A Small Boy and Others by James Henry; Collister Peter;

Author:James, Henry; Collister, Peter;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Virginia Press

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346. From the 1820s “large, elegant houses, some with marble fronts, were lining Bond and Bleecker Streets” and the district was regarded as competition when the construction of Washington Square was being mooted early in that decade. Spacious and broad, Bond Street was one of a select number served by mews that stabled horses and liveries for the residents' convenience. The rich Samuel Ward's Greek Revival mansion on the northeast corner of Broadway and Bond Street survived until 1872. The location attracted some of New York's wealthiest and most prestigious families until, “in the 1850s, Bond Street was eclipsed in desirability by Fifth Avenue, as was every other prime area in the city. Its quick slide into commercial use came from increased trade on Broadway, tawdry businesses, and the spread of rowdy gangs over the Bowery. Lurid press coverage of a ghastly murder on the block in 1857 didn't help” (Harris, Around Washington Square, 9, 47, 68).

347. Probably a good mile's walk. From what HJ says—and his later routine in London repeats the experience—the liberty to wander freely may have been “a calculated thing on the part of our dear parents.”

348. For the amenities of Union Square as a public space in the midcentury, see n. 171.

349. HJ appears to use the European (as opposed to the American) system of numbering stories whereby the first floor is above the ground floor.

350. “The first regular public transports in the city were the omnibuses running along Broadway in the early 1830s, large lumbering stagecoaches like the vehicles which travelled between New York, Boston and Philadelphia. They carried twelve passengers (for a 10-cent fare) and were notoriously slow and overcrowded” (Homberger, Historical Atlas of New York City, 106).

351. The intransitive verb “darkles” (becomes clouded or grows dark) is unusual diction even for HJ.

352. This whole chapter, with its innocent children, gloomy, nightmarish schoolrooms, and predominantly fearsome and caricatured teachers, develops a Dickensian drama of grotesquely misapplied education. HJ, however, invokes the work of Alphonse Daudet, “a great student of Dickens,” as he describes him in an essay reviewing Ernest Daudet's Mon frère et moi: Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse (LC 2, 210). The older James brothers would have been prepared for a reading of Jack, since the conditions of their schooldays, as recorded here, seem to foreshadow the unnerving experiences of the young Jack, who endures life at the Gymnase Moronval, that “multi-colored school,” (Jack: Moeurs contemporaines, 3rd ed. [Paris: Dentu, 1876], 1:33; translated into English by Laura Ensor [London: Routledge, 1890], 37), off the Champs Élysées. Of uncertain parentage, he is left there in the first phase of the novel by his pleasure-seeking mother: “It seemed to him that his life was now to be thrown amongst orphans, forsaken children, himself as forsaken as though he also had come from Timbuctoo or Tahiti” (Fr. 1:49; Eng. 51). The children board in squalid conditions and are taught by incompetent, failed teachers. “Pays chauds” are the tropics, and “petits pays chauds” is the name given to the unfortunate boarders who have arrived from distant lands to be educated.

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