Local Color

From all this I would not have you jump at the conclusion that Papa and Mamma Finkelstein and their steadily accruing progeny constituted an unhappy group. Mere precarious existence and the companionship of one another spelled for them contentment. The swarming East Side satisfied them as an abiding place. To the adults it was a better home by far than the drear, dreadful land of pogroms and Black Hundreds from which they had fled; to the younger ones it was the only home they had ever known. They were used to its tormented sky lines, faced in on either side by tall tenements and blocked across by the structures of elevated roads and the stone loops of viaducts; they were used to its secondhand sunshine that filtered down to them through girders and spans. To them the high arch of the Bridge approach was an acceptable substitute for the rainbow; their idea of the profusion of Nature was a tiny square, containing many green benches, a circular band stand, and here and there a spindling tree.

Having nothing they craved for nothing. When there was food they ate thereof; kosher food preferably, though the food of the Goyim was not despised. When there was none they went without, feeding on the thought of past feasts and the hope of future ones. Being without knowledge of the commoner rule of hygiene, their days were neither enhanced by its advantages nor disturbed by its observances.

With the coming of the winter Mamma Finkelstein sewed up her offspring, all and sundry, in their heavy undergarments. Only one consideration ever interposed to prevent her from so doing – the occasional absence of any heavy undergarments in which to sew them up. To the pores, which always ye have with ye, she gave no heed. An interrupted duct more or less meant nothing to her, she being serenely unaware of the existence of such things as ducts, anyhow. In the springtime she cut the stitches and removed the garments, or such portions of them as had not been taken up by natural process of absorption, finding her young, as now newly revealed, to be pinkish, though soiled as to their skins, and in every regard hale, hearty and wholesome.

Thus abided the Finkelsteins in their dire and happy extremity at the time of their discovery. The manner of their being discovered came about as follows:

Christmastide impended. The spirit of it was every where reflected: in the price tags; in the swollen ankles and aching insteps of shop girls on their feet behind counters twelve to fifteen hours a day; in the harassed countenances and despairing eyes of shoppers; in the heaving sides and drooping heads of wearied delivery-wagon teams; in the thoughts of the children of the rich, dissatisfied because there was nothing Santa Claus could bring them they didn’t already have; in the thoughts of the children of the poor, happy as they pressed their cold little noses against the plate-glass fronts of toy shop windows and made discriminating selection of the treasures which they would like for Santa to bring them, but knowing at the same time he couldn’t because of his previous engagements among the best families.

This all-pervading spirit penetrated even into the newspaper offices, borne thither upon the flapping wings of the full-page display advertisements of our leading retail establishments. One of the papers – the Morning Advocate– compiled a symposium of paragraphed miseries under the title of the One Hundred Most Deserving Cases of Charity, and on the Monday before Christmas printed it with a view to enlisting the aid of the kindly disposed. The list was culled largely from the files of various philanthropic organisations. But it so befell that a reporter, who had been detailed on these assignments, was passing through Pike Street on his way back to the office from one of the settlement houses when he encountered Papa Finkelstein, homeward bound after a particularly disappointing business day uptown.

The reporter was impressed much by the despondent droop of the little man’s sloping shoulders and by the melancholy smoulder in his big, dark eyes; but more was he impressed by the costume of Papa Finkelstein. It was a part of Papa Finkelstein’s burden of affliction that he customarily wore winter clothes in the summertime and summer clothes in the wintertime. On this gusty, raw December day he wore somebody’s summer suit – a much larger somebody evidently – and a suit that in its youth had been of light-coloured, lightweight flannel. It was still lightweight.

Infolded within its voluminous breadths the present wearer shivered visibly and drew his chilled hands farther up into its flapping sleeve ends until he resembled the doubly mutilated victim of a planing-mill mishap. If his expression was woebegone, his shoe soles were more – they practically were all-begone. A battered derby hat – size about seven and five-eighths – threatened total extinguishment of his face, being prevented from doing so only by the circumstance of its brim resting and pressing upon the upper flanges of the owner’s ears. They were ears providentially designed for such employment. Broad, wide and droopy, they stood out from the sides of Papa Finkelstein’s head like the horns of the caribou.

This reporter was a good reporter. He knew a human-interest story when he met it walking in the road. He turned about and tagged Papa Finkelstein to his domicile and there, after briefly inspecting the Finkelstein household in all its wealth of picturesque destitution, he secured the names and the address from the head of it, who perhaps gave the desired information all the more readily because he had not the slightest idea of what use this inquiring stranger wished to make of it.

Half an hour later the reporter was saying to the irritable functionary in charge of the Advocate’s news desk:

“Oh, so-so; just fair to middling, most of them; about the usual run of shad. But, say, I’ve got one bird of a case. I dug it up myself – it’s not down on any of the records I got from the charity people. When it comes to being plumb down and out none of them has anything on the meek and lowly Finkelsteins.”

“Good!” said the news editor. “You might lead with it if you want to. No, I guess you’d better run ’em alphabetically – it won’t do to be playing favourites.”

Mark now, how a little flame may kindle a large blaze: The afternoon half sister of the Morning Advocate was the Evening Dispatch. Between the two papers, owned as they were by the same gentleman and issued from the same printshop, a bitter rivalry prevailed; it generally does in such instances.

On Tuesday morning the city editor of the Evening Dispatch ran an agile and practiced eye through the story the Advocate had printed. With his shears he chopped out the first column of it. With his pencil he ringed one paragraph in the scissored section and then he lifted his voice and called to him a young woman professionally known as Betty Gwin, who sat in the city room at a desk somewhat withdrawn from copy readers, rewriters and leg men. This distinction of comparative aloofness was hers by right, she being a special-feature writer, under yearly contract, and, therefore, belonging to the aristocracy of the craft.

After the custom of her sex Miss Betty Gwin – whose real name, I may state, in confidence, was Ferguson – first put a hand up to be sure that her hair was quite right and then put it behind her to be sure her belt made proper connection with her skirt at the back; and then she answered her superior’s call. Answering it, all about her betokened confidence and competence. And why shouldn’t it? As a pen-smith this young person acknowledged no superiors anywhere. Her troupe of trained performing adjectives was admitted to be the smartest in town. Moreover, she was artistically ambidextrous. Having written a story she would illustrate it with her own hand. Her drawings were replete with lithesome curves; so, too, was her literary style. None but a Betty Gwin could write what she wrote; none but a Betty Gwin properly illustrate it afterward.

“Fergy,” said the city editor, “here’s a beaut for you – right in your line. Full of that heart-throb junk nine ways from the jack. Those idiots upstairs gave it ten lines when it was worth six sticks all by itself – buried it when they should have played it up. You run down to this number and get a good, gummy, pathetic yarn. We’ll play it up for to-morrow, with a strong picture layout and a three-col. head. Might call it: ‘What Christmas Means for the Whatyoumaycall’em Family and What Christmas Might Mean for Them!’ Get me?”

He passed over the clipping. In a glance his star comprehended the pencilled passage.

“Judging from the name and the neighbourhood Christmas wouldn’t excite this family much, anyhow,” she said.

“What do you care?” said her chief crisply. “There’s a story there – go get it!”

Doubtlessly the Christmas spirit got into Betty Gwin’s typewriter keys. Certainly it got into her inkpot and deposited the real essence of the real sob stuff there. The story she wrote trickled pathos from every balanced paragraph; there was pity in the periods and sentiment in the semicolons. As for the exclamation-points, they simply were elongated tear drops. It was one of the best stories Betty Gwin ever wrote. She said so herself – openly. But the picture that went with the story was absolutely diademic; it crowned figures of speech with tiaras of the graphic art. It showed Mamma Finkelstein seated on an upended box, which once had contained pickled herrings, surrounded by the eight little Finkelsteins. The children looked like ragged cherubs.

To accomplish this result it had been necessary for Miss Gwin to depart somewhat from a faithful delineation of the originals. But of what value is the creative ability unless it be used to create? I ask you that and pause for a reply. Not that the junior Finkelsteins were homely; without an exception they were handsome and well-formed. A millionaire might have been proud to own them.

But the trouble was, the Old Masters, who first painted cherubim, were mainly Italians, and for a variety of reasons chose their models from a race other than that to which the Finkelsteins appertained. To make her portraits conform with the popular conceptions of cherubs Miss Gwin saw fit to – shall we say? – conventionalise certain features. Indeed, when it came to reproducing for publication the physical aspect of Master Solly Finkelstein she did more than conventionalise – she idealised. Otherwise subscribers, giving the picture a cursory inspection, might have been led to believe that this cherub’s wings had sprouted mighty high up on him. For Solly, eldest man child of the Finkelstein brood, had inherited the paternal ear – not all of it, as we know, but an ample and conspicuous sufficiency. Yet, with his ears trimmed, he, on his own merits, had enough of sombre child beauty for any seven-year-older anywhere. So Betty Gwin trimmed them – with her drawing pencil.

The bright light of publicity having been directed upon this cheerfully forlorn family, results followed. Of the publicity its beneficiaries knew nothing. Such papers as Papa Finkelstein read were Yiddish papers; he was no bookworm at that. Of the results, though, they were all speedily made aware.

Miss Gwin embodied the original and pioneer one of the forces speedily set marching to the relief of the Finkelsteins. Persons of a philanthropic leaning, reading what she had written and beholding what she had drawn, were straightway moved to forward, in care of that young author and the publication which she served, various small sums of money to be conveyed to this practically fireless, substantially foodless and semigarmentless household. Miss Gwin thought, at first, of founding a regular subscription list under the title of Betty Gwin’s Succour Fund; but, on second thought, disliked the sound of the phrase when spoken, although it looked well enough written out.

Instead, she elected to carry in person to their proper destination the cash contributions already in hand, and along with them a somewhat more cumbersome offering consisting of a one-piece costume sent by a young lady in the theatrical profession – the chorus profession, to be circumstantial about it – who had accompanied the donation with a note on scented violet note paper, with a crest, stating that she wished the devoted mother of those “poor birdlings” – a direct quotation, this, from Miss Gwin’s story – to have the frock, and to keep it and wear it for her very own. With the Compliments of Miss Trixie Adair, of the Gay Gamboliers Musical Comedy Company.

Thus laden, Miss Gwin descended upon Pike Street and ascended upon the Finkelsteins, bringing with her, in addition to the other things mentioned, an air of buoyancy and good cheer. As on the occasion of her former call, two days earlier, the medium of intercourse between the visitor and the heads of the household was Miriam, aged nine, the topmost round of the family stepladder, ably reenforced by her brother Solly, who was mentioned just a bit ago with particular reference to his ears. In truth I should put it the other way round; for, to be exact, it was Solly who sustained the main burden of translation, his sister being a shy little thing and he in temperament emphatically the opposite.

Besides, his opportunities for acquiring facility and a repertoire in tongues had been more extensive than hers. While Miriam frequented the hallways of the tenement, or, at best, the sidewalk in front of it, concerned with the minding of the twins – Israel and Isadore, but both called, for convenience, Izzy – it was his practice to range far and wide, risking death beneath trolley cars, capture by the law, and murder at the hands of roused custodians of jobbing houses and buildings in course of construction, about which he lurked on the lookout for empty packing cases and bits of planking, and the like – such stuff as might be dragged home and there converted into household furnishings or stove fuel, depending upon whether at the moment the establishment stood more desperately in need of something to sit on than of something to burn.

Even now, at the tender age of seven, going on eight, Solly betrayed the stirrings of a restless ambition such as his sire had never known. It was an open question whether he would grow up to be a gunman or a revered captain of finance. A tug of fate might set his eager footsteps toward either goal. Already he had a flowing command of the sort of English spoken by startled and indignant motormen, pestered policemen and watchmen, tempted by provocation entirely beyond their powers of self-control. So Solly served as chief interpreter while Miss Gwin informally tendered the presents that had been intrusted to her charge for transmission.

In the same spirit Papa and Mamma Finkelstein, who continued to entertain the vaguest of theories regarding the sources of and the reasons for these benefactions, accepted them gratefully, with no desire to look a gift horse in the mouth. Gift horses were strange livestock in their experience, anyhow.

The money – eight dollars and ninety-five cents, all told – went for fuel and food; but mainly for food. With the Finkelsteins, life was a feast or else it was a famine; in their scheme of domestic economics they sought no middle ground. As for the gown bestowed by Miss Trixie Adair, of the Gay Gamboliers, Mamma Finkelstein started wearing it right away, merely adapting it to existing conditions – conditions that were, with her, not only existent but, I may say, chronic. It was – or had been – a pale-blue evening gown of a satinlike material, with no neck and no sleeves to the upper part, but with a gracefully long train to the skirt part, and made to hook up the back.

Because of the frequency of the demands put upon the maternal resources by the newest and smallest Finkelstein, it was deemed expedient and, in fact, essential to turn the gown round backward, so as to have the bodice fastenings directly in front of Mamma Finkelstein instead of directly behind her. This necessitated drawing the train up from beneath the occupant’s feet and draping it, sash-fashion, about her waist. Mamma Finkelstein wore it so. She was wearing it so that afternoon when Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass arrived, direct from upper Fifth Avenue, and also the next morning when Miss Godiva Sleybells came, representing, semi-officially and most competently, the Cherry Hill Neighbourhood House.

Since of these two Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass was first, firstly then we may consider her. I will begin by stating that she was a lady of augmented wealth and indubitable preeminence, being of that elect group who have ceased merely to smell society from afar off and now taste of its exclusive delights close up. For her it had been a hard climb, laboriously uphill all the way, boulder-strewn and beset by hazards, pitfalls and obstacles. But she had arrived finally upon those snow-capped peaks where the temperature is ever below freezing and life may only be maintained artificially.

Inasmuch as she had not been born to breathe the atmosphere of this rarefied altitude, but had achieved her right to breathe it by her own efforts, Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass felt it incumbent on her to maintain her position away up there on Mount Saint Elias by such manifold and varied activities as were most aptly designed to make for publicity, which meant prominence, which meant success. For the moment she was principally concerned with living up to the rôle of good angel to the worthily indigent. Those who loved her and in return wished to be loved by her called her the Lady Bountiful of the Slums.

She conferred the sweet boon of charity with the aid of a press agent, a subscription to a clipping bureau, a special secretary – not her regular secretary, but a special one – and a new photograph – copyright by De Valle, Fifth Avenue, all infringements prohibited – appearing about once in so often in the Sunday Magazine Sections.

It was no strain upon the eyes to gaze upon Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass; nor yet upon her photograph. Nor did she consciously and willfully deny any properly respectful person the opportunity. A distinguished portrait painter once had said, shortly after completing a commission which brought him large pecuniary returns from Mr. F. Fodderwood Bass, that Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass possessed the most beautiful profile on the entire North American continent. When in company the recipient of this tribute kept her side face turned to the majority present – the greatest possible good to the greatest possible number, you see. She had one secret regret: one could not walk sideways – or, at least, one could not for any considerable distance.

I would not go so far as to say that Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass actually read the prose poem emanating from Miss Betty Gwin’s sympathetic typewriter; but I will go so far as to say that promptly the article of that gifted young word chandler was brought to her attention. No time was to be lost; in fact, no time was lost. Very shortly thereafter Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass, attired in housings appropriately plain, to accord with her errand – housings which had cost less than five hundred dollars, exclusive of import duties – and suitably riding in a simple French limousine of but forty-eight horse power, was conveyed southward and eastward from her home to Pike Street. Her arrival there created a measure of popular tumult only to be equalled by a bank run or a fire alarm. A self-appointed escort at least seventy-five strong piloted her up four flights to the Finkelstein flat.

Papa Finkelstein was out temporarily, and Mamma Finkelstein was stunned into a state approximating dumb stupor by the grandeur of the visitation that appeared before her, heralded though its coming had been by many small, excited couriers dashing up the stairs in advance. Though Mamma Finkelstein was of humble station, Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass did not deny her a treat. Throughout her stay, which was short, she remained standing in the doorway, with her profile presented to the dazzled stare of her hostess.

Her purpose being explained through volunteer interpreters, and largess having been bestowed generally, she masterfully bore away Miriam, Solly and the two small duplicate Izzys, Mamma Finkelstein making no sign either of demur to or acquiescence in the plan, to a Christmas-tree entertainment given under her direct patronage in a rented hall some distance north of Cooper Union.

At eight P. M., long before their mother had in any visible respect rallied from her coma of dumb bewilderment, these four, a torpid and satiated quartet, were safely returned to the home nest, gorged on goodies, and laden with small gifts for themselves and for their yet more juvenile sisters and brothers. Throughout the remainder of the evening, though, little Miriam persisted in regarding her father with a certain silent and distressful reproach in her big black eyes. Made uneasy by his daughter’s bearing he questioned her; and she divulged something she had heard.

It seemed that in explaining the intent of the festival of Christmas, Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass, though actuated by the best intentions imaginable, had nevertheless revealed certain phases of Sacred History which, when the first shock of disclosure was over, left sensitive little Miriam in a state of mind where she stood ready to fix direct responsibility upon her own parent. Papa Finkelstein may have been lax in the precept and practice of his theological beliefs, but assuredly his convictions were both sound and orthodox. Immediately he developed an entirely unwarranted but none the less sincere distrust for the motives of Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass.

Truly, he wronged her there. There was nothing that was ulterior, but much that was superior in the lady’s attitude toward the lower forms of animal life which she observed flourishing below her. By lower forms of animal life I, as the historian of this episode, would include everything and everybody outside of her set. These lesser manifestations of an inscrutable scheme of creation she regarded benignantly, tolerantly and at times – wonderingly. To her they seemed so – well, so different – if you get my meaning and hers. One wondered sometimes, really one did, if they could be so susceptible to emotion and sensation as those who had been called to service in a higher sphere of activity? The answer might be yes and then again it might be no. It all depended upon one’s point of view. Indeed when one came to ponder these matters, so much always did depend upon one’s point of view, did it not? Meanwhile pending the ultimate solution of these perplexing sociological problems, she would minister Samaritanlike to the wants of the needy, and not forget to advertise the Samaritan. That was at once her pleasure and her duty.

If Papa Finkelstein’s suspicions endured through the night, as I have my reasons for believing they did endure, they found no permanent lodgment in the bosom of his helpmate; for the next morning an event occurred that for the time being, at least, served to dispossess Mamma Finkelstein’s mind of all lesser considerations. I refer to the arrival of Miss Godiva Sleybells, from the Cherry Hill Neighbourhood House. Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass typified amateur philanthropy; but not so Miss Sleybells. She came, panoplied with purposeful intent, as the specialised, the expert, the austere representative of systematic relief.

In a period not far remote the allegation had been made that, so often, organised charity was lacking in the personal and the direct touch. It had been said that its common attitude was this: if a starving man applied for help in the guise of sustenance, organised charity took his name and address and made a very painstaking investigation of the merits of the mendicant and his plea, sparing neither time nor expense in the scope of its inquiry. His case being established as a worthy one, organised charity took steps to seek him out and providing he had not inconsiderately died in the interim, or moved to another park bench, it bestowed upon him a small blue ticket entitling the holder to saw wood so many hours a day at a specially maintained wood yard, and to receive in return for such labour a specified number of frugal meals. Mind you I do not pretend to assume that this actually was the fact; I merely repeat a form of criticism current at one time. But now, organised charity was become more personal and possibly a trifle less statistical in its methods. For proof, observe how promptly Miss Godiva Sleybells moved. She, too, read Miss Betty Gwin’s account of the lorn Finkelsteins. She waited not for an inquisition to be made and a report to be filed. She girded up her walking skirt, as a result of which girding it hiked in front and it drooped behind; and she put on her heavy rubbers and she came.