were i asked to choose a subject which would most gratify my own fancy i believe i would choose the docks and piers of new york. nowhere may you find a more pleasingly encouraging picture-life going on at a leisurely gait, but going, nor one withal set in a lovelier framework. and, personally, i have always foolishly imagined that the laborers and men of affairs connected with them must be the happier for that connection. it is more than probable that that is not true, but what can be more interesting than long, heavily-laden piers jutting out into the ever-flowing waters of a river? and those tall masts adjoining, how they rock and swing! whistler had a fancy for scenes like these; they appealed to his sense of line and background and romance. you can look at his etchings of collections of boats along the thames at london and see how keenly he must have felt the beauty of what he saw. networks of ropes and spars; stout, stodgy figures of half-idle laborers; delicious, comforting, homey suggestions of houses and spires behind; and then the water.
how the water sips and gurgles about these stanchions and spiles and hulls! you stand on the shore or on the hard-cobbled streets of the waterfront, crowded with trucks and cars, and you realize that the too, too solid substance of which they are composed is to be10 here for years. but this water at your feet, this dark, silent current sipping about the boats and rocking them, the big boats and the little boats, is running away. here comes a chip, there goes a wisp of straw. a tomato box comes leisurely bobbing upon the surface of the stream, and now a tug heaves into view, puffing and blowing, and then a great “liner” being towed to her dock. and then these nearer boats fastened here—how they rest and swing in the summer sunshine! no rush, no hurry. only slow movement. yet all are surely and gradually slipping away. in an hour your ship will be a mile or two farther down stream. in a day or two or three your liner will be once more upon the bosom of the broad atlantic or, later even, the pacific. the tug you saw towing it will be pulling at something else, or you will find it shoving its queer stubby nose into some quaint angle of the waterside, hardly earning its skipper’s salt. is it not a delicious, lovely, romantic picture? and yet with the tang of change and decay in it too, the gradual passing of all things—yourself—myself—all.
as for the vast piers on the shores of the hudson, the east river, the jersey side and brooklyn and staten island, where the liners house themselves, i cannot fancy anything more colorful. they come from all ports of the world, these big ships. they bring tremendous cargoes, not only of people but of goods, and they carry large forces of men, to say nothing of those who assist them to load and unload. if you watch any of the waterfronts to and from which they make their entry and departure you will find that you can easily tell when they are11 loading and unloading. the broad, expansive street-fronts before these piers are crowded with idling men waiting for the opportunity to work, the call of duty or of necessity. and it is an interesting crowd of men always, this, imposingly large on occasion. individually these men are crude but appealing, the kind of man that is usually and truly dubbed a workingman. they have in the main, rough, quaint, ambling figures, and rougher, ruder hands and faces. some of them are black from having shoveled in the holds of vessels or passed coal (coal-passers is their official title), and some are dusky and strawy from having juggled boxes and bales, but they are men who with a small capacity for mental analysis are taking things exactly as they find them. they are not even possessed of a trade, unless you would call the art of piling boxes and bales under the direction of a foreman a trade. apparently they have no sense of the sociologic or economic arrangement of life, no comprehension of the position which they occupy in the affairs of the world. they know they are laborers and as such subject to every whim and fancy of their masters. they stand or sit like sheep in droves awaiting the call of opportunity. you see them in sun or rain, on hot days and cold ones, waiting here. sometimes they jest, sometimes they talk, sometimes they sit and wait. but the water with which they are so intimately connected, from which they draw their subsistence, flows on. i have seen a vain, self-conscious foreman come out from one of these great pier buildings and with a c?sar-like wave of his hand beckon to this man and that. at his sign a dozen, a score of men would rise and look inquiringly in his12 direction, dumb and patient like cattle. and then he would pick this one and that, wavering subtly over his choice, pushing aside this one, who was not quite strong enough, perhaps, or agile enough, laying a hand favoringly on that, and then turning eventually and leaving the remaining members of the group dumb but a little disappointed. invariably they seemed to me to be a bit bereaved and neglected, sorry that they could not help themselves, but still willing to wait. i have sometimes thought that cattle are better provided for, or at least as well.
but from an artistic and natural point of view the scene has always fascinated me. is it morning? the sun sparkles on the waters, the wind blows free, gulls wheel and turn and squeal, white flecks above the water, swarms of vehicles gather with their loads, life seems to move at a smart clip. is it noon? a large group of men is to be seen idling in the sun, blue-jacketed, swarthy-faced, colorful against the dark background of the piers. is it night? the lanterns swing and rock. there is darkness overhead and the stars.
the waterfront
i sometimes think no human being ever lived who caught more significantly, more sweetly, the beauty of the waterfront than the great englishman, turner. when one looks at his canvases, rich in their gold of sunshine, their blue of sky, their haze of moisture, one feels all that the sea really presents. this man understood, as did whistler, only he translated his mood in regard to it all into richer colors, those gorgeous golds, reds, pinks, greens, blues. and he had a greater tenderness for atmosphere than did whistler. in whistler one misses13 more than the bare facts, albeit deliciously, artistically, perfectly presented. in turner one finds the facts presented as by nature in her balmiest mood, and idealized by the love and affection of the artist. you have seen “the fighting téméraire,” of course. it is here in new york harbor any sunny afternoon. the wind dies down, the sun pours in a golden flood upon the east bank from the west, the tall elevator stacks and towering chimneys of factories on the west shore give a beauty of line which no artist could resist. up the splashing bosom of the river, trembling silver and gold in the evening light, comes a great vessel. her sides stand out blackly. her masts and funnels, tinged with an evening glow of gold, burn and shimmer. against a magnificent, a radiant sky, where red and gold clouds hang in broken patches, she floats, exquisitely penciled and colored—“the fighting téméraire.” you would know her. only it is now the hudson and not the thames.
the skyline, the ship masts, the sun, the water, all these are alike. the very ship is the same, apparently, and the sun drops down as it did that other day when his picture was painted. the stars come out, the masts rock, swinging their little lamps, the water runs sipping and sucking at the docks and piers. the winds blow cool, and there is silence until the morning. then the waterfront assumes its quaint, delicious, easy atmosphere once more. it is once more fresh and free. so runs its tide, so runs its life, so runs our very world away.
