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- Herausgeber: Krill Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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THE VAN DWELLERS: A STRENUOUS QUEST FOR A HOME
Albert Bigelow Paine
DOSSIER PRESS
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This book is a work of nonfiction and is intended to be factually accurate.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2016 by Albert Bigelow Paine
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I.: The First Home in the Metropolis.
II.: Metropolitan Beginnings.
III.: Learning by Experience.
IV.: Our First Move.
V.: A Boarding House for a Change.
VI.: Pursuing the Ideal.
VII.: Owed to the Moving Man.: WRITTEN TO GET EVEN.
VIII.: Household Retainers.
IX.: Ann.
X.: A “Flat” Failure.
XI.: Inheritance and Mania.
XII.: Gilded Affluence.
XIII.: A Home at Last.
XIV.: Closing Remarks.
LORDS OF THE NORTH: By A.C. LAUT: A Strong Historical Novel
The Van Dwellers: A Strenuous Quest for a Home
By
Albert Bigelow Paine
The Van Dwellers: A Strenuous Quest for a Home
Published by Dossier Press
New York City, NY
First published circa 1937
Copyright © Dossier Press, 2015
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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I.: THE FIRST HOME IN THE METROPOLIS.
WE HAD NEVER LIVED IN New York. This fact will develop anyway, as I proceed, but somehow it seems fairer to everybody to state it in the first sentence and have it over with.
Still, we had heard of flats in a vague way, and as we drew near the Metropolis the Little Woman bought papers of the train boy and began to read advertisements under the head of “Flats and Apartments to Let.”
I remember that we wondered then what was the difference. Now, having tried both, we are wiser. The difference ranges from three hundred dollars a year up. There are also minor details, such as palms in the vestibule, exposed plumbing, and uniformed hall service—perhaps an elevator, but these things are immaterial. The price is the difference.
We bought papers, as I have said. It was the beginning of our downfall, and the first step was easy—even alluring. We compared prices and descriptions and put down addresses. The descriptions were all that could be desired and the prices absurdly modest. We had heard that living in the city was expensive; now we put down the street and number of “four large light rooms and improvements, $18.00,” and were properly indignant at those who had libeled the landlords of Gotham.
Next morning we stumbled up four dim flights of stairs, groped through a black passage-way and sidled out into a succession of gloomy closets, wondering what they were for. Our conductor stopped and turned.
“This is it,” he announced. “All nice light rooms, and improvements.”
It was our first meeting with a flat. Also, with a janitor. The Little Woman was first to speak.
“Ah, yes, would you mind telling us—we’re from the West, you know—just which are the—the improvements, and which the rooms?”
This was lost on the janitor. He merely thought us stupid and regarded us with pitying disgust as he indicated a rusty little range, and disheartening water arrangements in one corner. There may have been stationary tubs, too, bells, and a dumb waiter, but without the knowledge of these things which we acquired later they escaped notice. What we could see was that there was no provision for heat that we could discover, and no sunshine.
We referred to these things, also to the fact that the only entrance to our parlor would be through the kitchen, while the only entrance to our kitchen would be almost certainly over either a coal-box, an ironing board, or the rusty little stove, any method of which would require a certain skill, as well as care in the matter of one’s clothes.
But these objections seemed unreasonable, no doubt, for the janitor, who was of Yorkshire extraction, became taciturn and remarked briefly that the halls were warmed and that nobody before had ever required more heat than they got from these and the range, while as for the sun, he couldn’t change that if he wanted to, leaving us to infer that if he only wanted to he could remodel almost everything else about the premises in short order.
We went away in the belief that he was a base pretender, “clad in a little brief authority.” We had not awakened as yet to the fulness of janitorial tyranny and power.
We went farther uptown. We reasoned that rentals would be more reasonable and apartments less contracted up there.
Ah, me! As I close my eyes now and recall, as in a kaleidoscope, the perfect wilderness of flats we have passed through since then, it seems strange that some dim foreboding of it all did not steal in to rob our hearts of the careless joys of anticipation.
But I digress. We took the elevated and looked out the windows as we sped along. The whirling streets, with their endless procession of front steps, bewildered us.
By and by we were in a vast district, where all the houses were five-storied, flat-roofed, and seemed built mainly to hold windows. This was Flatland—the very heart of it—that boundless territory to the northward of Central Park, where nightly the millions sleep.
Here and there were large signs on side walls and on boards along the roof, with which we were now on a level as the train whirled us along. These quoted the number of rooms, and prices, and some of them were almost irresistible. “6 All Light Rooms, $22.00,” caught us at length, and we got off to investigate.
They were better than those downtown. There was a possibility of heat and you did not get to the parlor by climbing over the kitchen furniture. Still, the apartment as a whole lacked much that we had set our hearts on, while it contained some things that we were willing to do without.
It contained, also, certain novelties. Among these were the stationary washtubs in the kitchen; the dumb-waiter, and a speaking-tube connection with the basement.
The janitor at this place was a somber Teutonic female, soiled as to dress, and of the common Dutch-slipper variety.
We were really attracted by the next apartment, where we discovered for the first time the small button in the wall that, when pressed, opens the street door below. This was quite jolly, and we played with it some minutes, while the colored janitor grinned at our artlessness, and said good things about the place. Our hearts went out to this person, and we would gladly have cast our lot with him.
Then he told us the price, and we passed on.
I have a confused recollection of the other flats and apartments we examined on that first day of our career, or “progress,” as the recent Mr. Hogarth would put it. Our minds had not then become trained to that perfection of mentality which enables the skilled flat-hunter to carry for days visual ground-plans, elevations, and improvements, of any number of “desirable apartments,” and be ready to transcribe the same in black and white at a moment’s notice.
I recall one tunnel and one roof garden. Also one first floor with bake-shop attachment. The latter suggested a business enterprise for the Little Woman, while the Precious Ones, who were with us at this stage, seemed delighted at my proposition of “keeping store.”
Many places we did not examine. Of these the janitors merely popped out their heads—frowsy heads, most of them—and gave the number of rooms and the price in a breath of defiance and mixed ale. At length I was the only one able to continue the search.
I left the others at a friendly drug store, and wandered off alone. Being quite untrammeled now I went as if by instinct two blocks west and turned. A park was there—a park set up on edge, as it were, with steps leading to a battlement at the top. This was attractive, and I followed along opposite, looking at the houses. Presently I came to a new one. They were just finishing it, and sweeping the shavings from the ground-floor flat—a gaudy little place—the only one in the house untaken.
It was not very light, and it was not very large, while the price was more than we had expected to pay. But it was clean and new, and the landlord, who was himself on the premises, offered a month’s rent free to the first tenant.
I ran all the way back to the Little Woman, and urged her to limp as hastily as possible, fearing it might be gone before she could get there. When I realized that the landlord had held it for me in the face of several applicants (this was his own statement), I was ready to fall on his neck, and paid a deposit hastily to secure the premises.
Then we wandered about looking at things, trying the dumb waiter, the speaking tube, and the push-button, leading to what the Precious Ones promptly named the “locker-locker” door, owing to a clicking sound in the lock when the door sprang open.
We were in a generous frame of mind, and walked from room to room praising the excellence of everything, including a little gingerbread mantel in the dining-room, in which the fireplace had been set crooked,—from being done in the dark, perhaps,—the concrete backyard, with its clothesline pole, the decorated ceilings, the precipitous park opposite that was presently to shut off each day at two p.m. our western, and only, sunlight; even the air-shaft that came down to us like a well from above, and the tiny kitchen, which in the gathering evening was too dark to reveal all its attractions.
As for the Precious Ones, they fairly raced through our new possession, shrieking their delight.
We had a home in the great city at last.
II.: METROPOLITAN BEGINNINGS.
We set out gaily and early, next morning, to buy our things.
We had brought nothing with us that could not be packed into our trunks, except my fishing rod, some inherited bedding and pictures which the Little Woman declined to part with, and two jaded and overworked dolls belonging to the Precious Ones. Manifestly this was not enough to begin housekeeping on, even in a flat of contracted floor-space and limitless improvements.
In fact the dolls only had arrived. They had come as passengers. The other things were still trundling along somewhere between Oshkosh and Hoboken, by slow freight.
We had some idea of where we wanted to go when we set forth, but a storehouse with varied and almost irresistible windows enticed us and we went no farther. It was a mighty department store and we were informed that we need not pass its doors again until we had selected everything we needed from a can-opener to a grand piano. We didn’t, and the can-opener became ours.
Also other articles. We enjoyed buying things, and even to this day I recall with pleasure our first great revel in a department store.
For the most part we united our judgments and acted jointly. But at times we were enticed apart by fascinating novelties and selected recklessly, without consultation.
As for the Precious Ones, they galloped about, demanding that we should buy everything in sight, with a total disregard of our requirements or resources.
It was wonderful though how cheap everything seemed, and how much we seemed to need, even for a beginning. It was also wonderful how those insidious figures told in the final settlement.
Let it be understood, I cherish no resentment toward the salesmen. Reflecting now on the matter, I am, on the whole, grateful. They found out where we were from, and where we were going to live, and they sold us accordingly.
I think we interested them, and that they rather liked us. If not, I am sure they would have sold us worse things and more of them. They could have done so, easily. Hence my gratitude to the salesmen; but the man at the transfer desk remains unforgiven.
I am satisfied, now, that he was an unscrupulous person, a perjured, case-hardened creature whom it is every man’s duty to destroy. But at the time he seemed the very embodiment of good intentions.
He assured us heartily, as he gave us our change, that we should have immediate delivery. We had explained at some length that this was important, and why. He waved us off with the assurance that we need give ourselves no uneasiness in the matter—that, in all probability, the matting we had purchased as a floor basis would be there before we were.
He knew that this would start us post-haste for our apartment, which it did. We even ran, waving and shouting, after a particular car when another just like it was less than a half block behind.
We breathed more easily when we arrived at our new address and found that we were in good season. When five minutes more had passed, however, and still no signs of our matting, a vague uneasiness began to manifest itself.
It was early and there was plenty of time, of course; but there was something about the countless delivery wagons that passed and re-passed without stopping which impressed us with the littleness of our importance in this great whirl of traffic, and the ease with which a transfer clerk’s promise, easily and cheerfully made, might be as easily and as cheerfully forgotten.
