because the rents were low, and one could get a floor of great rooms with high ceilings and tall windows (giving a true north-light) for I dare not say how little money; because the tangle of crooked little streets shut out the traffic, and left a quiet island where the houses were as it seemed they had always been, where the pace of life slowed down a bit and left time for dreams and friendship and art and love. There were two or three restaurants, where the cuisine was good and the prices modest, and where one knew everyone else. Because social life was so casual and easy, it was possible to spend most of one's time working. And the play was the play of artists, simple and ingenuous; the talk was golden, and the loves were frank and candid. But, alas! some rumour of this peace being spread among the barbarians to the north, they descended upon the place. They were as a plague of locusts, that left not one green thing. They destroyed the place utterly. The Greenwich Village that was, is no more. Let me recount the tragic details of its debacle. In the first place (doubtless the whole thing was a plot of the real-estate agents), the rents were raised. Fabulous prices were charged for anything with a roof over it, so that only a few holes and corners, desperately clung to, were left to the original inhabitants. Then, as the invaders came to stare, the Villagers fled from one restaurant to another, leaving each new one in rage and despair as it was discovered by the enemy. Then the showplaces, with imbecile names, began to be opened"picturesque" (i.e., insanitary) places where the Uptowners pay two dollars for a bad sandwich and a thimbleful of coffee, and look at each other and think they are seeing life. Ah! how many honest bootblack stands and coal-holes have been displaced to make room for these new Coney Island sideshows! A new one yawns at one's feet every day. Thither, allured by the hope of finding something truly bohemian (i.e., naughty), the sad Uptowner repairs, bringing his vulgarity, his bad manners, and money. And as in a looking-glass he sees himself, for that is all there is to see. The Village is not there. It still exists, as the Christian sect existed in the Catacombs during the darkest days of the Roman persecution. But his search for it is in vain. Let him go back to One-Hundred-andEighty-sixth Street. He will never find it. his It will be perceived that my attitude toward the Uptowner is somewhat unsympathetic. It is most of all uncordial to the male Uptowner, whose inclination is to regard any woman he meets in the Village as an indefinite kind of courtesan; his naïve concupiscence betrays itself too crudely in his speech and manner for me to be at all tolerant of his existence. If I had the patience I would endeavour to persuade him he need not hope to find here the materialization of his pitiful erotic day-dream. But neither am I precisely tolerant toward the female Uptowner, whose expectations of the Village, if less obtrusively offensive, are scarcely less annoying. She hopes to be shocked. One can imagine her buying "Greenwich Village," by Anna Alice Chapin, and turning its pages in the vague expectation of being scandalized. She will be disappointed. For once I am grateful to the puritanism of the American publisher! I can see no good reason why her curiosity should be satisfied at the expense of my neighbours. Indeed, I had intended to take advantage of this occasion to relate some reminiscences of the old, the true Village, which glow pleasantly in my memory. But now it occurs to me-though under other circumstances the fact would be irrelevant-that these reminiscences are, as it were, improper. And— who knows?—these reminiscences might fall into the hands of just such a person, eager to be shocked. I shall not give her that satisfaction! But I will tell her one thing, lest finally, in the desperation of her curiosity, and after many qualms (and despite the grave dissuasion of all her male relatives), she should decide rashly to come and live here in one of those thousand-dollar-a-year garrets, so as to see Village life for herself: I will tell her that the first rule (for Villagers have their strict conventions)the first rule of life for a woman in Greenwich Vil lage, if she does not wish to be shut out utterly from its graces, is that she must work and earn her own living; just as the first rule for a man in the Village is that he must be interesting. 1918 XXI. G. K. Chesterton, I Revolutionist S G. K. Chesterton a reactionary or a radical? crat at the same time? Why does he hate eugenics and state-ownership, and despise prison reform and woman suffrage? Why does he make such a fuss about beer? What is he driving at, anyway? Those who know the answer to the above questions will find it unnecessary to read the following remarks. G. K. Chesterton is one of the exponents of a very old mode of revolutionary thought which in all of its phases and sects numbers millions of adherents, and which has made a profound impress upon revolutionary history. In one of its phases, under the leadership of Bakunin, it engaged in a struggle with the newer Marxian doctrine which tore the First International to pieces. In a later phase, as the I. W. W., it split American Socialism in two and gave sensational expression to some of its most vital energies. Yet this mode of thought is not exclusively Anarchist or Syndicalist, or even extremist. |