Of course, nothing was as I’d envisioned it. My geography of the city was all askew. And Greenwich Village, I had no idea. . . .
All that noise. So different from our quiet enclave in Chelsea. Automobiles and taxis always going too fast, always honking. A cacophony of voices—vendors calling out from pushcarts, hawking cheap necklaces and rings and scarves; children spilling out from tenements into the streets to play ball, chase rats, and yell epithets at each other and anyone who happened to be near. Greenwich Village was a carnival. We were, all of us, amused and delighted.
Still, it was disconcerting to discover that, as denizens of the neighborhood, we were tourist attractions. Double-decker tour buses regularly rolled through the quaint, diagonal streets—“Bohemian Excursions” they called them. Little boys stood at the end of Macdougal Alley, offering, for a quarter, to show passersby where Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney had a studio. Step right this way, ladies and gents, see where the rich lady woiks same as for a livin’!
Macdougal Alley, our new address, was an artists’ enclave, a little cul-de-sac just off Macdougal Street, between Eighth Street and Washington Square. Not long before, the alleyway had housed rows of horse stables, and a few were still in use—most days we could catch a whiff of horse manure or hear a faint whinnying. Often, we had to maneuver our way around horse droppings. And like the Village itself, the alley was not a quiet place. Wagons rolled in, groaning. Aproned loaders delivered blocks of marble or slabs of clay. Smocked and spattered artists stood outside their doors, chatting amiably—or not so amiably—about art or food or local politics. Children played on the cobblestoned lane: skip-rope or one o’ cat or hopscotch. Dogs wandered in and out, usually managing to disturb a game of marbles or jacks. The children would leap up, whooping, and chase them away. Cats, ignoring the pandemonium, slept curled up on doorsteps, alongside potted plants.
Hidden in the back corner of the alley, behind Gertrude’s studio at No. 19, was the Jumble Shop, a homey and colorful café. It was a popular gathering place for poets, artists, and musicians who’d sit into the wee hours talking, drinking, and eating. More or less in that order.
I fell in love with Macdougal Alley immediately. The children, the artists, the animals. It all felt quite like home to me.
margery
There were only a few days before the opening for Pamela’s exhibition. Francesco was wild with anticipation.
He kept calling Mr. Kennerley, the president of Anderson Galleries, asking questions, making changes. I heard him talking about publicity, people who must be invited to the reception, arrangement of the pictures, prices to be increased or decreased.
Alone, with me, he worried. Gertrude liked Pamela’s art, of course, but did that mean Americans in general would feel the same? What if no one bought Pamela’s work? What if they didn’t even care for it?
I gave him all the expected reassurances. That Pamela could not fail. That her appeal was universal. At any rate, I told him, there was not a thing we could do about any of it.
By then I was glad Francesco was in control, I had no urge to interfere. Things had been quite calm between us for in the last few years. Still, there was an undercurrent, unacknowledged. We both felt it. Small things—perhaps he would stop midsentence, or I might give him a look I couldn’t take back. There were voices altered, words ignored. We would pretend nothing had happened. But his old betrayal burned beneath the surface of our marriage like a peat fire. I feared it would take only a tiny spark to cause a conflagration.
With luck, I thought, it would not happen.
? ? ?
Yes, well.
It did happen. Quite quickly.
When the moment came, somehow I steeled myself, turned away. But it went against all natural instinct, as if an ember had leapt from the fireplace, and I just let it sit on the rug, burn a hole right through.
pamela
Early on the morning of the opening, Daddy and I walked all the way uptown to the gallery at Park Avenue and 59th Street. He wanted to check on things one last time.
Anderson Galleries was huge, intimidating. My work—170 of my drawings and paintings—filled three vast, high-ceilinged rooms, hung on walls covered in great swaths of red velvet. The pictures were arranged more or less chronologically from newest to oldest. One room in the back was devoted entirely to the works of my earliest childhood.
Daddy was quiet. He kept rearranging his pocket handkerchief—I knew that meant that he was nervous. He must have been very worried that the crowds wouldn’t appear, that no one would buy my pictures. I followed my father in nervous silence as he made the final rounds of the great halls.
As soon as the doors opened, rivers of people filled the gallery. Before long, it was difficult to move about. Many viewers had trouble getting close enough to see the pictures without leaning over someone’s shoulder or standing on tiptoe. Mr. Kennerley said he’d never in his entire career seen a show mobbed that way. He’d never seen such sales, either. In the first week, more than a hundred pictures sold! The room reserved for my earliest works was almost stripped bare and had to be closed while new pictures were hung. Mr. Kennerley was especially pleased that so many of the purchasers were celebrities and members of New York society’s elite—people with names like Frick and Vanderbilt and Hopkins.
The songwriter Jerome Kern could not decide which of my rabbit drawings he liked best, and so he bought three.
Americans, it seemed, liked my work very much indeed.
GIRL ARTIST AT 14
HAS EXHIBITON HERE
____
Anderson Galleries Show Work
of Child Who Took Italy and
England by Storm
____
PAINTINGS EAGERLY SOUGHT
The New York Sun
March 21, 1921
*
14-YEAR-OLD BRUSH WIZARD AMAZES WORLD WITH GENIUS
____
Little Blonde Pamela Bianco, Here from England, Plays
with Home-Made Dolls and Creates Canvas Masterpieces
Between Times
New York Evening Telegram
March 27, 1921
*
CHILD’S PAINTINGS FIND READY MARKET
____
Society Leaders Take Many Pictures from the Exhibit of Pamela Bianco, Aged 14
____
Purchasers include Mrs. J. H. Hopkins, Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, Mrs. Bayard Cutting, Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, Miss Helen Frick. Jerome Kern, the songwriter, takes the largest number of pictures.
The New York Times
March 30, 1921
margery