Bow Street

“ A sadness seems to hang about the place, especially [Pg 119] when it is "To be Let," with gaping windows and desolate brick front.
For a century Bow Street has been closely associated with the chief police court of London where many famous criminals have ended their days of liberty. Wycherley the dramatist lived here, when he lay ill, and Charles II. came to him and gave him the five hundred pounds that took him to the south of France in search of health. ”

“ Mary Bow church is the head thereof on the west side, and it runneth down south through that part which of later time was called Hosier lane, now Bow lane, and then by the west end of Aldmary church to the new built houses, in place of Ormond house, and so to Garlicke hill, or hithe, to St. James’ church. The upper part of this street towards Cheape was called Hosier lane, of hosiers dwelling there in place of shoemakers; but now those hosiers being worn out by men of other trades (as the hosiers had worn out the shoemakers) , the same is called Bow lane of Bow church. ”

“ Sir Walter Scott says, in a note on the passage, "With a slight alteration in spelling, a modern poet would have written Bond Street beaux. A billet-doux from Bow Street would now be more alarming than flattering." [274]
Mrs. Bracegirdle spoke this epilogue at Drury Lane. There was no Covent Garden theatre then. People of fashion occupied the houses in Bow Street, and mantuas floated up and down the pavement. This was towards the end of the Stuart's reign, and the beginning of the next century—the times of Dryden, Wycherly, and the Spectator. The beau of Charles's time is well-known. ”

“ It is not long since a man was thrown from a two-pair of stairs window in Charles Street,{1} which is just by, having been decoyed into a house of ill fame by a Cyprian, and this in a situation within sight of the very Police Office itself in Bow Street! ”

“ Passing through the Stone Bow, as the city-gate close by is called, we ascended a street which grew steeper and narrower as we advanced, till at last it got to be the steepest street I ever climbed,— so steep that any carriage, if left to itself, would rattle downward much faster than it could possibly be drawn up. ”

“ And for this, at eleven every Saturday, there is a great rush westward, a vast migration over Lea, from all the length of High Street. From the nearer parts they walk, or do their best to walk; but from further Stratford, by the Town Hall, the Church, and the Martyrs' Memorial, they crowd the cars. For one thing, it is a long half-mile, and the week's work is over. Also, the car being swamped, it is odds [Pg 74] that a man shall save his fare, since no conductor may fight his way a quarter through his passengers before Bow Bridge, where the vehicle is emptied at a rush. ”

“ The prim little black marble mantelshelf held half a dozen painted sugar statuettes, ravished from a Houston Street pasticceria, representing Sicilian banditi, not unmenacing, and bland shepherdesses with thick ankles, guarding shapeless sheep. The table, at dinner, was usually a confusion of fragile, opaque Bristol Glass, with decorations of birds and flowers, old Staffordshire china, and ornaments of artificial grapes and crystal, laid on the bare walnut board. Sometimes a great bronze Buddha panted on his back in a bowl of nasturtiums, his hexagonal belly looming high above the posies. ”

“ Respectable people avoid the Bowery, as far as possible, at night; but on Sunday night, few but those absolutely compelled to visit it, are to be seen within its limits. Every species of vice and crime is abroad at this time, watching for its victims. Those who do not wish to fall into trouble should keep out of the way.
THE AVENUES. The Avenues of New York commence with First Avenue, which is the second east of the Bowery. They are numbered regularly to the westward until Twelfth Avenue is reached. This street forms the western shore of the island in the extreme upper part of New York. ”

“ All his life he had lived according to the desires of others, and it seemed natural enough to go on living that way.
Suddenly, and for the first time, Harold became aware of his surroundings, for the taxi had come to a full stop. At Broadway, near Twenty-eighth Street, a heavy truck had become entangled with a taxi-cab in so intimate a manner as to completely obstruct the street. A great crowd had already collected. ”

“ On, on, still up the Bowery, of which the end is not yet. Great numbers of people are passing to and fro, an excess of the feminine element being generally observable. The sidewalks are cumbered with rough wooden cases. As in Chatham Street, the shop-keepers—or "merchants," if they insist on being so designated—are sitting, mostly, outside their doors. Garlands of hosiery and forests of hoop-skirts wave beneath the awnings,—for most of the Bowery shops have awnings,—making the sidewalk in front of them a sort of arcade for the display of their goods. ”

“ The dancing school bow we were compelled to practise in the days of our otherwise happy youth was a nightmare to us, and now in our maturity we have a sense of doing something utterly inane when, at a formal dinner party, it devolves upon us to present an arm to a lady, as if to assure her of protection through the perils of the voyage from drawing room to table. ”

“ The passers up and down on opposite sides of Broadway are as if in different streets, and neither expect to recognize each other nor to pass from one to the other without set effort. It took a good while to make Broad and Canal Streets attractive business-streets, and to get the importers and jobbers out of Pearl Street; but the work is now done. The Bowery affords the only remaining chance of building a magnificent metropolitan thoroughfare in New York; and we anticipate the day—when Broadway will surrender its pretensions to that now modest Cheapside. ”

“ I could eat a smoked Pom, was Bunny's riposte.
Presently, they were all munching sausages laid in between two strips of bun, larded with mustard.
Buy me a balloon and a kewpie, John, cried the ravished Campaspe. Can you find me a geranium balloon? . . . No, they're all off-colour. I'll take a blue one. Harold, come here! Stay with me and you'll enjoy yourself. John, the other side for you. I find you charming, John. There's something so fresh and wholesome about you Wall Street men after a week-end in the country. The country is so perverse, nothing normal about it at all. ”

“ Those who go well introduced to Japan meet there an experience such as is hardly to be encountered in any other land. Japanese courtesy and hospitality are fairly stupefying to the average Anglo-Saxon. [pg 260] The Occidental mind is staggered by the mere externals.
You see two Japanese meet—two gentlemen, two ladies, or a lady and a gentleman. They face each other at fairly close range. Then, as though at some signal unperceived by the foreigner, they bow deeply from the waist, their heads passing with so small a space between that one half expects them to bump. ”

“ Of course, before Stoddert (Q) Street was cut through, the Bowie house adjoined the property of Tudor Place, and they were on a level. I can remember when the street was paved, and now that it is one of the busiest boulevards of the city, it seems almost impossible to believe that back in the nineties a houseful of charming-girls, real old-fashioned belles, used often to "erupt" with their many beaux from their home on the neighboring corner, at eleven o'clock some evenings, and have a dance right in the middle of the street—two-steps and waltzes galore! ”

“ The Bowery is not a large place, for I think that, properly speaking, it is a place rather than a street or avenue. It is an irregularly shaped ellipse, of notable width in its widest part. It begins at Chatham Square, which lies on the parallel of the sixth Broadway block above City Hall, and loses its identity at the Cooper Union where Third and Fourth Avenues begin, so that it is a scant mile in all. ”

“ To those who really understand them, every one of the great, vital streets of the world has a soul as well as a body. The social invader from the West, the merchant whose establishment still found profit in Grand Street, the banker from Broad Street, or the ship's chandler from South, the club awakening to the fact that its quarters on Broadway or in one of the side streets near Irving Place was too far downtown, or in size inadequate to its growing membership—those were the agencies that wrought the Avenue's material development. ”

“ Fifth Avenue is handsome, the handsomest street imaginable. It is what the streets of German cities try to be. The buildings are large, square, 'imposing,' built with the solidity of opulence. The street, as a whole, has a character and an air of achievement. "Whatever else may be doubted or denied, American civilisation has produced this." One feels rich and safe as one walks. Back in Broadway, New York dropped her mask, and began to betray herself once again. A little crowd, expressionless, intent, and volatile, before a small shop, drew me. ”

“ It is unqualifiedly a democratic street. While Fifth Avenue represents one extreme of city life, the Bowery represents the other. Here are the streets and shops of the working classes, consisting of dry and fancy goods, cigar shops, lager beer saloons, shoe stores, confectionery stores, pawnbrokers' shops, and ready-made clothing, plentifully besprinkled with variety and concert saloons and beer gardens. There are no elegant store fronts or marble stores here. ”

“ Let us cross over the Bowery, and take a look at Division Street, which diverges from it at the neck of Chatham Square, and is one of the curiosities of the district. It is a narrow street, very brilliantly lighted up on one side by the show-windows of the milliners' shops; and a marvellously long row of milliners it is, never ending until it runs against a druggist just where Bayard Street makes an angle with Division. ”

“ My route from the office lay through the Fourth and the Sixth wards, the worst in the city, and for years I walked every morning between two and four o'clock the whole length of Mulberry Street, through the Bend and across the Five Points down to Fulton Ferry. There were cars on the Bowery, but I liked to walk, for so I saw the slum when off its guard. The instinct to pose is as strong there as it is on Fifth Avenue. It is a human impulse, I suppose. We all like to be thought well of by our fellows. ”

“ Again across Broadway, and so—passing from the many-coloured crowd and glittering shops—into another long main street, the Bowery. A railroad yonder, see, where two stout horses trot along, drawing a score or two of people and a great wooden ark, with ease. The stores are poorer here; the passengers less gay. Clothes ready-made, and meat ready-cooked, are to be bought in these parts; and the lively whirl of carriages is exchanged for the deep rumble of carts and waggons. ”

“ Many more are the names that might be mentioned, for the street has ever been a magnet, and even those who toil in the attics of Bohemia find their way here, in the hours of leisure, to see and to be observed. Grub Street has assumed the garments of propriety, and shorn itself of its long hair, and in the prosperous, well-dressed throng that surges up and down the Fifth Avenue pavement, its denizens pass to and fro, no longer shyly, furtively, and conspicuously out of place, but with the easy assurance of those who are "to the manor born." ”

“ It was past midnight when the two friends reached the Bowery, and the Third Avenue cars, on one of which Harding was going up, were running less frequently than early in the evening. There was not one of the green lights in sight down the Bowery from the corner of Bleecker Street, and the friends chatted a moment while waiting for one to make its appearance. Then they grew tired and restless, as people very soon do who are waiting for cars (or boiling tea-kettles, or marriage-days, or any thing of that kind) ”

“ Roger said, “I like you in brown.”
I love going down Fifth Avenue in the dark of a winter evening. The traffic of business is over. Motors and carriages go spinning by, carrying people [Pg 61] to dinners. The big glistening street is like an artery with the joyous blood of the city racing through it, coursing along with the throb, throb, throb of a deathless vitality. ”

“ When the light of morning touches the buildings and pavements of a city, it always seems to borrow their hardness and to lose in some degree its quality of flowing detachment. The Sunday morning that fell upon Ninth Avenue, New York City, gave you a sense of invisible stiffness in its very air. The buildings, with their smudged, flat fronts and tops, presented the impression of huge warehouses stretching down both sides of the street—the appearance of holding commodities rather than human beings. ”

“ Its young men have the leanness of outline that comes from an authentic American tailor. Its Jewesses have the neat crispness of American fashion that gives their vivid beauty a new and sparkling note. It was astonishing the number of beautiful young women one saw on the Bowery, but not astonishing when one recalls the number of beautiful young women one saw in New York. Fifth Avenue at shopping time, for example, ceases to be a street: it becomes a pageant of youth and grace. ”

“ Nature sets her velvety willows a waving near, and lower than their airy tops plans a vista of trees arching above the track, which is as wild and pretty and illusive a vista as the sunset ever cared to look through and gild a board fence beyond.
Most of our people come from Boston on the horse-cars, and it is only the dwellers on the Avenue and the neighboring streets whom hurrying homeward I follow away from the steam-car station. The Avenue is our handsomest street; and if it were in the cosmopolitan citizen of Charlesbridge to feel any local interest, I should be proud of it. ”