From Time to Time

15

THIS IS MY ROOM, the photo from a hotel brochure I picked up at the desk when I registered—the room I dressed in next morning looking down at Central Park to take my mind off the soiled linen I had to put on. I hate putting on dirty clothes, socks especially, so after a fast breakfast, out to a Sixth Avenue haberdashery. And at a shop next door, on impulse, bought a red leather box Kodak. Thought about a topcoat, but gambled it would warm up. Back for a shower, then a leisurely walk down Fifth Avenue with my new camera.

I snapped this first, the Plaza Hotel there at the right. And at the left, the Savoy. Both would be new to Julia, and astonishingly tall. Directly ahead, the peaked roof of an old friend, the Vanderbilt mansion. But what were the two tall buildings up ahead there? I snapped this scene, then stood a moment or so longer looking down Fifth. Was this the look of 1912 New York? If so, I liked it. There’s no escaping that nineteenth-century New York is—well, ugly. The buildings have a squeezed-down, huddled look; cramped—I like it for reasons other than its look. But this—tall buildings but not inhumanely tall, and well separated—this was an open, airy, sunny city; it occurred to me that this was how Paris still looked in the years up ahead.

I set out to walk down Fifth for a way; too early to go down Broadway hunting for what I hoped and was afraid to find. My new camera, like the city around me, was a novelty, so for a time it was clickety-click, snap, snap, snap. I crossed Fifty-ninth to head on down Fifth, turned to glance back, and saw a double-decker bus rumbling toward me. I’d heard of them but never seen one, and had to snap this. Watching the bus roll toward me in the little viewfinder, I was surprised to see that it was green; I’d always thought they were red. There at the right, the Netherland. This whole new corner would amaze Julia.

I snapped the bus as I stood beside the Vanderbilt mansion, and now I walked across Fifth Avenue for a better look, then quickly raised my camera in time to snap the girl watcher—see him there on the walk? Hoping, I suppose, for a glimpse of ankle. And I accidentally caught something else I’d see a lot of in this New York—the street-corner loafer there by the lamppost. A moment later, he leaned his shoulder against it. Julia would be pleased when I told her the Vanderbilt mansion still looked just as we so often saw it walking up Fifth Avenue toward the Park of a Sunday—Julia never failing to wonder what it looked like inside, and I never failing to suggest that we drop in and see, explaining to the Vanderbilts that we were just passing by.

A car came rolling into the mansion grounds through the Fifty-eighth Street gate, and I strolled over and tried to sneak this, but got caught, as you see. It was a fairly big camera, hard to hide, and at Fifty-seventh Street as I stood waiting to cross, an open car came chugging along toward Fifth. I could easily have skipped across in front of it, but instead I raised my camera, pretending to take something up ahead. And I snapped this as it rolled past, the beauty inside giving me the haughty eye. The young guy at the wheel was singing “Turkey Trot,” and as I walked on behind their car I sang softly: “Everybody’s doin’ it, doin’ it!” This was fun, walking—strolling, really—along this sunny, leisurely street. Some kids were playing up ahead on the walk, and when I stopped to take this, I got caught once more, by the towhead there, and as I passed he said, “Juh take my pitcha, Mista?” I said, “No, you broke the camera.” There’s a first time for everyone to hear this ancient joke, and he stared, then grinned and whirled to inflict it on the girl playing behind him. “D’man says you broke duh camera!”

I’d suddenly recognized the building up ahead with the awning, the St. Regis Hotel. I walked on a block, and near the corner I took this. From under the awning and behind the hedge I heard voices and the cheerful clink of china. Lunch? I pulled out my watch; only a bit after eleven—they were serving breakfast and I wished I’d known and sat here too, under that awning watching the easy leisurely traffic move by.

Onward, watching, happy, I saw this approaching, turned and caught the bride inside smiling out at me, at my camera, and at the world.

Then I stood winding my film, and a couple strolled by me, her face merry and beautiful. She was young, not more than thirty, and it occurred to me that she’d been born about the time I met Julia. And that by my own time far ahead she’d be . . . but that wasn’t a thought I wanted.

They’d gone by, but I took their picture anyway, here beside a formidable building I didn’t know. Took it because they were young here in 1912; took it for the twin spires of St. Pat’s Cathedral up there ahead alone on the sky—it would have pleased Julia that at last both spires were finished. And I took this picture for the fire hydrant there at the curb, the lamppost on the corner, and to capture this quiet instant of this fine vanished day. A dozen more steps, and the couple turned into the building beside them. A moment or so later when I passed the entrance and saw the polished brass plaque reading Gotham Hotel, I wondered what my young couple were doing in there; then wondered if they were married, sort of hoping, too, they weren’t. And walked on then, wondering why I should hope that.

Up ahead, the southwest corner at Fifty-third Street meant Allen Dodsworth’s School for Dancing. But no longer. His sign was gone, though the building still stood. I wasn’t surprised: the dancing I’d seen last night wasn’t what Allen Dodsworth had taught. Was he still alive? And what stood on that corner far ahead in my own time? The Tishman Building? I wasn’t quite sure.

On past one of the great old Fifth Avenue mansions I knew so well, from the outside. I turned to look back, then moved to one side, composing this view, which I’m a little bit proud of. See how the old Fifth Avenue of the foreground sort of frames the new twentieth-century Fifth Avenue of great fasionable hotels rising behind it? Must be giving the owners of the house beside it fits.

Click-click, snap, snap. Just ahead lay a stretch of the street, this one, looking almost unchanged, one of the great old mansions serenely taking up half the sidewalk, St. Pat’s over there at the left and on ahead, across the street to the south of it, an old friend (Howdy!), the Buckingham Hotel, looking as permanent as St. Pat’s, but I knew I was seeing a ghost. Because as I framed this scene in the little window of my viewfinder, I could also see, standing in the Buckingham’s place far ahead of time, Saks Fifth Avenue looking just as permanent. Well, Saks became an old friend too.

At Forty-ninth Street I stopped, stepping just around the corner to watch a gray limousine, the gray-uniformed chauffeur sitting out front in the open, hunched over his wheel, as he swung off Fifth into West Forty-ninth, made a tight little U-turn, and stopped before an imposing brick building. The chauffeur hopped out and stood almost at attention by the curbside rear door. Then the doors of the building were swung open by a uniformed attendant, and out trooped this impressive bunch, to head down to their waiting limousine, their faces certain of the world and their places in it. Then for a few minutes I stood, my back against a sun-warmed building wall, to watch other faces move past my eyes along Fifth, wishing I had the nerve to lift my camera and snap some of these faces head-on. What were they thinking, these 1912 people, their shoe leather scuffing or tapping by? Who were they? People of other times aren’t simply people like us except for the funny clothes. These faces were different, even the children’s, formed by the thoughts, events, and feelings of the unique experiences of their own time. So what did these passing faces tell me? I thought that they looked . . . serene. That most of them seemed cheerful, eyes fully open, aware of and enjoying this particular day. And—what else? There was something else. They didn’t seem afraid, I decided. Or worried, most of them. And no one I saw looked angry. These people walking and strolling past my eyes along Fifth Avenue through their own time and world seemed to me secure and confident in it. I knew that they were wrong; that this pleasant peaceful world had only a few years left to it. Unless . . . but it seemed preposterous that I could possibly do anything at all about that.

Walking toward me now, here came a not-quite-elderly marvel, a boulevardier, a bona fide dandy with Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, gray, striped trousers, black coat with plush lapels and collar, heavy gold watch chain, silver-headed cane, glittering silk hat. I walked toward him, trying to make myself lift the camera and snap him, but didn’t. Couldn’t. A spear of lightning would have flashed down and instantly killed me.

But when he had passed, heading north there on Fifth Avenue, cane swinging beautifully, I turned around to catch him, but waited a moment, fiddling with the camera, then pretended to take my man up ahead—and instead snapped these marvelous chattering girls. Yes, girls, damn it. Of course they are young women, but to sometimes say “girls” was never to call them children. The English language is hardworking; the meaning of a word can vary by context. And to compare using “girl” for “young woman” with the Southern use of “boy” for a black man is thoughtless, and just plain dumb.

Well, all right. Okay. Yes, yes, I’m fine now. The girl on the right is wearing a green–and–white–striped coat, the young woman in the middle a maroon dress, and the other—your choice now—a kind of bottle green, I think you’d call it. She caught me in the act of snapping this—and I caught another young–woman watcher behind them.

Where was The Rev. and Mrs. C. H. Gardner’s Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies and Gentlemen? Gone. Julia sometimes talked of sending Willy there, but I didn’t.

Fifth Avenue was changing more obviously now, as I walked on. I was seeing more and more storefronts. And Apartment to Let signs like this one, which I took because I remembered the house there with the heraldic lions as the home of a rich family. A little depressing somehow, and then I glimpsed something just ahead at Forty–fourth Street, grinning with pleasure and using my next-to-last film to take this wonderful little wedding cake of a building. What was this? I had to see, and I walked catercorner across Fifth Avenue past the cop. And then, standing under the awning looking up the stairs, I saw the polished brass plate that told me this was Delmonico’s, moved uptown. A hand touched my elbow, and a woman’s voice behind me said, “Well, I am surprised! Are you here for the lecture?” I turned, and the Jotta Girl’s face, framed in the cartwheel brim of a pale blue hat, smiled up at me, and I smiled back.

“Well!” I said a little stupidly. “What are you doing here?”

“Following you, of course! Are you coming in?”

At the curb women were arriving steadily, mostly middle-aged or elderly, stepping out from limousines, cabs, or carriages—more limos than cabs—car doors slamming, low-horsepower engines clunking as they pulled away.

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. Now here came the young women, smelling just great, laughing, looking so splendid in their enormous hats, and showing some fine ankle as they plucked up their skirt hems to climb the stairs. Accompanying a lot of them, and all the best-looking ones, were young or youngish men, nearly every damn one of them eight feet tall.

“Oh, don’t be a stick!” said the Jotta Girl, her hand at my elbow urging me on. “This lecture should be very helpful to you!” and she smiled at some kind of joke.

“Okay.” We walked on up. “What’s going to be so helpful?”

She nodded at a large poster just inside the open doors. It stood on an easel of gilded bamboo, and read in expert lettering, the margins decorated with painted ivy leaves: Mrs. Charles Henry Israel’s Committee on Amusement and Vacation Resources for Working Girls Will Present Professor Duryea’s Demonstration of the Dance Promptly at 10 a.m. I understood her joke now, and said, “I thought I’d done my share of entertaining working girls with my dancing last night,” and she smiled again.

No one inside seemed to be taking tickets, and we followed the crowd up a flight of carpeted stairs at our right, the women ahead of us daintily lifting their skirt hems, and I realized how well I was adapting, already an expert ankle watcher. Down a short hallway now, the women, chattering, laughing a lot, leaving a trail of perfumed air. Okay, Rube; I’m following orders. When do I get lucky? A man just behind us said, “Hello there, Helen,” and the Jotta Girl turned to smile and answer, “Hello, Archie,” and I wondered, Helen Who? Into a ballroom now: wood floor, mirror panels inset in the walls at intervals, a small raised platform up front. Rows of gilt chairs had been set out, the crowd sidling into them, women doing that splendid skirt-smoothing motion as they sat down. Up front, before the raised platform, stood a half-circle of chairs, green ribbon strung along their backs to mark off a reserved section of floor.

I glanced around as we sat down, and saw that among the few men in the audience a couple were reporters, I thought, because they seemed to be jotting down names, and it occurred to me that this might be a pretty social crowd.

Up on the platform three men in formal morning dress sat waiting, music open before them: a pianist, clarinetist, and violinist. And at stage center, on a gilt chair, a large, magnificently impressive, gray-haired woman in a maroon beaded dress, pince-nez glasses hanging from a dime-size gold button fastened at her chest: Mrs. Israel herself, I had no doubt. Nodding, smiling graciously, she sat talking eagerly to the man seated at her right in a double-breasted black frock coat whose hem touched his knees. He was fifty, maybe, dark graying hair worn longer than any I’d seen anywhere else. His wife, I guessed, to whom Mrs. Israel turned now, wore a white evening dress with a gardenia pinned to one side at her waist.

Behind and around us the laughter and chatter continued, and I was certain I caught a whiff—and sneaked a look around me—of cigarette smoke. I glanced at the Jotta Girl, and she nodded. “One of the young ones sneaking a smoke,” she said. “It’s all the rage. Glad you came?”

“Of course. Actually I’m a big fan of Madam Israel’s. Wouldn’t miss a lecture.”

Mrs. Israel stood up, smiling benignly out at us, one hand clasping the other on her stomach, serenely confident that the talk would quickly subside, and she was right. She began to speak, and what she said, as well as I can remember, was: “Welcome, my fellow social workers. How very pleasant to see you here this morning, so many leaders and leaders of the future of our New York Society willing to give of themselves.” She paused, looking out at us, her smile fading to let us know that now came the serious part. “In the course of your committee’s vigilant watch on the dance halls of New York, it has become necessary, we believe, to strike out at some of the forms of the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear which have appeared even where Society dances. We are all of us, certainly, modern. But that there should be some standard of decency in social dancing we do not doubt.” I gave a quick sideways glance at the Jotta Girl just as she glanced at me, and we both held on to our serious expressions, facing front again. “What is good, however, and what is bad? How are the supervisors to answer the working girl when she protests that everyone is dancing the Turkey Trot? But an innocent version of the Turkey Trot may well be preserved, if rechristened”—I leaned toward the Jotta Girl to whisper, “The Buzzard Bounce?” and she folded her lips in—“rechristened lest the dancers of the poor be misled into thinking there is high sanction for the Turkey Trot as they see it in the ill-supervised halls that are their only refuge from dark and dismal homes. We should all of us here today know just what these things are; for the girl who dances at Sherry’s has just as much responsibility for the welfare of the girl who dances at the Murray Hill Lyceum as has the recreation supervisor in that district.”

Mrs. Charles Henry Israel was really saying these things up there on the platform. “We are met this morning to answer this question by observing the Turkey Trot and the other newer dances performed as they ought to be danced, if at all. The demonstration will be conducted, together with his charming wife, by one who, for many of you, will require no introduction. May I present Professor Duryea, a teacher of dancing who thinks about his art.” Smiling, supergracious, left hand splaying across her chest, she turned and, half bowing, nodded at the professor.

He stood up, taller than I’d thought, and thinner, his double-breasted frock coat like a tube with black silk lapels. He took a step forward, smiled for a moment, then said, “The Monkey Glide. The Lame Duck. The Turkey Trot, the Bunny Hug, the Grizzly Bear, the Bird Hop, all come hailed as ‘the newest thing,’ yet are only slight variations, if any, of the slow rag. Can these new dances, if properly done, offer an occasional variation of our repertoire? Perhaps. But I do not believe that Society can accept the uglier extremes of these dances. For there is no safety in retaining anything that departs from a correct position, as in the impeccable waltz, where the man has his right arm around the girl’s waist, and her right hand rests in his left, which must be extended. Only last Wednesday I dropped into Terrace Garden for observation, and saw a policeman there in the middle of the floor busy barring the Turkey Trot, and he did it by two gestures, one to indicate that the man’s left arm must be extended, and one that the languorous half-walk must not be substituted for the good old-fashioned twirl. These simple rules, born of the bluecoat’s own experience in suppression, cannot be improved upon. Yet without the presence of a bluecoat, closer and closer the partners dance. And more and more perceptible becomes the tremor that keeps time with the ‘ragging’ of the orchestra. This is the evolution so often followed, and can take place not only from season to season within the world of dancers but within a single evening.” With a professional smiling nod and gracious half-turn of left hand and wrist, he beckoned to his wife, who smiled and stood.

He took her hand, and they stepped down into the little area marked off by ribboned chairs. Both holding their smiles, they turned to face each other maybe eight or ten inches apart. She set her left hand on her hip, fingers to the back, elbow swung well forward. He put his right hand through the loop of her elbowed-out arm, his palm covering the back of her hand. They clasped their other hands, raising them well above their heads. Professor Duryea nodded at the musicians, the pianist struck a chord, nodded at the other two, and the group began—sedately, the violin strong and rich—Oh, you beautiful doll. And the Duryeas began—truly skilled and graceful about it—a kind of equally sedate hop from one foot to the other so that they rocked from side to side, their clasped hands moving in a wide overhead arc, the distance between them rigidly maintained.

Continuing to dance, the professor said, “The Turkey Trot as it can be danced, should be danced; who could object? But right here on Fifth Avenue I have seen the change of which I spoke. At the start the participants would be dancing with the hop and the arms held out. Four hours later, with the room more crowded and the dancers more weary and more in the spell of the music . . .” This seemed to be a cue, the trio now speeding up the tempo and—is this the word?—slurring it a bit, and to my ears it really did sound a little lewder. “The man and his partner would dance closer and closer.” And now so did the Duryeas. “And as they circle the floor, the hop becomes more of a glide.” Their two raised arms had gradually lowered as the Professor talked, and now their other arms lowered to each other’s waist. “Thus the Turkey Trot becomes almost indistinguishable”—both of them crouched a little, unclasping their upraised arms to bring them, too, down to the other’s waist—“from The Shiver?” They began shuddering their shoulders to You great big beautiful doll, and the audience murmured; just behind me a woman gasped, a little theatrically, I thought; and I saw a woman in our row sit bolt upright to frown dramatically. But I heard a good part of the audience behind us snicker.

Above the nice rhythmic piano, swooning violin, and tootling clarinet—I had the feeling the musicians liked this—Mrs. Israel called out, “How many have seen this very thing done in the dance hall!” The Jotta Girl’s hand flew up, and as I glanced around, dozens of younger women were raising their hands, and an indulgent laughter moved through the room. This was an audience more young than not, looking beautiful in their cloches and wide-brimmed hats, and I understood that the young ladies weren’t taking this too seriously.

And realized an instant later that they’d come for more reason than the Duryeas, because the room stirred, murmuring. I turned and now a young man and woman stood at the back of the hall. In a way I couldn’t quite figure out, they looked and were different from the rest of us. They stood quietly, polite and attentive to the dancing Duryeas, but they held the eye, and for a moment or two I forgot to turn front again. She was beautiful in a very young, innocent-faced way. Wore a long pink dress to just above her white-stockinged ankles, and a wide-brimmed pink hat set way back to frame her face and light brown hair with a pink wheel of brim. His hair, shiny black, was combed straight back, his face a thin cheerful triangle, and his suit—well, his suit was checked and sharp. She smiling, he grinning, they stood looking happy to be here, and I knew—how, I don’t know, but it was easy to see—that these were stage people, onstage right now, somehow far more alive and interesting, just standing there, than anyone else in this room: you wanted to go back and join them. People made themselves face front again, smiling excitedly, heads ducking to murmur or listen to quick whispering. But these were courteous, well-bred people, and they quickly silenced themselves, attentively watching the Duryeas through the final moments of their dance. Not quite final. As the last notes—Oh . . . you . . . beautiful doll!—plinked and tootled, the Professor “signaled to the pianist,” the Times said next morning, though I didn’t see the signal, and “the Gaby Glide strains floated out across the room and away they went with the dance at its worst. A faintly suppressed ripple of laughter could be heard”—that was true—“and there were frank chuckles when cheek touched cheek, and the languor of the movement was intensified.”

They finished the Gaby Glide, not looking much different to my ignorant eyes than they had before. Then Professor Duryea and his wife joined hands—she had a great smile; I liked her—to bow together, getting a fine hand, certainly including mine. They sat down, pleased, Mrs. Israel rising to thank them, which she did very nicely. Then she smiled to say, “I think the Professor and Mrs. Duryea have shown us—in the earlier portion of their splendid performance,” she added, getting her laugh, “that an innocent version of the Turkey Trot may well be preserved if rechristened,” and the Jotta Girl winked at me.

Mrs. Israel beckoned to the new couple at the back of the ballroom, and up they came, walking around the edge of the room, smiling across it to acknowledge the polite tips-of-the-fingers preliminary applause, and suddenly I saw who he was. Of course I’d never seen him before, only in pictures, but unmistakably here, edging along the side of the room so that he continued to face us, came a very young version of him, grinning, cocky, having a great time.

“The morning was one of contrast,” the Times reported next day, which I quote because it was true, “and the Duryeas, he in a frock coat and she in a simple evening dress of white, gave way to Al Jolson and Florence Cable of the Winter Garden, she with her hat on, young and gay . . . he in high jollity . . .”

Jolson stood facing us now, smiling and really looking at us, glad to see us, it seemed. We all grinned back, and he said, “I picked up the art of dancing as I saw it on the Barbary Coast where I used to sell papers as a San Francisco boy.” His voice, I thought, had just barely a touch of raspiness, and seemed to fit the look on his face of a man absolutely confident in himself. Suddenly he did a fast little dance step of some kind, the patent leather of his shoes sparking light. Three seconds of that, no more; then he suddenly stopped, knees still bent, both hands thrusting downward to one side, fingers splayed, and he grinned, and had us: we loved him. He flicked a finger at the pianist who instantly began, clawed hands bouncing off the keys in rhythm with his shoulders, and even I knew we were hearing ragtime.

And then how they danced—together, then whirling apart, then together again, Florence Cable simply marvelous, Jolson with the kind of nimble effortless perfection that makes you suddenly sure, knowing better, that you could do it too. They danced close, then threw themselves apart, hands clasped at arms’ length as they leaned far apart, bodies making a V. Together again, chins very nearly on each other’s shoulders, feet flying, hands—I don’t know how their hands were or what they were doing, but oh, they were great. They stopped, piano still going, and Jolson said, “It’s all the same dance. Call it Turkey Trot, Bunny Hug, Lovers, Walk Back, Bird Hop, as you will. Strip off the variations—just watch us!—and they all come down to the same thing.” Again they moved, the happy pianist bouncing from one tune to another, and I guess they moved into and out of various dances, because I heard people murmuring dance names. But—he was right—they were the same dance, and I was wishing I could do what Al Jolson was doing. They stopped again, the pianist continuing, Jolson sweating a little now. “Fifteen or twenty dance halls there on the Barbary Coast,” he said, “doing most of their business on the half-drunk sailors in port. And—what do you expect!—all those ginks could do was half skate around the dance floor to begin with. There was a Negro cabaret there on the Barbary Coast, and they say it all started there; they called it the Texas Tommy.” He grabbed Miss Cable, and they flashed around the floor in the Texas Tommy, Jolson looking comically drunk. They stopped. “And then the orchestra would hit up, and they’d rag it a bit”—he grinned at the pianist, whose hands and shoulders took the cue—“and then strike out on the minors that are more seductive, I guess.” The pianist slowed, striking out on the minors, I’m sure, and Al Jolson and Florence Cable pulled closer and closer, tightly together now, very cheek to cheek, and I glanced up at Mrs. Israel, who looked fascinated. “And get closer and closer,” Jolson said, then suddenly drew back to snap the fingers of both hands, “and . . . I guess I’ve said enough!” Then they just flew, feet flicking, flashing, in a whirling miracle of dancing, and the audience went nuts. “He was thunderously applauded,” the Times said next morning, “as he and Miss Cable showed how it was done.”

Then it was over, the applause wild, the two of them bowing, happy, and I glanced up at the Duryeas. They were applauding too, smiling, and—he was a pro—his smile looked real. But hers, I thought, didn’t quite make it. You can’t really tell what people are thinking, but I had to wonder what the Professor up there in his frock coat and artistically long hair felt in this moment. His face wasn’t old but you could see how it would look when it was. He’d had his way for years, I imagined as I applauded; he’d taught the waltz and the two-step to generation after generation on into this new century. Now, suddenly and out of nowhere as it may have seemed to him, there stood these bowing youngsters down on the floor, and the applause was for their kind of dancing. Finally the applause tapered off, and I sat wondering what was going to happen to the Duryeas now. Maybe they’d saved their money.