The Day in Bohemia

or

Life Among the Artists

was written by John Reed

in 1912 and was

printed for the author

by the

Hillacre Bookhouse in 1913

---

THE

DAY IN BOHEMIA

OR

LIFE AMONG THE ARTISTS

being a jeu d'esprit containing Much that is Original

and Diverting.  In which the Reader will find the Cognomens

and Qualities of many Persons destined one day to adorn

the Annals of Nations, in Letters, Music, Painting,

the Plastic Arts, and even Business;

TOGETHER WITH

Their Foibles, Weaknesses, and Shortcomings.

And some Account of the Life led by Geniuses in Manhattan's

QUATIER LATIN

BY

JOHN REED

---

THE DAY IN BOHEMIA

    Muse, you have got a job before you,--
Come, buckle to it, I implore you.
I would embalm in deathless rhyme
The great souls of our little time:
Inglorious Miltons by the score,--
Mute Wagners, -- Rembrandts, ten or more,--
And Rodins, one to every floor.
In short, those unknown men of genius
Who dwell in third-floor-rears gangreneous,
Reft of their rightful heritage
By a commercial, soulless age.
Unwept, I might add,-- and unsung,
Insolvent, but entirely young.

Twixt Broadway and Sixth Avenue,
And West perhaps a block or two,--
From Third Street up, and Ninth Street down,
Between Fifth Avenue and the Town,--
Policeman walk as free as air,
With nothing on their minds but hair,
And life is very, very fair
In Washington Square.

Bohemia! Where dwell the Sacred Nine,
Who landed, steerage from the White Star Line,--
(For, when the Sacred Springs dried up in Italy
They packed their duds and emigrated prettily.
And all the Ladies, donning virile jeans,
Became the Editors of Magazines.)

Bohemia! There, hiding neath the Arch,
Acteon on Diana steals a march;
Glimpsing the Huntress at her weekly tub
In the round fountain near the Little Club.
(She with the watchful eye out for the cop
Who haunts the corner where the buses stop.)
Or Dionysus, prone from many drams,
Praises the vine in gulping dithyrambs;
Till some official Pentheus, bully drawn,
Fans the loud-cursing God, and bids him "On!"
While that old Maenad with disordered hair,
Each Sabbath eve careens around the Square.

Beneath the trees, when summer-nights are hot,
Bray shawn and psaltery, if you will or not;
Out swarm light-hearted Dagos by the millions
Gay Neapolitans and dark Sicilians--
Shouting and laughing, slowly they creep on
Like a drab frieze about an East Side Parthenon!

Say, unenlightened bards whom I deride,
Defend you Gramercy or Morningside,
As fitter spots for poets to reside?
Nay, you know not where Virtue doth abide!
Do GLACKENS, FRENCH, WILL IRWIN linger there?
Nay, they would scorn your boasted Uptown air!
Are marble bathtubs your excuse ingenious?
In God's  Name, what are bathtubs to a genius!
What restaurant have you that to compare is
With the cool garden back of PAGLIERI'S?
I challenge you to tell me where you've et
Viands more rare than at the LAFAYETTE!
Have you forgot the BENEDICK,-- the JUDSON,
(Purest of hostelries this side of the Hudson)
The Old BREVOORT, for breakfast late on Sunday,
The CRULLERY, where poor men dine on Monday?
You don't remember THOMPSON STREET. For shame!
Nor WAVERLY PLACE, nor, (classic, classic name!)
MACDOUGAL ALLEY, all of stables built,
Blessed home of Art and MRS. VANDERBILT.

Young Smith he took a studio,--                                        A Ballad of
With a fol de rol de rero.                                               MacDougal
    He sculped like Michael Angelo,--                                    Alley
        With a fol de rero.
    The neighbors shook their heads and said
        "It's much too much like Rodin's,--
    "And then it can't be Art, because
        It's nothing like St. Gaudens!"
    With a fol de rol de rol de rol--
    O many a clever rally
    Takes place among the geniuses
    In bold MacDougal Alley!

    Smith felt his life in twain was rent,
        With a fol de rol de rero.
    But not his artistic temperament,--
        With a fol de rero.
    And so he gave up Art because
        Success you can't rely on,
    And up and eloped with a painter's wife
        And now's a social lion!-
    With a fol de rol de rol de rol--
    No one knows who's worse Sally,
    The spice of Life's uncertainty
    In gay MacDougal Alley!

Lives there a man with soul so dead, I ask,
Who in an attic would not rather bask
On the South Side, in lofty-thinking splendor,
Than on the North Side grow obese and tender?
The North Side, to the golden ladle born,
Philistine, suckled at a creed outworn!
Unnumbered Jasons in their motor-cars
Pass fleeceward, mornings, puffing black cigars--
We smoke Fatimas, but we ride the stars!

True to our Art, still there are variations,
Art cannot flourish on infrequent rations;
We condescend to work in humbler sort,
For Art is long and money very short.
Hence it is not so terribly surprising
That ANDREWS deigns to scribble advertising;
ROGERS, whose talent is of epic cast,
at Sunday-paper stuff is unsurpassed.
LEE teaches in an Art School he abhors,
And LEWIS tries to please the editors;
BOB EDWARDS, when he needs some other togs,
Draws pictures for the clothing catalogues.
And I, myself, when no one wants my rhymes,
Yes, even I relax a bit at times.

Yet we are free who live in Washington Square,
We dare to think as Uptown wouldn't dare,
Blazing our nights with arguments uproarious;
What care we for a dull old world censorious
When each is sure he'll fashion something glorious?
Blessed art thou, Anarchic Liberty
Who asketh nought but joy of such as we!

O Muse inflate your pulmonary bellows
And sing ROG, ANDY, OZ, and all the other fellows.
Homage to FORTY-TWO, Parnassus Flats!
Hail to its Cock-roaches, its Dust, its Rats
Lout your Greek bonnet to the third-floor-back,
Hymn the two landladies, red haired and black--
The Amiable MARIE, the bland ADELE;
Our Spanish Jack-of-all-work, MANUEL.

In winter the water is frigid,                                                   Forty-two
In summer the water is hot;                                                    Washington
And we're forming a club for controlling the tub                   Square
For there's only one bath to the lot.
You shave in unlathering Croton,
If there's water at all, which is rare,--
But the life isn't bad for a talented lad
At Forty-Two Washington Square!

The dust it flies in at the window,
The smells they come in at the door,
Our trousers lie meek where we threw 'em last week
Bestrewing the maculate floor.
The gas isn't all that it should be,
It flickers,-- and yet I delcare
There's pleasure or near it for young men of spirit
At Forty-Two Washington Square!

But nobody questions your morals,
And nobody asks for the rent,--
There's no one to pry if we're tight, you and I,
Or demand how our evenings are spent.
The furniture's ancient but plenty,
The linen is spotless and fair,
O life is a joy to a broth of a boy
At Forty-Two Washington Square!

    Third Floor, Hall-room and Black, Elysian bower,
Where the IMMORTAL FOUR spent many a blissful hour!
The high sun-parlor, looking South and East,
Whence we discerned a million cats at least
Communing in the tenement back-yards,
And hove at them innumerable shards.
There spawn the overworked and underpaid
Mute thousands;-- packed in buildings badly made,--
In stinking squalor penned,-- and overflowing
On sagging fire-escapes. Such to-and-froing
From room to room we spied on! Such a shrill
Cursing between brass earinged women, still
Venomous, Italian! Love-making and hate;
Laughter, white rage, a passionate debate;
A druken workman beating up his wife;
Mafia and Camorra,-- yelling strife!
The wail of children,-- dull, monotonous,
Unceasing,-- and a liquid, tremulous
High tenor, singing, somewhere out of sight
"Santa Lucia!" in the troubled night.

Below's the barren, grassless, earthen ring
Where Madame, with a faith unwavering
Planted a wistful garden every spring,--
Forever hoped-for, --never blossoming.
Above, th' eternal washing droops in the air,
From wall to window hanging, everywhere!
What poet would not yield to their allure
'The short and simple flannels of the poor!'

SHELLEY

The Tenement Like battle-riven pennants fluttering,
Clothes-Line;                                  Float on the serene and variable air
A Series of The many-tinted wash. How fair a thing
Excellent                                        Is linen cleansed! How virginally fair
Parodies                                         Those clinging sunlit draperies! O where
                                                       In the vast awful void where slaves are hurled
                                                       Headlong into caverns of despair,
                                                       Are such undaunted oriflammes unfurled?
                                                       Cringe tyrants! Hellas flaunts her linen to
                                                            the world!

---

WALT WHITMAN

Wash! Flung to the four winds of Manahatta,
I, Walt Whitman, see this.
The simple, democratic wash of my camerados--
Italianos, Muscovites, and even Americanos--
Undershirts, underdrawers, kimonos, socks, bedclothes,
    pajamas;
Pink, red, green, of various tints, shades and colors;
Some with holes in them, some without holes in them;
Tattered, faded, patched, the Female's equally with
    the Male's I sing!

APOLLO'S beams our humble house adorn,
And wake th' IMMORTAL FOUR on Tuesday morn;
Coincident, while still our ears we pound,
The alarm-clock gives a horrid sound.
With one bound, orient OSGOOD hits the floor,
(Cerberean timeclocks guard his office door).
REED with a countenance whence joy has fled,
Drags the resisting ROGERS from his bed.
But ANDREWS still the downy pillow presses,
While every feature deep disgust expresses;
And ere he once forsakes his virgin couch,
Accumulates his early morning grouch.
The radiant OSGOOD round the chamber passes,
Scanning himself in all the looking-glasses;
And whispering that beauty is no shame
Loudly begins to carol "La Boheme."
("O chop it!" ANDY cries "In God's sweet Name!")
Thrice turns the tap, thrice finds the water wanting--

REED excavates a pitcher, nothing daunting
And, naked, rushes down two flights of stairs,
The cynosure of maiden-ladies' glares.
Then comes the water, mixed with earth and rock,
Belching and bubbling like the Jabberwock,
Like coffee to the sight--but not to taste;
Blaspheming, BELVIDERE remounts in haste,--
Again doth ROGERS in his nest recline,
And must be thence propelled upon his spine,
While STEEL-TRAP ANDY still remains supine.

    Now OZZY'S toilet-table stands displayed,
Each silver box in mystic order laid;
In neat pajamas, first the Youth adores
With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers.
EROS' own image in the glass appears,
To that he bends, to that his eyes he rears;
Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here
The various offerings of the world appear:
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The tortoise and the steel-works to unite
To make these razors, sabre-edged and bright;
Here, neckties are in brilliant rows arrayed,
Here, powders, patches, pincers and pommade.
Now awful beauty puts on all its arms,--
The fair each moment rises in his charms;
Till, waxing his mustache, at last he turns,
And ardent, for his daily conquests burns!

Now, when the distant bells are sounding Nine,
Uncoils vast ANDREWS,-- hideous, serpentine;
Yawns, blinking, like a famine-stricken owl,
And folds ill-temper round him like a cowl.
"___ ___ you birds!" he cries. "___ ___ ___ ___!"
"If I've insomnia, I've got you to thank!
A Business Man has need of peace and quiet;
Think I can slumber in this ___ ___ riot?
Three of your collars in my last Week's wash;
This week I find a shirt of REED'S, by Gosh!
I'm ___ if I will shoulder your expense,
You birds each owe me twenty-seven cents!
And somebody's been wearing my neckties;
Why don't you buy things of your own, you guys?"
Robed in a bath-robe like a gaberdine,
Thus ANDY vents his ante-breakfast spleen.
And OSGOOD, chafing 'neath this diatribe,
Foregoes his song, and sharp returns the gibe:
"Keep your unfashionable clothes apart,
Who never knew a decent tailor's art!
Think you I have so little pride,--
To let my wash your laundry rest beside?
By God, in honorable recompense,
I think you owe us twenty-seven cents!
Those neckties, emblems of a bourgeois taste;--
By God, I wouldn't wear 'em round my waist...!"
Etcetera, etcetera, amen!
Until the clocks announce the hour of Ten.
OZZY, who should have been at work by Nine,
Sans breakfast, rushes for the Subway line.
To spend the day forclosing mortgages,--
Poor widows ruining, with orphans on their knees.
While STEEL-TRAP ANDY, with a ghastly groan
Assumes his pants and seeks the telephone;
Reporting that he is on business gone,
And has been working in the Bronx since dawn!
Then, with a half pajama for a shirt,
Splendidly breakfasts at the gay BREVOORT.
REED once more chivies ROGERS from his bed,
And two hours late, goes officeward with dread.

Souls of Scribblers dead and gone,                                        Lines on the
Where in Hades have ye known                                             Dutch Treat
Better with or worser grub,
Than TOM MASSON'S Dutch Treat Club?
Has the bonehead waiter brought
Chicken-pie, when chops you sought?
For a mess of asphodel
Do they charge so high in Hell?
Bloweth not a double rose
Fairer than the IRWIN BROS.
Nor by other name as sweet
Would be HUGHES or JULIAN STREET!

I have heard that on a day
J.M. FLAGG had stayed away;
If he did, I do declare
Dutch Treat would dissolve in air!
What blithe spirit could be found
To better make the world go round?
Without him how could we face
CHARLIE TOWNE or JOSEPH CHASE?
Who could hear without a sob
All the tales of IRVIN COBB?
Souls of scribblers dead and gone
Where in Hades have ye known
Better food or worser grub
Than TOM MASSON'S Dutch Treat Club?

So I arrive at work at half-past-ten,
Sneak to my desk, and madly seize my pen;

[Etc.]