Halcyon Days in the Dream City

by Mrs. D. C. Taylor

Continued from Part 1

A May morning, cool but not cold, with a brisk wind, blowing, cloud shadows and sun bursts chasing one another across the deep blue sky. To-day we make our way straight from the 60th street entrance to the Midway Plaisance.

When we have passed through that tunnel like passage under the intramural railway, we have left America behind us. We are in foreign countries among foreign people. A strange, groaning, whistling noise attracts our attention, and glancing to the right, we see a tall brawny Highlander in full bravery of kilts and plaids, and what not, fingering the bag pipes and pacing swiftly to-and-fro, before the door of a large, low white building on which is painted in black letters the words, “World’s Congress of Beauty.” We approach the door, pay our entrance fee and enter.

We find ourselves in an immense hall brilliantly lighted by electricity; lined on all sides by gaily draped booths protected by iron railings, and raised some two or three feet above the floor. Stepping up to the first one on the right, we see a dark-eyed damsel seated in a chair, with two tiny feet encased in high-heeled slippers stretched straight out before her. She wears a rather short dress of yellow silk flounced with black lace, a long black lace mantilla is gracefully draped over her dark hair, and held in place by one crimson rose. Over her head hangs a banner with the word “Cuba.” She is rather pretty but not a beauty.

So on we pass from face to face, country to country, all represented by ladies and young girls in appropriate costumes, but sad to say, most positively, not one beauty among the whole congress. Greece, Spain, Arcadia, Italy all represented by different costumes and all posing in many attitudes of more or less, generally LESS, grace. They sit here all day long exposed to the comments of the gazing crowd; are to sit here for six long months. Let us hope they are well paid for it.

But what is this? here in this World’s congress of Beauty! A brown Bedouin, withered and dirty, with loose hanging head cloth and wrapped in mangy looking sheep skin. A strange looking instrument like a sort of gourd covered with skin, lies at his feet. We intimate by gesture that we wish him to play upon the drum, and after a little hesitation, he takes it up and resting it upon his knees, raps upon it with the extreme tips of his long bony fingers. It gives out a dull unmusical sound to which he keeps time with his sandaled feet, and soon he breaks out into a tuneless chant, keeping perfect time however, and pausing at intervals, while the fingers still keep up the rythmic rapping. This is the music of the desert. The wild warriors listen to such sounds when they rest in the shadow of their tents upon the hot sands at noonday. No doubt the words issuing from that cavernous mouth are some wild barbaric tale of love or war; and he who utters them, has in person careered upon his steed across the yellow sweeps of plain with glittering spear and clumsy matchlock at his side. What think you of us, wild son of the desert? But he chants monotonously on with rattle of drum and beat of sandals ’till we pass beyond hearing and are outside again.

We pause to admire the Highlander who still keeps up his march before the door, and one of us recalls the day, when in far off Edinboro’ town, she saw rank upon rank, file upon file, with swinging plaids crossing brawny breasts and brown bare knees showing beneath full kilts; to the sound of squealing bag pipes the Queen’s Highlanders march bravely down the street. Then we stroll along, and as we pass the inclosure bearing the name of the ‘South Sea Islands,’ the high gate swings open, and to the rattling of drums and jingling of cowry shells, marches out a company of naked savages, girt only with little skirts of bark. What splendid looking fellows! Not one under six feet high and many more than that. Their broad bare backs and muscular arms, smooth and gleaming like yellow satin and great round heads covered with crisp, close, black wool. Their countenances are fine and benignant looking. Can these be cannibals? If so why do they not break loose and take a meal off some fine plump, juicy maiden? for surely those giant frames and terrible looking spears and clubs, could put to flight scores of these dapper little beings in coats and trousers who seem to be guiding their movements. But no! meekly they follow the bidding of the little manikins, and disappear in the interior of the South Sea Island theatre, whither we do not follow them.

We go on! Pass through another tunnel-like passage, this time under the Illinois Central railway, and emerging from its cool darkness, find ourselves confronted on the right by a very high, lattice-like fence formed of reeds closely interlaced. Stepping up and peeping through we find that it incloses the Java village. Immediately in front of us about four feet from the fence, stands a queer little doll house on four little legs about a foot high. Its walls are made of flat reeds in two colors, black and white; so woven as to form a uniform pattern of square blocks. This has a border at the top of smaller blocks, and is surmounted by a curving gable roof which projects some three feet at the sides, and covered by a thatch formed of finely shred black bark, like jute, loosely plaited into bundles which are closely packed side by side and bound down by ropes of the same. No door is visible from where we stand and there are no windows. Between us and the doll house stand two animated dolls, with round olive faces, great dark eyes and dense masses of smooth rich black hair done up in heavy coils. Their lithe slender bodies are clad in skirts made of a single breadth of cotton cloth of dull dark color, drawn tightly and smoothly around the hips, and reaching to the ankles. Above these skirts are jackets of blue or white cotton, without seam or gather to mold them to the figure and reaching only to the waist. Their bare feet are thrust into slippers that cover only the instep and leave the heels exposed.

One of these ladies has a square of paper pinned up on the wall of the house, and is drawing something in blue chalk upon it. She and her companion are chatting volubly in regard to this and one of them disappears for a moment and comes back with another doll, dressed like herself. They take no more notice of us than they do of the fence, but finish their discussion and vanish. Walking along by the fence and still peeping through, we see many more of these little houses all built after the same pattern, though some are of white and red, and some blue and black. Walking about are many more of these doll like women, and little men dressed in full blue cotton trousers, and jackets like the women. Some of the women carry tiny little naked babies, but they all look miserably cold on this May day. Many of them wear colored cotton quilts pinned around their shoulders, and we see one woman with a bright pink quilt pinned about her neck and hanging straight behind her to the ground, while she shuffles dejectedly along, carrying a naked baby on one arm and a bright new tin coffee pot on the other. Poor things! How homesick they look! How they must long for their native land of warmth and sunshine! so lightly clothed and no means of warming their houses, and the sharp spring wind searching them out so keenly.

We peep in at the open door of one of the little houses, and see the inmates eating their noon meal. They sit cross-legged in a circle on the floor, around a large dish containing some kind of a white granular paste. Each one puts in his or her fingers and takes out a portion, and laying the back of the left hand upon the floor and making a hollow cup of the palm, with the right, mold and knead the paste for a moment, make it into a ball, and seem to hand it down the throat entire. They are a very busy lot, dipping, kneading, swallowing, while a gaping crowd looks in at the door. They are an industrious little people; all working like a hive of bees; some building houses, some making thatches, all at work down to a fat naked baby sitting on a mat before his father’s door, industriously gathering in a crop of pennies that the laughing crowd drops into his little fat brown hands, while his little lean brown father, unobstrusively [sic] posted in the background faithfully relieves him of his spoils. There is one language known the world over, and that is the language of mammon.

A hurrying mass of mites are engaged in building a theatre, all of the same material, bamboo large and small, and in all their labor no sound of the hammer is heard. Everything is bound with ropes, dovetailed and mortised and all with the one useful bamboo. They are a gentle little people and loving, and they pined for home. Long before the summer,—the fitful treacherous summer of this foreign land was over, they sought to return to their homes, but they were bound by contracts and forced to remain.[1] Three of their women, chilled to the heart by the cold lake breezes died in despair; and were laid to rest in the cold northern soil. The others have sailed away, and perchance in that dear land of kindly skies and soft airs, they speak sadly of those who sleep alone in that far off strange country.

Continued in Part 3

NOTES

[1] Mrs. Taylor’s one-sided experience of the Java Village and characterization of the occupants as “industrious little people” was a typical American response. For more on this, see Spiller, Henry Javaphilia: American Love Affairs with Javanese Music and Dance. U. Hawai‘i Press, 2015. Ch. 2 “Roots of American ‘Javas’: The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.”