don’t spoil her delight: she is such an ardent adorer!” He pulled his watch out. “Time!” he shouted over the stair rail to the lady, and to me he said, “Old Toronto student of mine meeting us here to conduct us to the new spring shows, come along.”
“I’d love to, only . . .” He laughed, knowing my pet horror.
“Elevators? I’ll fix that with the operators, come on.”
Each time we were about to drop like a pail filled with rocks Mr. Lismer whispered in the elevator man’s ear and we slid down slowly and gently. I have always felt gratitude towards Arthur Lismer for that.
Those modern exhibitions were a wonderment beyond my comprehension, but they were certainly not beyond my interest. In some of them I found great beauty which stirred me, others left me completely cold; in fact some seemed silly, as though someone was trying to force himself to do something out of the ordinary.
We saw Kandinsky, Bracque, Ducamp, Dove, Archipenko, Picasso and many others. Some had gripping power. The large canvas, Nude Descending a Staircase, hung in one gallery. I had seen reproductions of this painting before. Mr. Lismer stood looking at it intently. His student, the lady from Toronto and I were arranged beside him looking too, but with less understanding. The four of us were dumb, till Lismer said, “One thing certain, the thing is very, very feminine.”
Not until my last day in New York did I meet Mr. Harris’s artist friend, the President of the “Société Anonyme”. I had tried to communicate with her by ’phone from Martha but without success—she lived in such swell Mansions. Ordinary people were not permitted to communicate with the mansion-dwellers except by some special telephonic gymnastics far too occult for me to grasp, so I wrote her a note. She immediately called at my hotel, which was most gracious of her. I happened to be out, so she left a message at the desk. Martha neglected to deliver it till within two hours of the departure of my train for Toronto.
I was annoyed with Martha. I wanted to meet Miss Dreier. Martha atoned the best she could by sticking me into a cab and heading me for the Mansions. They faced on a beautiful park and were of overpowering magnificence. There were as many guards, door-attendants, bell-boys, elevatresses and enquiry clerks as if it had been a legation (spies expected). All of them looked down their noses. I was such a very ordinary person to be asking for one of their tenants! Half a dozen attendants consulted. It was decided that one of the elevatresses, who, by the way, was costumed in black velvet, should take a bellboy and ascend. The boy would take my message and see if it was Miss Dreier’s wish to receive me.
It was Miss Dreier’s wish to receive me, but, the black-velveted lady informed me, “She is about to go out, so the visit must be brief!”
Such rigmarole! I began to wish I had not come, but, as soon as I saw Miss Dreier I was glad I had. She was friendly and kind. I explained about Martha’s negligence in delivering her message. She asked about Mr. Harris and his work and a little about me and my work out west. I got up to go saying, “I believe, Miss Dreier, you were just about to go out.”
“Only to my bank,” she replied. “That can wait till another day. I do not meet artists from Canada every day.”
She bade me sit down again. Her house was sumptuous. On the walls were fine paintings, all were canvases by Moderns, all “abstract”. Then she brought out many canvases of her own painting. She talked about abstraction and abstractionists. She was particularly proud of a Franz Marc which had just come into her possession.
Among her own canvases was one called Portrait of a Man. I would never have suspected it. From the midst of squirming lines and half circles was something which rather resembled the outer shape of a human eye, but through its centre was thrust a reddish form that was really a very healthy carrot.
I looked a long time. I had to say something so I asked, “Please, Miss Dreier, why is that carrot stuck through the eye?”
“Carrot!” Miss Dreier gasped. “Carrot! I did think I had so plainly shown the man’s benevolence! He was the most benevolent person I ever knew!”
I felt dreadfully wilted, dreadfully ignorant. To put me at ease Miss Dreier told me about her new book just published, Western Art and the New Era.
“I shall get it,” I said. “Maybe it will teach me something about abstract Art.”
We discussed Georgia O’Keefe’s work. I told of how I had met her in the gallery of Mr. Steiglitz.
I said, “Some of her things I think beautiful, but she herself does not seem happy when she speaks of her work.”
Miss Dreier made an impatient gesture.
“Georgia O’Keefe wants to be the greatest painter. Everyone can’t be that, but all can contribute. Does the bird in the woods care if he is the best singer? He sings because he is happy. It is the altogether-happiness which makes one grand, great chorus.”
I have often thought of that statement of Miss Dreier’s, also of how extremely nice she was to me.
“Thank Mr. Harris for sending you. I am so glad I had not already left for my bank,” were her good-bye words.
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