72: Central Park Sailboat Pond
72. E.B. White added the name Stuart Little to the roster of famous New Yorkers in 1945. Despite being a mouse, Stuart distinguished himself as a snappy dresser. He also proved to be an able yachtsman when he skippered a model sloop to victory in a race on the Conservatory Water, more popularly known as the Central Park Sailboat Pond.
Welcome to Reading the City.
It was fun to visit the sailboat pond on a gorgeous day and reflect on my childhood obsession with Stuart Little. Here’s what I remember about Stuart Little, without revisiting the book. Stuart Little is a mouse. Maybe? More on that later. His love of adventure inspired me to want to get in my own little homemade car with wooden coins I could use to buy a drink of sarsaparilla in a beautiful town. What is sarsaparilla? I still remember this word. My parents made me write down unfamiliar words I encountered in books and look them up in the dictionary.
As I stood at the edge of the pond I thought to myself, did Mrs. Little, a human woman, give birth to Stuart, a mouse? And did everyone, including a human child previously born to the Littles, just kind of act as if this rodent birth were a normal thing? I Googled it to find that Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings wrote about this:
…Mr. Frederick C. Little and his wife conceive and give birth to a human baby — who just happens to look like a fully-grown two-inch-tall mouse, complete with tail and whiskers. No one seems too concerned by this development; the doctor is “delighted with Stuart and said that it was very unusual for an American family to have a mouse.” To be fair, it’s not clear that E. B. White actually knows what a mouse really is. “Before he was many days old he was not only looking like a mouse but acting like one, too — wearing a gray hat and carrying a small cane.” That’s…acting like a mouse to you?
Stuart’s smallness and sweet nature are the engine for the rest of the plot, but after his family’s initial surprise wears off, no one ever talks much about his mouse-like appearance. Sure, his parents take care not to sing “Three Blind Mice” around him, but Mrs. Little never wonders why a mouse-sized fetus would produce a normal baby bulge, and Mr. Little never asks his wife if she had a torrid affair with a rodent tradesman. But White is always very clear: Stuart is not a mouse. His mom calls him “my poor little boy” when he’s sick, and later on his travels he refers to himself as “a society man” and “a young person of modest proportions.” He “does look a good deal like a mouse,” as his father can’t help noticing, but he’s not a mouse. He’s a two-inch person who just happens to have fur, a tail, and mouse ears. You want to make something of it?
You may have a copy of The Elements of Style, co-written by E.B. White. I keep mine on the shelf next to Dreyer’s English.
Side note: My friend Amanda came with me on the journey. She works for New York Life, a client of Science House, the company I co-direct in Manhattan. New York Life just supported the installation of this statue of Women’s Rights Pioneers in Central Park. It was the first time I’ve seen a client face to face in seven months of constant Zoom calls. I hand-delivered a proposal to her as if there’s no such thing as the internet.
White’s most poignant book is HERE IS NEW YORK. I have a first edition, from 1949. I have had it since childhood. I have read it many times. It is filled with the visible symbols of aspiration, towers, the sound of the Queen Mary’s horn, the excitement of creativity, the brief medicinal illusion of gin.
A night bell rings in the building. Someone sings off-key. The intimation of travel injected into the pledge of love. Purple light, paper bags. Advertising displays. Great mansions in decline. The intimation of mortality. The stubborn fact of annihilation. Doormen blowing whistles for cabs. Long, blue-black hair in the lamplight. Watermelons and lingerie. The vibrations of great times and tall deeds. A magical illusion, all free.
The book famously includes a passage about the kinds of people populating our city.
“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities, the greatest is the last — the city of final destination, the city that is a goal.”
I grew up here with people who came from somewhere else. My Italian great-grandfather in Brooklyn whose garden was a slice of paradise filled with roses, grapes, hot peppers and mint. He kept his wooden wine barrel in the cellar and sent me in to collect the skins. The early printing press, by the way, used the same technology at the core of the wine press. My great-grandmother kept a go-bag next to her chair after the house next door burned down and the charred remains of the children killed in the fire were removed via the fire escape, through her window and kitchen. The men who spent their lives in prison for arson were falsely accused.
But a fourth New York exists. The fourth New York is populated by those who choose to stay, whether they came from elsewhere or remember they are not so far removed from those who did. We can leave, but we don’t. We are all free to move, whether born in New York or not. The fourth New York chooses to stay. We are the New Yorkers with no illusions. The city is not an episode of a television show once watched in another city. We do not believe the city exists to serve our fantasies. We are the architects who shape the future. Sure, we can climb into a homemade car with a fistful of whittled coins and enjoy the occasional sarsaparilla in a beautiful little town, but we are here, carving a path between towers, a life, forging connections, creating things, and fighting to keep the flickering flame of this city’s promise alive. People can come from anywhere in this world and become equal New Yorkers. It is the best thing about this city, though Central Park is a close second.
