Frenzied Fiction/Father Knickerbocker: A Fantasy
II—Father Knickerbocker: A Fantasy
It happened quite recently—I think it must have been on April the second of 1917—that I was making the long pilgrimage on a day-train from the remote place where I dwell to the city of New York. And as we drew near the city, and day darkened into night, I had fallen to reading from a quaint old copy of Washington Irving’s immortal sketches of Father Knickerbocker and of the little town where once he dwelt.
I had picked up the book I know not where. Very old it apparently was and made in England. For there was pasted across the fly-leaf of it an extract from some ancient magazine or journal of a century ago, giving what was evidently a description of the New York of that day.
From reading the book I turned—my head still filled with the vision of Father Knickerbocker and Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown—to examine the extract. I read it in a sort of half-doze, for the dark had fallen outside, and the drowsy throbbing of the running train attuned one’s mind to dreaming of the past.
“The town of New York”—so ran the extract pasted in the little book—“is pleasantly situated at the lower extremity of the Island of Manhattan. Its recent progress has been so amazing that it is now reputed, on good authority, to harbour at least twenty thousand souls. Viewed from the sea, it presents, even at the distance of half a mile, a striking appearance owing to the number and beauty of its church spires, which rise high above the roofs and foliage and give to the place its characteristically religious aspect. The extreme end of the island is heavily fortified with cannon, commanding a range of a quarter of a mile, and forbidding all access to the harbour. Behind this Battery a neat greensward affords a pleasant promenade, where the citizens are accustomed to walk with their wives every morning after church.”
“How I should like to have seen it!” I murmured to myself as I laid the book aside for a moment. “The Battery, the harbour and the citizens walking with their wives, their own wives, on the greensward.”
Then I read on:
“From the town itself a wide thoroughfare, the Albany Post Road, runs meandering northward through the fields. It is known for some distance under the name of the Broad Way, and is so wide that four moving vehicles are said to be able to pass abreast. The Broad Way, especially in the springtime when it is redolent with the scent of clover and apple-blossoms, is a favourite evening promenade for the citizens—with their wives—after church. Here they may be seen any evening strolling toward the high ground overlooking the Hudson, their wives on one arm, a spyglass under the other, in order to view what they can see. Down the Broad Way may be seen moving also droves of young lambs with their shepherds, proceeding to the market, while here and there a goat stands quietly munching beside the road and gazing at the passers-by.”
“It seems,” I muttered to myself as I read, “in some ways but little changed after all.”
“The town”—so the extract continued—“is not without its amusements. A commodious theatre presents with great success every Saturday night the plays of Shakespeare alternating with sacred concerts; the New Yorker, indeed, is celebrated throughout the provinces for his love of amusement and late hours. The theatres do not come out until long after nine o’clock, while for the gayer habitués two excellent restaurants serve fish, macaroni, prunes and other delicacies till long past ten at night. The dress of the New Yorker is correspondingly gay. In the other provinces the men wear nothing but plain suits of a rusty black, whereas in New York there are frequently seen suits of brown, snuff-colour and even of pepper-and-salt. The costumes of the New York women are equally daring, and differ notably form the quiet dress of New England.”
“In fine, it is commonly said in the provinces that a New Yorker can be recognized anywhere, with his wife, by their modish costumes, their easy manners and their willingness to spend money—two, three and even five cents being paid for the smallest service.”
“Dear me,” I thought, as I paused for a moment in my reading, “so they had begun it even then.”
“The whole spirit of the place”—the account continued—“has recently been admirably embodied in literary form by an American writer, Mr. Washington Irving (not to be confounded with George Washington). His creation of Father Knickerbocker is so lifelike that it may be said to embody the very spirit of New York. The accompanying woodcut—which was drawn on wood especially for this periodical—recalls at once the delightful figure of Father Knickerbocker. The New Yorkers of to-day are accustomed, indeed, to laugh at Mr. Irving’s fancy and to say that Knickerbocker belongs to a day long since past. Yet those who know tell us that the image of the amiable old gentleman, kindly but irascible, generous and yet frugal, loving his town and seeing little beyond it, may be held once and for all to typify the spirit of the place, without reference to any particular time or generation.”
“Father Knickerbocker!” I murmured, as I felt myself dozing off to sleep, rocked by the motion of the car. “Father Knickerbocker, how strange if he could be here again and see the great city as we know it now! How different from his day! How I should love to go round New York and show it to him as it is.”
So I mused and dozed till the very rumble of the wheels seemed to piece together in little snatches. “Father Knickerbocker—Father Knickerbocker—the Battery—the Battery—the citizens walking with their wives, with their wives—their own wives”—until presently, I imagine, I must have fallen asleep altogether and knew no more till my journey was over and I found myself among the roar and bustle of the concourse of the Grand Central.
And there, lo and behold, waiting to meet me, was Father Knickerbocker himself! I know not how it happened, by what queer freak of hallucination or by what actual miracle—let those explain it who deal in such things—but there he stood before me, with an outstretched hand and a smile of greeting, Father Knickerbocker himself, the Embodied Spirit of New York.
“How strange,” I said. “I was just reading about you in a book on the train and imagining how much I should like actually to meet you and to show you round New York.”
The old man laughed in a jaunty way.
“Show me round?” he said. “Why, my dear boy, I live here.”
“I know you did long ago,” I said.
“I do still,” said Father Knickerbocker. “I’ve never left the place. I’ll show you around. But wait a bit—don’t carry that handbag. I’ll get a boy to call a porter to fetch a man to take it.”
“Oh, I can carry it,” I said. “It’s a mere nothing.”
“My dear fellow,” said Father Knickerbocker, a little testily I thought, “I’m as democratic and as plain and simple as any man in this city. But when it comes to carrying a handbag in full sight of all this crowd, why, as I said to Peter Stuyvesant about—about”—here a misty look seemed to come over the old gentleman’s face—“about two hundred years ago, I’ll be hanged if I will. It can’t be done. It’s not up to date.”
While he was saying this, Father Knickerbocker had beckoned to a group of porters.
“Take this gentleman’s handbag,” he said, “and you carry his newspapers, and you take his umbrella. Here’s a quarter for you and a quarter for you and a quarter for you. One of you go in front and lead the way to a taxi.”
“Don’t you know the way yourself?” I asked in a half-whisper.
“Of course I do, but I generally like to walk with a boy in front of me. We all do. Only the cheap people nowadays find their own way.”
Father Knickerbocker had taken my arm and was walking along in a queer, excited fashion, senile and yet with a sort of forced youthfulness in his gait and manner.
“Now then,” he said, “get into this taxi.”
“Can’t we walk?” I asked.
“Impossible,” said the old gentleman. “It’s five blocks to where we are going.”
As we took our seats I looked again at my companion, this time more closely. Father Knickerbocker he certainly was, yet somehow strangely transformed from my pictured fancy of the Sleepy Hollow days. His antique coat with its wide skirt had, it seemed, assumed a modish cut as if in imitation of the bell-shaped spring overcoat of the young man about town. His three-cornered hat was set at a rakish angle till it looked almost like an up-to-date fedora. The great stick that he used to carry had somehow changed itself into the curved walking-stick of a Broadway lounger. The solid old shoes with their wide buckles were gone. In their place he wore narrow slippers of patent leather of which he seemed inordinately proud, for he had stuck his feet up ostentatiously on the seat opposite. His eye followed my glance toward his shoes.
“For the fox-trot,” he said. “The old ones were no good. Have a cigarette? These are Armenian, or would you prefer a Honolulan or a Nigerian? Now,” he resumed, when we had lighted our cigarettes, “what would you like to do first? Dance the tango? Hear some Hawaiian music, drink cocktails, or what?”
“Why, what I should like most of all, Father Knickerbocker”
But he interrupted me.
“There’s a devilish fine woman! Look, the tall blonde one! Give me blondes every time!” Here he smacked his lips. “By gad, sir, the women in this town seem to get finer every century. What were you saying?”
“Why, Father Knickerbocker,” I began, but he interrupted me again.
“My dear fellow,” he said. “May I ask you not to call me Father Knickerbocker?”
“But I thought you were so old,” I said humbly.
“Old! Me old! Oh, I don’t know. Why, dash it, there are plenty of men as old as I am dancing the tango here every night. Pray call me, if you don’t mind, just Knickerbocker, or simply Knicky—most of the other boys call me Knicky. Now what’s it to be?”
“Most of all,” I said, “I should like to go to some quiet place and have a talk about the old days.”
“Right,” he said. “We’re going to just the place now—nice quiet dinner, a good quiet orchestra, Hawaiian, but quiet, and lots of women.” Here he smacked his lips again, and nudged me with his elbow. “Lots of women, bunches of them. Do you like women?”
“Why, Mr. Knickerbocker,” I said hesitatingly, “I suppose—I”
The old man sniggered as he poked me again in the ribs.
“You bet you do, you dog!” he chuckled. “We all do. For me, I confess it, sir, I can’t sit down to dinner without plenty of women, stacks of them, all round me.”
Meantime the taxi had stopped. I was about to open the door and get out.
“Wait, wait,” said Father Knickerbocker, his hand upon my arm, as he looked out of the window. “I’ll see somebody in a minute who’ll let us out for fifty cents. None of us here ever get in or out of anything by ourselves. It’s bad form. Ah, here he is!”
A moment later we had passed through the portals of a great restaurant, and found ourselves surrounded with all the colour and tumult of a New York dinner à la mode. A burst of wild music, pounded and thrummed out on ukuleles by a group of yellow men in Hawaiian costume, filled the room, helping to drown or perhaps only serving to accentuate the babel of talk and the clatter of dishes that arose on every side. Men in evening dress and women in all the colours of the rainbow, décolleté to a degree, were seated at little tables, blowing blue smoke into the air, and drinking green and yellow drinks from glasses with thin stems. A troupe of cabaret performers shouted and leaped on a little stage at the side of the room, unheeded by the crowd.
“Ha ha!” said Knickerbocker, as we drew in our chairs to a table. “Some place, eh? There’s a peach! Look at her! Or do you like better that lazy-looking brunette next to her?”
Mr. Knickerbocker was staring about the room, gazing at the women with open effrontery, and a senile leer upon his face. I felt ashamed of him. Yet, oddly enough, no one about us seemed in the least disturbed.
“Now, what cocktail will you have?” said my companion. “There’s a new one this week, the Fantan, fifty cents each, will you have that? Right! Two Fantans. Now to eat—what would you like?”
“May I have a slice of cold beef and a pint of ale?”
“Beef!” said Knickerbocker contemptuously. “My dear fellow, you can’t have that. Beef is only fifty cents. Do take something reasonable. Try Lobster Newburg, or no, here’s a more expensive thing—Filet Bourbon à la something. I don’t know what it is, but by gad, sir, it’s three dollars a portion anyway.”
“All right,” I said. “You order the dinner.”
Mr. Knickerbocker proceeded to do so, the head-waiter obsequiously at his side, and his long finger indicating on the menu everything that seemed most expensive and that carried the most incomprehensible name. When he had finished he turned to me again.
“Now,” he said, “let’s talk.”
“Tell me,” I said, “about the old days and the old times on Broadway.”
“Ah, yes,” he answered, “the old days—you mean ten years ago before the Winter Garden was opened. We’ve been going ahead, sir, going ahead. Why, ten years ago there was practically nothing, sir, above Times Square, and look at it now.”
I began to realize that Father Knickerbocker, old as he was, had forgotten all the earlier times with which I associated his memory. There was nothing left but the cabarets, and the Gardens, the Palm Rooms, and the ukuleles of to-day. Behind that his mind refused to travel.
“Don’t you remember,” I asked, “the apple orchards and the quiet groves of trees that used to line Broadway long ago?”
“Groves!” he said. “I’ll show you a grove, a coconut grove”—here he winked over his wineglass in a senile fashion—“that has apple-trees beaten from here to Honolulu.” Thus he babbled on.
All through our meal his talk continued: of cabarets and dances, or fox-trots and midnight suppers, of blondes and brunettes, “peaches” and “dreams,” and all the while his eye roved incessantly among the tables, resting on the women with a bold stare. At times he would indicate and point out for me some of what he called the “representative people” present.
“Notice that man at the second table,” he would whisper across to me. “He’s worth all the way to ten millions: made it in Government contracts; they tried to send him to the penitentiary last fall but they can’t get him—he’s too smart for them! I’ll introduce you to him presently. See the man with him? That’s his lawyer, biggest crook in America, they say; we’ll meet him after dinner.” Then he would suddenly break off and exclaim: “Egad, sir, there’s a fine bunch of them,” as another bevy of girls came trooping out upon the stage.
“I wonder,” I murmured, “if there is nothing left of him but this? Has all the fine old spirit gone? Is it all drowned out in wine and suffocated in the foul atmosphere of luxury?”
Then suddenly I looked up at my companion, and I saw to my surprise that his whole face and manner had altered. His hand was clenched tight on the edge of the table. His eyes looked before him—through and beyond the riotous crowd all about him—into vacancy, into the far past, back into memories that I thought forgotten. His face had altered. The senile, leering look was gone, and in its place the firm-set face of the Knickerbocker of a century ago.
He was speaking in a strange voice, deep and strong.
“Listen,” he said, “listen. Do you hear it—there—far out at sea—ships’ guns—listen—they’re calling for help—ships’ guns—far out at sea!” He had clasped me by the arm. “Quick, to the Battery, they’ll need every man to-night, they’ll”
Then he sank back into his chair. His look changed again. The vision died out of his eyes.
“What was I saying?” he asked. “Ah, yes, this old brandy, a very special brand. They keep it for me here, a dollar a glass. They know me here,” he added in his fatuous way. “All the waiters know me. The head-waiter always knows me the minute I come into the room—keeps a chair for me. Now try this brandy and then presently we’ll move on and see what’s doing at some of the shows.”
But somehow, in spite of himself, my companion seemed to be unable to bring himself fully back into the consciousness of the scene before him. The far-away look still lingered in his eyes.
Presently he turned and spoke to me in a low, confidential tone.
“Was I talking to myself a moment ago?” he asked. “Yes? Ah, I feared I was. Do you know—I don’t mind telling it to you—lately I’ve had a strange, queer feeling that comes over me at times, as if something were happening—something, I don’t know what. I suppose,” he continued, with a false attempt at resuming his fatuous manner, “I’m going the pace a little too hard, eh! Makes one fanciful. But the fact is, at times”—he spoke gravely again—“I feel as if there were something happening, something coming.”
“Knickerbocker,” I said earnestly, “Father Knickerbocker, don’t you know that something is happening, that this very evening as we are sitting here in all this riot, the President of the United States is to come before Congress on the most solemn mission that ever”
But my speech fell unheeded. Knickerbocker had picked up his glass again and was leering over it at a bevy of girls dancing upon the stage.
“Look at that girl,” he interrupted quickly, “the one dancing at the end. What do you think of her, eh? Some peach!”
Knickerbocker broke off suddenly. For at this moment our ears caught the sound of a noise, a distant tumult, as it were, far down the street and growing nearer. The old man had drawn himself erect in his seat, his hand to his ear, listening as he caught the sound.
“Out on the Broad Way,” he said, instinctively calling it by its ancient name as if a flood of memories were upon him. “Do you hear it? Listen—listen—what is it? I’ve heard that sound before—I’ve heard every sound on the Broad Way these two centuries back—what is it? I seem to know it!”
The sound and tumult as of running feet and of many voices crying came louder from the street. The people at the tables had turned in their seats to listen. The music of the orchestra had stopped. The waiters had thrown back the heavy curtains from the windows and the people were crowding to them to look out into the street. Knickerbocker had risen in his place, his eyes looked toward the windows, but his gaze was fixed on vacancy as with one who sees a vision passing.
“I know the sound,” he cried. “I see it all again. Look, can’t you see them? It’s Massachusetts soldiers marching South to the war-can’t you hear the beating of the drums and the shrill calling of the fife-the regiments from the North, the first to come. I saw them pass, here where we are sitting, sixty years ago”
Knickerbocker paused a moment, his hand still extended in the air, and then with a great light upon his face he cried:
“I know it now! I know what it meant, the feeling that has haunted me—the sounds I kept hearing—the guns of the ships at sea and the voices calling in distress! I know now. It means, sir, it means”
But as he spoke a great cry came up from the street and burst in at the doors and windows, echoing in a single word:
WAR! WAR! The message of the President is for WAR!
“War!” cried Father Knickerbocker, rising to his full height, stern and majestic and shouting in a stentorian tone that echoed through the great room. “War! War! To your places, every one of you! Be done with your idle luxury! Out with the glare of your lights! Begone you painted women and worthless men! To your places every man of you! To the Battery! Man the guns! Stand to it, every one of you for the defence of America—for our New York, New York”
••••••
Then, with the sound “New York, New York” still echoing in my ears I woke up. The vision of my dream was gone. I was still on the seat of the car where I had dozed asleep, the book upon my knee. The train had arrived at the depot and the porters were calling into the doorway of the car: “New York! New York!”
All about me was the stir and hubbub of the great depot. But loud over all it was heard the call of the newsboys crying “WAR! WAR! The President’s message is for WAR! Late extra! WAR! WAR!”
And I knew that a great nation had cast aside the bonds of sloth and luxury, and was girding itself to join in the fight for the free democracy of all mankind.