Episodes Before Thirty/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
As a new "bum reporter," however, I had a hectic life, but rapidly made friends with the other men, and a mutual loathing of the work brought us easily together. Friday was pay-day; by Wednesday everybody was trying to borrow money—one dollar, usually—from everybody else, the debts being always faithfully repaid when the little envelopes were collected at the cashier's office downstairs.
My first week's reporting passed in a whirl of feverish excitement. Assignments of every possible kind were hurled at me. I raced and flew about. The "Britisher," the "English accent," were a source of amusement to the staff, but there was no ill-nature. Cooper seemed to like me; he chuckled; he even gave me hints. "Well, Mr. Britisher, did you get it this time?" Few of my first efforts were used, the flimsy report being printed instead, but a divorce case in special sessions, and interviews with the principals in it, brought me into notice, the story being put in the front page of the first edition. When I came down on the following Monday, McCloy whipped up to me like a steel spring released. "You can cover the Tombs this morning," he rattled. "Anything big must be in by ten at the latest. Use judgment and pick out the best stories. Don't let anyone get a beat on you."
He flashed away, and I tore down to the Tombs Police Court.
The Tombs—I can smell to-day its peculiar mixture of extremely dirty humanity, cheap scent, very old clothes, Chinese opium, stale liquor, iodoform, and a tinge of nameless disinfectant. In winter the hot-air which was the means of heating the court whose windows were never opened, and in summer the stifling, humid atmosphere, to say nothing of the added flavour of acid perspiration, were equally abominable. The building, with its copy of Egyptian architecture, vies in gloom with the prison in Venice, though the former takes unpleasant precedence--a veritable Hall of Eblis, with thick walls, impressive portals, a general air of hopeless and portentous doom about even its exterior. There was a grimness in its dark passages that made the heart sink, truly an awe-ful building. The interior was spick and span and clean as a hospital ward, but the horror of that repellent outside leaked through somehow. Both inside and outside, the Tombs Prison became as familiar to me as my room in East 19th Street; many a prisoner I interviewed in his cell, many a wretch I talked with through the bars of his last earthly cage in Murderers' Row; I never entered the forbidding place without a shudder, nor stepped into the open air again without relief.
The routine of the police court, too, became mechanical as the months went by. The various reporters acted in concert; we agreed which stories we would use, and in this way no paper got a "beat" on the others. The man on duty stood beside the Tammany magistrate, making his notes as each case came up. It was a depressing, often a painful, business.
The cases rattled by very quickly--arson, burglary, forgery, gambling, opium dens, street women, all came up, but it was from assaults that we usually culled our morning assortment for the first edition. Negroes used a razor, Italians a stiletto, white men a knife, a pistol, a club or a sandbag. Women used hatpins mostly.
It was, of course, some particular feature, either picturesque or horrible, that lent value to a case. Gradually my "nose for news" was sharpened. It was a friendly little German Jew, named Freytag, who taught me how to make the commonest police story readable. I had just "given up" the facts about a Syrian girl who had been stabbed by a jealous lover, and the reporters all round me were jotting down the details. Freytag, who worked for Hermann Ridder's Staatszeitung, looked over my shoulder. "That's no good," he said. "Don't begin 'Miriam so and-so, living at such a place, was stabbed at two o'clock this morning by Whatshisname....' That's not interesting. Begin like this: 'A mysterious crime with an exotic touch about it was committed in the early hours this morning when all worthy New Yorkers were enjoying their beauty sleep.... Far away, where the snows of the Taurus Mountains gleam to heaven, the victim, a lovely Syrian maid, once had her home....'" I followed his advice, though my version was severely blue-pencilled, but his point--selecting a picturesque angle of attack--was sound and useful.
The police court work was over by half-past ten, and I was then generally sent on to report the trials in Special or General Sessions. These, naturally, were of every sort and kind. Divorce, alienation of affection and poison trials were usually the best news. My hair often stood on end, and some of the people were very unpleasant to interview. The final talk before a man went to the Chair was worst of all. If the case was an important one, I had to get an interview in the Tombs Prison cell before the day's trial--there was no sub judice prohibition in New York. Inevitably, I formed my own opinion as to a man's innocence or guilt; the faces, gazing at me through bars, would often haunt me for days. Carlyle Harris, calm, indifferent, cold as ice, I still see, as he peered past the iron in Murderers' Row, protesting his innocence with his steely blue eyes fixed on mine; he was a young medical student accused of poisoning his wife with morphia; he was electrocuted ... and Lizzie Borden ... though this was in Providence, Rhode Island--who took all her clothes off, lest the stains of blood betray her, before killing her father and mother in their sleep....
Some of the cases made a lasting and horrible impression; some even terrified. The behaviour of individuals, especially of different races, when sentence was given also left vivid memories; negroes, appealing hysterically to God and using the most extraordinary, invented words, the longer the better; the stolid, unemotional Chinamen; the voluble Italian; the white man, as a rule, quiet, controlled, insisting merely in a brief sentence that he was innocent. In a story, years later (Max Hensig, Bacteriologist and Murderer), the facts were taken direct from life. It needed more than fifteen years to dim their memory. I remained the Tombs reporter for the best part of a loathed, distressing, horror-laden year.
There were pleasanter intervals, of course. The French paper, Le Courier des Etats Unis, published a short story every Monday, and one day I translated an exceptionally clever one, and submitted it to McCloy. It was printed; subsequently, I was allowed an afternoon off weekly, provided I translated a story each time, and though no money was paid for these, I secured a good many free hours to myself. These hours I spent in the free library in Lafayette Place, devouring the Russians, as well as every kind of book I could find on psychology; or else in going out to Bronx Park, a long tram journey, where I found trees and lovely glades and water. Bronx Park, not yet the home of the New York "Zoo," was a paradise to me, the nearest approach to the woods that I could find. Every Sunday, wet or fine, I went there. In a cache I hid a teapot, and would make a tiny fire and drink milkless tea. I could hear the wind and see the stars and taste the smell of earth and leaves, the clean, sweet things....
One morning in the second week of my apprenticeship, I interviewed a lion.
"Afraid of wild animals, Mr. Britisher?" inquired Cooper, looking at me quizzically. I stared, wondering what he meant. It was my duty to have read the morning paper thoroughly, but there had been no mention of any wild animal. I replied that I thought I didn't mind wild animals.
"Take your gun," said Cooper, "and get up to East 20th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues. Bostock's Circus came to town last night late. Their lion's escaped. They've chased it into a stable. Killed a valuable horse. Neighbourhood's paralysed with terror. It's a man eater. Send down bulletins about it. Now, better get a move on!"
On leaving the elevated train at East 18th Street, the streets were black with people, they even pressed up the front steps of the houses. The word "lion" was in everybody's mouth. Something about Cooper's voice and eyes had made me suspect a "fake." As I forced my way through towards 20th Street, there came a roar that set the air trembling even above the din of voices. It was certainly no fake.
On reaching 20th Street, the cordon of police, with pistols ready, keeping the crowd in order, showed plainly where the stable was. Gradually I bored a way through. The stable stood back from the road, a courtyard in front of it. A ladder, crowded already with reporters climbing up, led to a hayloft just above. I met the Evening Telegram man, whom I knew, half-way up this ladder. "Got a messenger boy? No! Then you can share mine," he offered good-naturedly. The only occupants of the yard were a dozen of these messenger boys, waiting to take the "copy" to the various newspaper offices. It was 8.30 a.m.
I noticed to my surprise that the Evening Telegram man was a star reporter; three rungs above him, to my still greater surprise, climbed Richard Harding Davis. My vanity was stirred. This was a big story, yet Cooper had chosen me! As I squeezed up the ladder, my hands stuffed with paper, the lion below gave forth an awe-inspiring roar; it was a dreadful sound. The great doors of wood seemed matchwood easily burst through. The crowd swayed back a moment, then, with a cheer, swayed forward again.
In the loft I found some twenty reporters; each time the brute gave its terrible roar they scuttled into corners, behind the hay, even up into the rafters of the darkened loft. Pistol shots accompanied every roar, and the added terror lest a bullet from below might pierce the boards on which we stood, made us all jump about like dervishes. One man wrote his story, perched in the dark on the highest rafter, from which he never once moved. I scribbled away, and threw down my "stuff" to the boy below.
Meanwhile the circus officials were doing their best to force the great beast into a cage. This cage stood ready against the outside doors in the yard, and at the right moment these doors would be swiftly opened. On being driven into the stable, the animal had found, and quickly killed, a trotting horse, valued at $2,000, standing in its stall. This detail I at first disbelieved, but when my turn came to kneel and peer through the trap-door for feeding the hay down into the dark stable below, I found it was all true. In the centre of the floor the great lion was plainly visible, not six feet below my own face, lying with two paws stretched upon the carcass of a torn, dead horse. The smell of flesh and blood rose to my nostrils. In a dim corner perched on a refrigerator, sat one of the trainers, a pistol in his hand. In another corner, but invisible from my peephole, crouched another circus man, also with his pistol, and each time the lion made an ugly move, both men fired off their weapons.... I wrote more "bulletins," and dropped them down to a messenger boy in the yard. He hurried off, then returned to fetch more "copy"; I sent at least a column for the first edition. I felt a very proud reporter.
After two hours of thrills and scares, the news spread that the Strong Man of the circus was on his way down, a fearless Samson of a fellow who lifted great weights. The news proved true. A prolonged cheer greeted him. He acknowledged it with a sweeping bow. He wore diamonds and a top hat. Swaggering up among the reporters, he announced in a loud voice: "Boys! I'm going to fix that lion, and I'm going to fix it right away!"
The boastful bluff received no believing cheer in response, but to my amazement, the fellow proved as good as his talk. He said no further word, he just lifted the trap-door in the floor and began to squeeze himself through--straight down on to the very spot where the lion lay, crouching below on the dead horse. He dropped. We heard the thud. We also heard the appalling roar that followed, the quick pistol shots, the shouts, the excited cries--then silence. The reporter at the trap-door called out to us what was happening.... That Strong Man was a hero.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, the big stable-doors swung open, and the cage, with the lion safely inside it, emerged on a high-wheeled truck into full view of the cheering crowd. On the top of the cage, sweeping his shiny top hat about, bowing, waving his free hand with modest dignity to the admiring thousands, the Strong Man sat enthroned, cross-legged, proud and smiling. The procession through the streets of the city was a triumphal progress that lasted most of the day. That night Bostock's Circus opened to the public.
I hurried back to the office, and had the joy of seeing the first edition hawked and cried about the streets, even before I got there. Big head-lines about a "Man-eating Lion," a "Two Thousand Dollar Trotting Horse," "Heroic Rescuer," and the rest, met my eye everywhere. Cooper, however, made no remark or comment, sending me on at once to report a murder trial at special sessions, and in half an hour the gruesome thrills of a horrible poison case made the lion and the strong man fade away.
"Read your morning paper?" Cooper asked, when I appeared next morning. I nodded. The lion story, I had noticed, filled only half a stick of print. "Read the advertisements?" he asked next. I saw a twinkle in his eye, and quickly scanned the circus advertisements about the man-eating lion that had killed a trotting horse, and a strong man whose courage had done this and that, saving numerous lives ... but I was still puzzled by Cooper's twinkling eye. He offered no word of explanation; I learned the truth from someone else later. The toothless, aged lion, gorged with food and doped as well, had been pushed into the stable overnight, the carcass of a horse, valued at $10, had been dragged in after it. The newspapers had been notified, and the long advertisements, of course, were paid for in the ordinary way, but the free advertisement obtained was of a kind that mere dollars could not buy.
Occasional interludes of this sort certainly brightened the sordid daily routine, but they were rare. A big fire was a thrilling experience, a metal badge pinned to the coat allowing the reporter to go as near as he liked and to run what risks he pleased. Such work became, with time, mechanical in a sense, it occurred so often, arson, too, being very frequent, especially among the Jews of the East side. Even in those days the story of the two Jews was a "chestnut": "I'm thorry your blace of business got burnt down last Tuesday," says Ikey. To which Moses replies: "Hush! It's next Tuesday!"
The rôle of the reporter in New York, of course, was an accepted one; publicity and advertisement were admittedly desirable; the reporter as a rule was welcomed; privacy was very rare; a reporter could, and was expected to, intrude into personal family affairs where, in England, he would be flung into the street.... Other interviews were of a pleasanter kind; I remember Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in their special train, Sarah Bernhardt, at the Hoffman House hotel, and many a distinguished foreigner I was sent to interview because I could speak their languages. The trip to meet the Atlantic steamer at Quarantine I regarded as a day off: it could be made to last for hours. I saw the coast, moreover, and smelt the sea....
Most of my work on the Evening Sun, at any rate, took me among the criminal and outcast sections of the underworld. In those days the police, as a whole, were corrupt, brutal, heartless; I saw innocent men against whom they had a grudge, or whom they wanted out of the way for some reason, "railroaded to gaol" on cooked-up evidence; sickening and dreadful scenes I witnessed.... The valueless character of human evidence I learned daily in the trials I reported, so that even a man who was trying to tell the truth seemed unable to achieve it. Tammany had its slimy tentacles everywhere and graft was the essence of success in every branch of public life. A police captain had his town and country house, perhaps his yacht as well.... The story of Tammany has been told again and again. It is too well known for repetition. I watched its vile methods from the inside with a vengeance; its loathsome soul I saw face to face. The city, too, I soon knew inside out, especially its darker, unclean quarters. Chinatown, Little Africa, where, after dark, it was best to walk in the middle of the street, "Italy," the tenement life of the overcrowded, reeking East side.... I made friends with strange people, feeling myself even in touch with them, something of an outcast like themselves. My former life became more and more remote, it seemed unreal; the world I now lived in seemed the only world; these evil, depraved, tempted, unhappy devils were not only the majority, but the real, ordinary humanity that stocked the world. More and more the under-dog appealed to me. The rich, the luxurious, the easily-placed, the untempted and inexperienced, these I was beginning to find it in me to look down on, even to despise. Mutatis mutandis, I thought to myself, daily, hourly, where would they be?... Where would I myself be...?
Bronx Park, Shelley, the violin, the free library, organ recitals in churches, my Eastern books, and meetings of the Theosophical Society, provided meanwhile the few beauty hours to which I turned by way of relief and relaxation. One and all fed my inner dreams, gave me intense happiness, offered a way of escape from a daily atmosphere I loathed like poison. Sometimes, sitting in court, reporting a trial of absorbing interest, my eye would catch through the dirty window a patch of blue between the clouds ... and instantly would sweep up the power of the woods, the strange joy of clean solitary places in the wilderness, the glamour of a secret little lake where loons were calling and waves splashing on deserted, lonely shores. I heard the pines, saw the silvery moonlight, felt the keen wind of open and untainted spaces, I smelt the very earth and the perfume of the forests.... A serious gap would follow in my report, so that I would have to borrow from the flimsy man, or from another reporter, what had happened in the interval. In this connexion there comes back to me a picture of a World man whose work constituted him a star reporter, but who could write nothing unless he was really drunk. With glazed eyes he would catch the witness and listen to question and answer, while with a pencil he could scarcely direct, he scribbled in immense writing three or four sloping lines to each page of "copy" paper,[**P1: .?] It always astonished me that such work could be any good, but once I made a shorthand note of several of his pages, and found them printed verbatim in the next edition, without a single blue-pencil alteration. When this man sat next me, my intervals of absent-mindedness did not matter. His big writing enabled me to crib easily all I had missed.
Other compensating influences, too, I found with my "room-mates," especially with Boyde, to whom I had become devotedly attached. I was uncommonly lucky to have such friends, I thought. Talking with Boyde, playing the fiddle to his singing, sharing my troubles with his subtle, sympathetic, well-read mind, was an unfailing pleasure, that made me look forward intensely to our evenings together, and helped me to get through many a day of repulsive and distasteful work. Compared with the charm and variety of Boyde, Kay seemed stolid, even unresponsive sometimes.
To live consciously is to register impressions; some receive many more of these per second than others, and thus enjoy an intenser and more varied life. The two-per-second mind finds the two-per-minute one slow, dull and stupid. Kay, anyhow, didn't "mind" things much, circumstances never troubled him, whereas Boyde and I minded them acutely. I envied Kay's power of sleeping calmly in that bed, careless of night-attacks until they actually came. The horror of New York, similarly, that was creeping into my blood had hardly touched him, though it certainly had infected Boyde. In my own make-* up lay something ultra-sensitive that took impressions far too easily. Not only did it vibrate with unnecessary eagerness to every change in sky and sea, but to every shade of attitude and manner in my fellows as well. I seemed covered with sore and tender places into which New York rubbed salt and acid every hour of the day. It wounded, not alone because I felt unhappy, but of itself. It hit me where it pleased. The awful city, with its torrential, headlong life, held for me something of the monstrous. Everything about it was exaggerated. Its racing speed, its roofs amid the clouds with the canyon gulfs below, its gaudy avenues dripping gold that ran almost arm in arm with streets little better than sewers of human decay and misery, its frantic noise, both of voices and mechanism, its lavishly organized charity and boastful splendour, and its deep corruption in the grip of a heartless and degraded Tammany--it was all this that painted the horror into my imagination as of something monstrous, non-human, almost unearthly. It became, for me, a scab on the skin of the planet, brilliant with the hues of fever, moving all over with its teeming microbes. I felt it, indeed, but half civilized.
This note of how I felt in these--my early years--rose up again the other day, as I read what O. Henry wrote to his outlaw friend from the Ohio Penitentiary about it. Al Jennings had just been pardoned. O. Henry had finished his terms some years before. They met again in a West 26th Street hotel, not far from my own room in Mrs. Bernstein's house. They talked of their terrible prison days.
"It's good you've been there," said O. Henry. "It's the proper vestibule to this city of Damned Souls. The crooks there are straight compared with the business thieves here. If you've got $2 on you, invest it now or they'll take it away from you before morning."