The Phantom Of Manhattan (1999) Page 7

  ‘The cardinal went on his way and I thought no more about it. Four weeks later a letter arrived from the principal of the Irish College offering me a place. Bishop Delaney said he was sorry to see me go but gave me his blessing and urged me to take the chance. So I packed my single bag and took the train to Dublin. I thought that was big, until the ferry and another train brought me to London. Sure I had never seen such a place nor thought any city could be so big and grand.

  ‘Then there was a ferry to France and another train, this time to Paris. Another amazing sight; I could hardly believe what I was seeing. The last train brought me through the Alps and down to Rome itself.’

  ‘Were you surprised by Rome?’

  ‘Amazed and overawed. Here was the Vatican City itself, the Sistine Chapel, the Basilica of St Peter … I stood in the crowd and looked up at the balcony and took the Urbi et Orbi blessing from His Holiness himself. And I wondered how a boy from a potato patch outside Mullingar could ever have come so far and been so privileged. So I wrote home to my parents, telling them everything, and they took the letter round the whole village and showed it to everyone and they became celebrities themselves.’

  ‘But why do you now live with us, Father Joe?’

  ‘Another coincidence, Pierre. Six years ago your mama came to sing in Rome. I know nothing of opera but by chance a member of the cast, an Irishman, collapsed with a heart attack in the wings. Someone was sent running to ask for a priest and I was on duty that night. There was nothing I could do for the poor man but give him the last rites, but he had been carried to your mama’s dressing-room at her insistence. That was where I met her. She was very distressed. I tried to comfort her by explaining that God is never malign, even when He takes back one of His children to Himself. I had made it my business to master Italian and French, so we spoke in French. It seemed to surprise her that someone should speak both, plus English and Gaelic.

  ‘She also had problems for other reasons. Her career was taking her all over Europe, from Russia to Spain, from London to Vienna. Your father needed to spend more time with his estates in Normandy. You were six and running wild, your education constantly interrupted by the travelling, but too young for boarding-school and anyway she did not wish to be parted from you. I suggested she might engage a resident tutor to travel with her everywhere. She was thinking it over when I left, to return to the college and resume my studies.

  ‘Her engagement was for a week, and on the day before she left I was summoned to the office of the principal, and there she was. Clearly she had made quite an impression. She wished me to become your tutor, for formal education, moral guidance and a bit of manly control thrown in. I was dumbfounded and tried to decline.

  ‘But the principal would have none of it and he made it a flat order. As obedience is one of the vows, the die was cast. And as you know I have been with you ever since, trying to shove some knowledge into that head of yours and keep you from becoming a complete barbarian.’

  ‘Do you regret it, Father Joe?’

  ‘No, I do not. For your father is a fine man, better than you know, and your mama is a great lady with an extraordinary God-given talent. I live and eat too well, of course, and must say constant penance for this life of luxury, but I have seen amazing things: cities to take the breath away, paintings and art galleries that are the stuff of legend, operas to make you cry, and me a boy from the potato patch!’

  ‘I’m glad Mama chose you, Father Joe.’

  ‘Well, thank you for that, but you won’t be when we start into Caesar’s Gallic Wars again. Which ought to be now, but here comes your mother. Stand up, lad!’

  ‘What are you two doing in here? We have turned into the Roads, the sun has come out and burned off the mist and from the bow you can see all of New York moving towards us. Wrap up warm and come to look. For this is one of the greatest sights of the world and if we depart in darkness you will never see it again.’

  ‘Very good, my lady, we are on our way. Looks as if you are lucky once again, Pierre. No more Caesar today.’

  ‘Father Joe?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Will there be great adventures in New York?’

  ‘More than enough, for the captain has told me there is a huge civic reception awaiting at the docking pier. We’ll be staying at the Waldorf-Astoria, one of the biggest and most famous hotels in the world. In five days your mama will open a brand-new opera house and star nightly for a week. In that time I think we’ll be able to explore a little, see the sights, ride the new elevated train - I have read all about it in a book I bought in Le Havre …

  ‘Well now, will you look at that, Pierre. Is it not a fantastic sight? Liners and tugs, freighters and tramps, schooners and paddlers; how on earth do they not bang into each other? And there she is, look, over to the left. The Lady with the Lamp herself, the Statue of Liberty. Ah, Pierre, if you only knew how many wretched people, fleeing from the Old World, have seen her coming out of the mist and known they were starting a new life. Millions of them, including my own fellow-countrymen and women. For since the Great Famine fifty years ago half of Ireland has moved to New York, crammed like cattle into the steerage holds, coming on deck in the freezing cold of morning to watch the city move across the water and pray they would be allowed in.

  ‘Since then many of them have moved inland, even as far as the coast of California to help create a new nation. But many are still here in New York, the Irish-Americans, more in this city alone than in all of Dublin, Cork and Belfast combined. So I’ll be feeling quite at home here, my lad. I’ll even be able to get a pint of good Irish stout, which I have not found for many years.

  ‘Yes, New York will indeed be for all of us a great adventure and who knows what will happen to us here? God alone knows but He will not tell us. So we must find out for ourselves. Now, time to go and change for the civic reception. Young Meg will stay with your mama; you stick close by me all the way to the hotel.’

  ‘OK, Father Joe. That’s what the Americans say. OK. I read it in a book. And will you look after me in New York?’

  ‘Of course, lad. Do I not always, when your papa is not here? Now run along. Best suit and best manners.’

  8

  THE DESPATCH OF BERNARD SMITH

  SHIPPING CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK AMERICAN, 29 NOVEMBER 1906

  FURTHER PROOF WAS OFFERED, IF FURTHER PROOF was even needed, that the great harbor of New York has become the greatest magnet in the world for the reception of the finest and most luxurious liners our earth has ever seen.

  Just ten years ago barely more than three luxury liners plied the North Atlantic route from Europe to the New World. The voyage was hard and most travelers favored the summer months. Today our tugs and lightermen are spoiled for choice.

  The British Inman Line now has a regular schedule with her City of Paris. Cunard match their rivals with the new Campania and Lucania, while the White Star Line fight back with Majestic and Teutonic. All these Britishers are fighting for the privilege of carrying the rich and famous from Europe to experience the hospitality of our great city.

  Yesterday it was the turn of the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique out of Le Havre, France, to send the jewel of their crown, La Lorraine, sister ship of the equally sumptuous La Savoie, to take up her reserved berth on the Hudson river. Nor were her passengers confined to the cream of the high society of France; the Lorraine brought us all an extra and very special prize.

  Small wonder that from the breakfast hour, before even the French ship was clear of the Roads and rounding the tip of Battery Point, a host of private broughams and hansoms was beginning to choke Canal Street and Morton Street as sightseers from the mansions uptown sought a place from which to applaud our guest, New York style.

  And who was she? Why, none other than Christine, Vicomtesse de Chagny, deemed by many to be the greatest opera soprano in the world - but don’t tell Nellie Melba, who is due in ten days!

  The French Line’s Pier 42 was decked overall with bun
ting and Tricolore flags as the sun came out and the mist lifted to reveal the Lorraine, with her tugs fussing about her, easing herself stern first into her berth on the Hudson.

  Space was at a premium for the craning crowds as the Lorraine greeted us with three great whoops from her foghorn and smaller vessels up and down the river responded in kind. At the head of the pier was the podium, hung with French flags and Old Glory, where Mayor George B. McClellan would offer Mme de Chagny a formal welcome to New York, just five days before she will star in the inaugural opera at the new Manhattan Opera House.

  Grouped around the base of the podium was a sea of shining top hats and waving bonnets as half of New York society waited for a glimpse of the incoming star. From neighboring piers dockers and stevedores who must surely never have heard of the opera house or the soprano clambered up cranes and derricks to satisfy their curiosity. Before the Lorraine had cast her first hawser down to the pier, every structure along the quay was black with humanity. French Line staff rolled out a long red carpet from the dais to the base of the gangway as soon as the latter was in place.

  Customs men scurried up the gangway to complete the necessary formalities for the diva and her entourage in the privacy of her stateroom even as, with due pomp and circumstance, the Mayor arrived at the pierhead accompanied by a blue-coated squad of New York’s Finest. He and the bosses of City Hall and Tammany Hall who had come with him were escorted through the throng to mount the podium while a police band struck up ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. All hats were doffed as the Mayor and city dignitaries took their places on the dais, facing down the pier to the lower end of the gangway.

  For myself, I had avoided the ground-level press enclosure to occupy a window on the second floor of a warehouse right on the pierhead and from here I could look out upon the entire scene, the better to describe to readers of the American just what happened.

  Aboard the Lorraine herself the first-class passengers stared down from the upper decks, having themselves a grandstand view but prevented from disembarking until the civic welcome was over. In the lower portholes I could see the faces of the steerage-class passengers peering out and up to see what was going on.

  At a few minutes before ten there was a hubbub on the Lorraine as the captain and a group of officers escorted a single figure towards the head of the gangway. After cordial farewells to her French compatriots, Mme de Chagny began her journey down the gangway to her first-ever contact with American soil. Waiting to greet her was Mr Oscar Hammerstein, the impresario who owns and runs the Manhattan Opera and whose tenacity of purpose has succeeded in enticing both the vicomtesse and Nellie Melba across the Atlantic in winter to sing for us.

  With an old-world gesture seen with increasing rarity in our society, he bowed and kissed her extended hand. There was a loud ‘Ooooooh’ and some whistles from the workers clinging to the surrounding derricks but the mood was joyful rather than mocking and a round of applause greeted the gesture - it came from the ranks of the silk top hats grouped around the podium.

  Reaching the red carpet Mme de Chagny turned and, on the arm of Mr Hammerstein, proceeded along the length of the quay towards the dais. As she did so, and with a flair that would certainly put her in the running for Mayor McClellan’s job, she waved and flashed a beaming smile at the dockers atop the packing-crates and hanging from the girders of the cranes. They replied with even more whistles, this time of great appreciation. As none of them will ever hear her sing, this gesture went down extremely well.

  Through powerful glasses I could bring the lady into focus from my upper window. At thirty-two she is very beautiful, trim and petite. Opera-lovers have been known to wonder how such a magnificent voice could be contained in such a lissom frame. She wore from shoulder to ankles - for despite the sun the temperature was just above zero - a tight-waisted and befrogged coat in burgundy velvet, trimmed with mink at throat, cuffs and hem, with a circular Cossack-style hat of the same fur. Her hair was tucked into a neat chignon behind her head. The ladies of fashion of New York City will have to look to their laurels when this lady saunters down Peacock Alley.

  Behind her I could see her remarkably small and non-fussy entourage descending the gangway: her personal maid and former colleague Mlle Giry, two male secretaries to handle her correspondence and traveling arrangements, her son Pierre, a handsome boy of twelve, and his traveling tutor, an Irish priest in black soutane and broad-brimmed hat, youthful himself, with a wide and open grin.

  As the lady was helped up to the podium Mayor McClellan shook her hand, American style, and launched into his formal welcome, something he will have to repeat in ten days’ time for the Australian Nellie Melba. But if there were any fears that Mme de Chagny might not understand what was being said, these were soon dispelled. She needed no translation and indeed when the Mayor had finished she stepped to the front of the dais and thanked us all most prettily in fluent English with a delightful French accent.

  What she had to say was both surprising and flattering. After her thanks to the Mayor and the city for a most touching reception, she confirmed that she had come to sing for one week only in the inaugural opera at the Manhattan Opera House and that the work in question would be an entirely new opera, never heard before, by an unknown American composer.

  Then she revealed new details. The story was set in the American Civil War and entitled The Angel of Shiloh, concerning the struggle between love and duty besetting a Southern belle in love with a Union officer. She would sing the role of Eugenie Delarue. She added that she had seen the lyric and score in Paris in handwritten form, and it was the sheer beauty of the work that had caused her to change her itinerary and cross the Atlantic. Clearly her implication was that money had played no part in her decision, a poke in the eye for Nellie Melba. The working men on the cranes around the pier, silent while she spoke, let out a prolonged cheer and many whistles which would have been ill-mannered if they were not so obviously admiring. Again she waved at them and turned to descend the steps on the other side in order to board her waiting coach.

  At this point, in a hitherto carefully staged and flawless ceremony, two things happened which were emphatically not on the foreseen scenario. The first was puzzling and seen by few; the second caused a roar of amusement.

  For some reason I let my glance stray from the dais below me while she was speaking and saw, standing on the roof of a great warehouse directly opposite mine, a strange figure. It was of a man, standing quite motionless and staring down. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and was otherwise wrapped in a flowing cloak that flapped about him in the wind. There was something strange and vaguely sinister about the lone figure, standing high above us, looking down on the lady from France as she spoke. How did he get up there unseen? What was he doing? Why was he not with the rest of the crowd?

  I adjusted my eyeglasses for the new focus; he must have seen the sun glint on the lenses for he suddenly looked up and stared straight back at me. Then I saw that he wore a mask over his face and through the eyeholes it seemed as if he gazed fiercely at me for a couple of seconds. I heard a few shouts from the dockers clinging still to the cold steel of the derricks, and saw pointing fingers. But by the time those below started to look up, he was gone, with a speed that defies explanation. One second he was there, the next the skyline was empty. He had vanished as if he had never been.

  Seconds later the small chill this apparition might have created was dispelled by a roar of applause and laughter from below. Mme de Chagny had emerged from the rear of the raised speaking-dais and was approaching the liveried brougham prepared for her by Mr Hammerstein. The Mayor and the city fathers were a few steps behind. All saw that between their guest and her carriage, beyond the range of the red carpet, lay a large pool of half-melted slush, evidently left over from yesterday’s snowfall.

  A man’s stout boots would have made short shrift of it, but the French aristocrat’s dainty shoes? New York City’s government stood and stared in dismay but helpless. Then I saw a y
oung man vault over the barrier that surrounded the Press enclosure. He was wearing a coat of his own but carried over his arm something else which was soon revealed as a large evening cape. This he swung in an arc so that it landed right over the slush between the opera star and the open door of her brougham. The lady flashed a brilliant smile, stepped onto the cape and in two seconds was inside her carriage with the coachman closing the door.

  The young man picked up his soaking and muddied cape and exchanged a few words with the face framed in the window before the coach rattled away. Mayor McClellan gave the young man a grateful pat on the back and as he turned I perceived it was none other than a young colleague of mine on this very newspaper.

  All’s well, as the saying goes, that ends well and the welcome given by New York to the lady from Paris ended extremely well. Now she is ensconced in the finest suite at the Waldorf-Astoria with five days of rehearsals and voice-protecting before her no doubt triumphant debut at the Manhattan Opera House on 3 December.

  Meanwhile, I suspect that a certain young colleague of mine from the City Desk will be explaining to one and all that the spirit of Raleigh is not entirely dead!!

  9

  THE OFFER OF CHOLLY BLOOM

  LOUIE’S BAR, FIFTH AVENUE AT 28TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY, 29 NOVEMBER 1906

  DID I EVER GET AROUND TO TELLING YOU GUYS THAT being a reporter in New York is the greatest job in the world? I did? Well, forgive me but I’m going to say it again. Anyway, you have to forgive me, ‘cause I’m buying. Barney, could we have a round of beers?