Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Writings About New York (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (41 page)

It appears that she had had a historic quarrel with Apple Mag. She first recited the prowess of Apple Mag; how this emphatic lady used to argue with paving stones, carving knives and bricks. Then she told of the quarrel; what Mag said; what she said; what Mag said; what she said: It seems that they cited each other as spectacles of sin and corruption in more fully explanatory terms than are commonly known to be possible. But it was one of Mammy’s most gorgeous recollections, and, as she told it, a smile widened over her face.

Finally she explained her celebrated retort to one of the most illustrious thugs that had blessed the city in bygone days. “Ah says to ‘im, Ah says: ‘You—you’ll die in yer boots like Gallopin’ Thompson—dat’s what you’ll do.’ [Slug missing from newsprint here.] one chile an’ he ain’t nuthin’ but er cripple, but le’me tel’ you, man, dat boy’ll live t’ pick de feathers f ’m de goose dat’ll eat de grass dat grows over your grave, man! Dat’s what I tol’ ’m. But—lan’s sake—how I know dat in less’n three day, dat man be lying in de gutter wif a knife stickin’ out’n his back. Lawd, no, I sholy never s’pected nothing like dat.”

These reminiscences, at once maimed and reconstructed, have been treasured by old Mammy as carefully, as tenderly, as if they were the various little tokens of an early love. She applies the same back-handed sentiment to them, and, as she sits groaning by the fire, it is plainly to be seen that there is only one food for her ancient brain, and that is the recollection of the beautiful fights and murders of the past.

On the other side of the Lane, but near Mammy’s house, Pop Babcock keeps a restaurant. Pop says it is a restaurant, and so it must be one, but you could pass there ninety times each day and never know that you were passing a restaurant. There is one obscure little window in the basement and if you went close and peered in, you might, after a time, be able to make out a small, dusty sign, lying amid jars on a shelf. This sign reads: “Oysters in every style.” If you are of a gambling turn of mind, you will probably stand out in the street and bet yourself black in the face that there isn’t an oyster within a hundred yards. But Pop Babcock made that sign and Pop Babcock could not tell an untruth. Pop is a model of all the virtues which an inventive fate has made for us. He says so.

As far as goes the management of Pop’s restaurant, it differs from Sherry’s. In the first place the door is always kept locked. The ward-men
^bp
of the Fifteenth Precinct have a way of prowling through the restaurant almost every night, and Pop keeps the door locked in order to keep out the objectionable people that cause the wardmen’s visits. He says so. The cooking stove is located in the main room of the restaurant, and it is placed in such a strategic manner that it occupies about all the space that is not already occupied by a table, a bench and two chairs. The table will, on a pinch, furnish room for the plates of two people if they are willing to crowd. Pop says he is the best cook in the world.

When questioned concerning the present condition of the Lane, Pop said: “Quiet? Quiet? Lo’d save us, maybe it ain‘t! Quiet? Quiet?” His emphasis was arranged crescendo, until the last word was really a vocal explosion. “Why, dis her’ Lane ain’t nohow like what it useter be—no indeed, it ain’t. No, sir! ‘Deed it ain‘t! Why, I kin remember dey was a-cuttin’ an’ a’slashin’ ‘long yere all night. ‘Deed dey was! My—my, dem times was different! Dat dar Kent, he kep’ de place at Green Gate Cou‘t—down yer ol’ Mammy’s—an’ he was a hard baby—‘deed, he was—an’ ol’ Black-Cat an’ ol’ Bloodthirsty, dey was a-roamin’ round yere a-cuttin’ an’ a-slashin’ . Didn’t dar’ say boo to a goose in dose days, dat you didn’t, less’n you lookin’ fer a scrap. No, sir!” Then he gave information concerning his own prowess at that time. Pop is about as tall as a picket on an undersized fence. “But dey didn’t have nothin’ ter say to me! No, sir! ‘Deed, dey didn’t! I wouldn’t lay down fer none of ‘em. No, sir! Dey knew my gait, ’deed, dey did! Man, man, many’s de time I buck up agin ’em. Yes, sir!”

At this time Pop had three customers in his place, one asleep on the bench, one asleep on the two chairs, and one asleep on the floor behind the stove.

But there is one man who lends dignity of the real bevel-edged type to Minetta Lane, and that man is Hank Anderson. Hank, of course, does not live in the Lane, but the shadow of his social perfections falls upon it as refreshingly as a morning dew. Hank gives a dance twice in each week, at a hall hard by in MacDougal Street, and the dusky aristocracy of the neighborhood know their guiding beacon. Moreover, Hank holds an annual ball in Forty-fourth Street. Also he gives a picnic each year to the Montezuma Club, when he again appears as a guiding beacon. This picnic is usually held on a barge and the occasion is a very joyous one. Some years ago it required the entire reserve squad of an up-town police precinct to properly control the enthusiasm of the gay picnickers, but that was an exceptional exuberance and no measure of Hank’s ability for management.

He is really a great manager. He was Boss Tweed’s body-servant in the days when Tweed was a political prince, and anyone who saw Bill Tweed through a spyglass learned the science of leading, pulling, driving and hauling men in a way to keep men ignorant of it. Hank imbibed from this fount of knowledge and he applied his information in Thompson Street. Thompson Street salaamed. Presently he bore a proud title: “The Mayor of Thompson Street.” Dignities from the principal political organization of the city adorned his brow and he speedily became illustrious.

Hank knew the Lane well in its direful days. As for the inhabitants, he kept clear of them and yet in touch with them according to a method that he might have learned in the Sixth Ward. The Sixth Ward was a good place in which to learn that trick. Anderson can tell many strange tales and good of the Lane, and he tells them in the graphic way of his class. “Why, they could steal your shirt without moving a wrinkle on it.”

The killing of Joe Carey was the last murder that happened in the Minettas. Carey had what might be called a mixed ale difference with a man named Kenny. They went out to the middle of Minetta Street to affably fight it out and determine the justice of the question. In the scrimmage Kenny drew a knife, thrust quickly and Carey fell. Kenny had not gone a hundred feet before he ran into the arms of a policeman.

There is probably no street in New York where the police keep closer watch than they do in Minetta Lane. There was a time when the inhabitants had a profound and reasonable contempt for the public guardians, but they have it no longer apparently. Any citizen can walk through there at any time in perfect safety unless, perhaps, he should happen to get too frivolous. To be strictly accurate, the change began under the reign of Police Captain Chapman. Under Captain Groo, the present commander of the Fifteenth Precinct, the Lane has donned a complete new garb. Its denizens brag now of its peace precisely as they once bragged of its war. It is no more a bloody lane. The song of the razor is seldom heard. There are still toughs and semi-toughs galore in it, but they can’t get a chance with the copper looking the other way. Groo has got the poor old Lane by the throat. If a man should insist on becoming a victim of the badger game he could probably succeed upon search in Minetta Lane, as indeed, he could on any of the great avenues; but then Minetta Lane is not supposed to be a pearly street in Paradise.

In the meantime the Italians have begun to dispute possession of the Lane with the negroes. Green Gate Court is filled with them now, and a row of houses near the MacDougal Street corner is occupied entirely by Italian families. None of them seems to be overfond of the old Mulberry Bend fashion of life, and there are no cutting affrays among them worth mentioning. It is the original negro element that makes the trouble when there is trouble.

But they are happy in this condition, are these people. The most extraordinary quality of the negro is his enormous capacity for happiness under most adverse circumstances. Minetta Lane is a place of poverty and sin, but these influences cannot destroy the broad smile of the negro, a vain and simple child but happy. They all smile here, the most evil as well as the poorest. Knowing the negro, one always expects laughter from him, be he ever so poor, but it was a new experience to see a broad grin on the face of the devil. Even old Pop Babcock had a laugh as fine and mellow as would be the sound of falling glass, broken saints from high windows, in the silence of some great cathedral’s hollow.

1
(p. 7) for the honor of Rum Alley ... howling urchins from Devil’s Row: As far as can be determined there was neither a Rum Alley nor a Devil’s Row in Manhattan. Crane used these unpleasant names to underscore the squalor in which he had set his story. Rum Alley could be construed as a gentle dig at his mother’s devotion to the cause of temperance.

2
(p. 7) a
dock
at
the river:
The river mentioned here is the East River, which is not a river at all, but a tidal estuary that connects Upper New York Bay with Long Island Sound.

3
(p. 7)
Over on the Island:
This is a reference to Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island), which has been home to prisons, a quarantine hospital, and a potter’s field. Because the island can be seen from Rum Alley, we know that the action of the story takes place in a slum on the east side of Manhattan known as Dutch Hill, roughly where the United Nations building stands today.

4
(p. 18)
The babe,
Tommie,
died:
These four simple words are typical of Crane’s writing style. This clipped, emotionless, technique was the antithesis of the more flowery style of the day.

5
(p. 19)
His father died and his
mother’s
years were divided up into periods of thirty days:
This is another example of Crane’s dispassionate voice. (“Thirty days” is a reference to the fact that she is living month to month in her hovel.) It is interesting to note that there is no mention of extravagant grief over the death of a husband and child, as opposed to Mary Johnson’s lamentations following the death of her daughter.

6
(p. 21 )
Yet he achieved
a
respect for
a
fire engine:
The thundering of fire engines through the chaotic streets stopped even the most jaded New Yorkers in their tracks. Jimmie, who respects very little, respects the firemen in their rigs because they are stronger and even greater daredevils than he is.

7
(p. 22)
“Deh moon looks like hell, don’t it?”:
This is perhaps the most famous line in the book, and the inarticulate limit of Jimmie’s appreciation of life beyond the gutter.

8
(p. 22)
“Mag, I’ll tell yeh dis!”
Here Jimmie explains Maggie’s options, the two choices of slum women—hell (prostitution) or the presumed reward of heaven that comes with monotonous, unhealthy, poorly paid labor.

9
(p. 23)
to
a
boxing match in Williamsburg:
Williamsburg was a separate city from New York and Brooklyn. Presumably going to far-off Williamsburg was something of an adventure. Williamsburg was later incorporated into the city of Brooklyn, which in turn became a borough of New York City in 1898.

10
(p. 29)
nationalities of the Bowery:
As the legitimate theater moved uptown, the Bowery, which had once been the great entertainment center of New York, was given over to tawdry dance halls and music halls such as the one described here.

11
(p. 33)
She began to see the bloom:
This is almost the only example in the book of Maggie’s sense of her own worth.

12
(p. 42)
“Anybody what had eyes could see dat dere was somethin’wrong wid dat girl. I didn’t like her
actions”: The neighbors in the tenement function as a chorus commenting on the action of the story. They are by turns mocking, appalled, offended, and, as this line illustrates, almost always wrong.

13
(p. 53)
ease of Pete’s ways toward her:
This is a simple suggestion that Pete is bored with Maggie and ready to move on. His excitement at seeing Nell a few lines later only compounds this.

14
(p. 63)
Maggie went away:
With these three words Crane tells the reader, but not Maggie, that this is the beginning of the end for her.

15
(p. 65)
she was neither new, Parisian, nor theatrical:
Although we get the impression that Maggie was the most naive, inept prostitute to walk the streets of New York, this line suggests that she must have gained some worldly knowledge in the course of her brief career.

16
(p. 72)
“She’s gone where her sins will be judged”:
Here is another example of the tenement dwellers acting as commentators on the action of the story.

1
(p.
78) A man with
a
red, mottled
face ...
shook his fist:
This paragraph tells us that although we are now in the world of the upright, hardworking Kelceys, we are back in the slums, back in Maggie’s milieu.

2
(p. 80)
In the distance
an
enormous brewery:
Here Crane includes a simple bit of foreshadowing. This brewery, snorting smoke like some kind of monster, is the creature that suffuses the entire story and is the source of George’s downfall.

3
(p. 83)
He began to be vexed.... it was depressing:
This paragraph and the others describing the imagined prayer meeting are so vivid that they must have been based on Crane’s own experiences in his ultrareligious childhood home. The religious regimen of his youth consisted of going to church twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays, as well as twice-daily Bible readings at home.