The Walls of Jericho

I

Despite the objections of the dickties, who prefer to ignore the existence of so-called rats, it is of interest to consider Henry Patmore’s Pool Parlor on Fifth Avenue in New York.

The truth about Fifth Avenue has only half been told, that it harbors an aristocracy of residence already yielding to an aristocracy of commerce. Has any New Yorker confessed to the rest⁠—that when aristocratic Fifth Avenue crosses 110th Street, leaving Central Park behind, it leaves its aristocracy behind as well? Here are bargain-stores, babble, and kids, dinginess, odors, thick speech. Fallen from splendor and doubtless ashamed, the Avenue burrows into the ground⁠—plunges beneath a park which hides it from 116th to 125th Street. Here it emerges moving uncertainly northward a few more blocks; and now⁠—irony of ironies⁠—finds itself in Negro Harlem.

You can see the Avenue change expression⁠—blankness, horror, conviction. You can almost see it wag its head in self-commiseration. Not just because this is Harlem⁠—there are proud streets in Harlem: Seventh Avenue of a Sunday afternoon, Strivers’ Row, and The Hill. Fifth Avenue’s shame lies in having missed these so-called dickty sections, in having poked its head out into the dark kingdom’s backwoods. A city jungle this, if ever there was one, peopled largely by untamed creatures that live and die for the moment only. Accordingly, here strides melodrama, naked and unashamed.