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Title: Turns about Town
Author: Holliday, Robert Cortes, 1880-1947
Language: English
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TURNS ABOUT TOWN
ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
By ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
TURNS ABOUT TOWN
MEN AND BOOKS AND CITIES
BROOME STREET STRAWS
WALKING-STICK PAPERS
PEEPS AT PEOPLE
BOOTH TARKINGTON
THE MEMOIR TO:
JOYCE KILMER: POEMS
ESSAYS AND LETTERS
TURNS ABOUT
TOWN
BY
ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
_Copyright, 1921,
By George H. Doran Company_
_Printed in the United States of America_
CORRESPONDENCE
CONCERNING
THE
DEDICATION
OF THIS BOOK
TO JOHN BUNKER, ESQRE
_The Players,
16 Gramercy Park,
New York City,
June 10, 1921._
DEAR JOHN:
I am, with your permission, dedicating to you a new book of
mine--that it, on condition that you help me read the proofs. The
book is to be called "Turns About Town." It will be published
sometime this autumn.
_Ever yours,_
BOB.
_To: John Bunker, Esqre_
* * * * *
_New York,
521 West 148th Street,
June 12, 1921._
DEAR BOB:
_You can't intimidate me by any such threat. On the contrary, I
think I shall be secretly (and tremendously) pleased. As for the
proofs, all I have to say is (in the words of the stage villain),
"Produce your proofs!"_
_Always, dear Bob,
Sincerely yours,_
JOHN.
_To: Robert Cortes Holliday, Esqre_
FOREWORD
More than half of these pieces were syndicated in a number of American
newspapers by The Central Press Association of New York. Several others
of them originally appeared in _The Bookman_. "Literary Lives" has been
amplified since it was written for the New York _Times_ as a review of
the "Dictionary of National Biography," Second Supplement, Volumes II
and III. "Only She Was There" and "Former Tenant of His Room" are
reprinted from the New York _Evening Post_. "The Sexless Camera" was
contributed to a magazine called _The International_. "I Know an Editor"
was written at the invitation of a gentleman whose name I cannot recall,
and whether or not he ever used it in whatever publication it was with
which he was connected I do not know.
I thank all these friends of mine for permitting me to here reprint
these articles.
R. C. H.
New York, 1921.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD vii
I THE HOTEL GUEST 13
II A HUMORIST MISFITS AT A MURDER TRIAL 28
III QUEER THING, 'BOUT UNDERTAKERS' SHOPS 36
IV THE HAIRCUT THAT WENT TO MY HEAD 46
V SEEING MR. CHESTERTON 55
VI WHEN IS A GREAT CITY A SMALL VILLAGE? 72
VII THE UNUSUALNESS OF PARISIAN PHILADELPHIA 81
VIII OUR LAST SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT AS A FINE ART 90
IX WRITING IN ROOMS 99
X TAKING THE AIR IN SAN FRANCISCO 115
XI BIDDING MR. CHESTERTON GOOD-BYE 124
XII NO SYSTEM AT ALL TO THE HUMAN SYSTEM 141
XIII SEEING THE "SITUATIONS WANTED" SCENE 151
XIV LITERARY LIVES 162
XV SO VERY THEATRICAL 173
XVI OUR STEEPLEJACK OF THE SEVEN ARTS 182
XVII FORMER TENANT OF HIS ROOM 196
XVIII ONLY SHE WAS THERE 205
XIX A HUMORIST'S NOTE-BOOK 216
XX INCLUDING STUDIES OF TRAFFIC "COPS" 228
XXI THREE WORDS ABOUT LITERATURE 236
XXII RECOLLECTIONS OF LANDLADIES 242
XXIII AN IDIOSYNCRASY 256
XXIV THE SEXLESS CAMERA 271
XXV I KNOW AN EDITOR 276
XXVI A DIP INTO THE UNDERWORLD 281
XXVII NOSING 'ROUND WASHINGTON 290
XXVIII FAME: A STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 328
TURNS ABOUT TOWN
TURNS ABOUT TOWN
CHAPTER I
THE HOTEL GUEST
Some people just go to a hotel (sometimes referred to as "an hotel") and
stay awhile and go away again. And think nothing about the matter.
Of course, some may complain more or less at the place about the
"service." Or swank round outside about the address, saying carelessly:
"Oh! yes: at the Blackstone, you know." Or again, if it's a rather
inexpensive place, remark to friends: "Isn't it a funny hole! But the
cuisine is excellent. You'd be surprised! That's why I stop there. And
then it's much more homey, too, than those garish places."
Now I myself am a fan for hotels.
If I was a rich man I'd do like an aristocratic and restless young man I
know, who used to go to one New York hotel about twelve at night (after
the evening's entertainment) and leave a call for ten in the morning,
when he would get up and drive to another hotel, check in, eat lunch and
dinner there, and move on to a third New York hotel that night. A
cheerful way he had of adding variety to his life.
He was a highly agreeable youth, this chap. Always "wore" a
silver-headed cane. I'm sorry to have to say that he is now in jail.
Yep! You see, he had many attractive qualities, but dependability was
not a feature of his equipment. However, his is a resilient nature, and,
fortunately, he is an epicure by temperament. I was rather distressed,
myself, when I heard that he was in jail; and other of his friends that
I met also were decidedly disturbed about him. One day one of them got a
letter from him (it was in France, you know, that he was then in jail),
a bubbling, delightful letter (just like the youth), in which he
declared with much gusto that the jail he was in had the best menu of
any jail in France.
But about hotels. Oh, yes!
I always like those huge, brown-paper laundry bags they have hanging up,
pressed beautifully flat, in the rooms, closets or bathrooms of hotels.
You can't roll up your laundry all in one wad and thrust it into one of
these bags, because this would tear the bag. The way to do is to put in,
for instance, first your collars, then, say, your sox, follow perhaps
with your shirts, and so on. In hotels of the very first water, you have
observed, a neat little pocket is attached to the outside of the bag,
into which you have the fun of pinning your laundry slip, all
elaborately made out.
Next thing, of course, is to get your laundry started on its way. And
here come up a view of the nice nuances of hotels. You gotta watch your
Ps and Qs in these matters or you're likely to get a black-eye at your
hotel. All right in a modest sort of place just to holler down the
telephone for a boy. Then you say to boy, waving hand toward objects:
"Laundry to go down, suit to be pressed, hat to be ironed, shoes to be
polished, letters to be mailed," and so forth. Boy gathers up
miscellaneous collection of articles and proceeds upon these divers
assignments. Presto! Nothing further to detain you.
But suppose you have gone in for a little more class in the matter of
your hotel--Statler, or something like that. Then you find much more of
a ritual to life. To accomplish your existence requires thought, a clear
head--and time. You pay the penalty of the dignity of pomp and
circumstance. No large, off-hand, free and easy manner about sending up
a boy. The "operator" knows nothing of boys. In the matter of your
laundry you may request her to connect you with the "bell captain,"
through whose agency (but not otherwise) a boy may be procured. One
message. In the matter of your suit you may request to be connected with
the "valet service." Message two. And so on.
Then you sit you down and await the procession. Or, if you prefer,
contemplate the spectacle of life by looking out at the window.
You fee Buttons. Lapse of time.
Boots (as Dickens calls him) arrives--what probably here is a
porter--for shoes. Then you have an excellent opportunity (which may not
occur again during the day) for a slight period of philosophical
meditation, or to whistle a tune, before the valet appears.
In such places as I am describing it is not etiquette at all (though it
may seem to you the simplest way of doing the thing) to call a bellboy
to get down your bag. The porter does that--and through the correct
channel, that is by way of the freight elevator. And, say, something
goes wrong with your ice-water pipe. You are not to outrage hotel
decency here. What is necessary for you to procure is a waiter. Waiters
attend to your inner wants.
I like best the character of valet when he is English (either so by
birth, or this by self-cultivation); wears a skirt coat, immaculately
pressed, and a "buttonhole"; advances into the room in the attitude of a
bow, and comes to a pause in the pose of one listening with deep and
profoundly respectful attention to the haughty utterance of a stage
earl. Though, indeed, there is an element of disquiet in your being thus
elevated to the Peerage if, as with me, the suit you turn over to this
unexceptionable servitor is of Hirt, Snuffler and Muss manufacture, and
growing a trifle frail in the seat.
The same thing is true of bath-rooms. I don't, of course, mean that
bath-rooms perform the valet act. But that the more aristocratic in
hotels you get the more likely you are, so to say, to get into hot water
in bath-rooms. Like this:
If you get into a bathtub which is not quite the last word in bathtubs,
that is a bathtub which has legs and spigots to turn on the water, you
know where you are at all the while. You turn on the hot water in the
amount desired. It comes out of the hot water spout. As desired you turn
on the cold water. Out of the cold water spout comes it.
But, as you know, the last word in bathtubs is not simple and democratic
like that. It is built onto the floor and has a clock-like dial on the
wall. Dial marked at different points: "Cold," "Medium," "Hot," "Off."
Turn little handle to regulate temperature and flow of water. All out of
same pipe. Yes--but--dial untruthful--very. "Off" scalds you; "Medium"
freezes you. Bad time trying to take last word in baths.
"Tub or shower?" Maybe you say "shower." And draw one of those
police-court cells. Except the door, no opening in the little, square,
completely cement room but the small hole in the center of the floor
through which the water runs away. But that's not the way to look at it.
These little catacomb-like chambers are æsthetic in their ascetic
character. You may entertain yourself by fancying that you are St.
Jerome, or somebody like that. In here nothing that it will hurt can
get wet, and you can have a fine time making the whole room a
merry-go-round of splashes. One disturbing thought may occur to you. If
the door should stick you might not be found until the hotel got worried
about your bill, when perhaps it would be too late.
Still, I think the chummiest bath-rooms are those with a bay-window;
very reprehensible those which have no hooks on which to hang your
pajamas and razor strop.
Then there are those hotels so far-seeing into the possibilities of evil
chance and so solicitous of your equanimity that they provide your pin
cushion with one suspender button. I suppose the thought is to impress
you with the idea that nothing for your comfort, even down to the
smallest detail, is forgotten. Still, though I do not know that such an
untoward incident ever happened, it is within the range of human
possibility that a man might be shorn of two suspender buttons at once.
If, further, the hotel management were co-ordinated with the gentlemen's
underwear business a safety pin would be served along with the suspender
button--in view of the singular fact that, until your wife has taken a
reef in them, all nether garments are much too great in girth for any
figure at all approximating normal.
Working, however, as it does, with human material no hotel can get away
with perfection. For, as Dr. Johnson observed, "a fallible being will
fail somewhere." It was in San Francisco recently that three days were
required for me to recover a suit sent in the morning to be pressed by
that afternoon. This mischance was occasioned by three circumstances. To
wit: goblins (presumably) made away with the ticket attached to it; the
hotel tailor fell indisposed with (I hope) leprosy; and his assistant
had a slight mental infirmity, in other words he was seven times an
idiot.
Reverse English in Los Angeles a few days later. When one night I found
neatly hung on the coat frame in my closet a suit of excellent material,
of fashionable design, and seemingly of virgin character. I reported the
matter to the third assistant manager. One criticism only I have to make
of that suit. It was too confoundedly tight.
Then, of course, even at the best places (I almost think particularly in
the best places) you are likely any time to find under your door in the
morning a telephone message stamped "Rush," directing you to call
so-and-so "as soon as possible"--and dated 5:17-1/2 two days earlier.
Or, on coming in you are handed by the clerk a memorandum which states
that Mr. Cohan telephoned. Such matters, you reflect, are retrogressive.
If you are unacquainted with any gentleman of the name of Mr. Cohan, so
it may very well be that the guest here who is a friend of Mr. Cohan
received notice that _your_ friend Mr. Sloan telephoned. And there you
are!
My friend Harry Heartydrop (who, I declare! looks rosier even than
before the middle of January, 1920) has adopted a hotel life altogether
of late. He explains to me that the advantage of this is the new
side-line activity of numerous compassionate bell captains, who, it
seems--but that would be telling.
One of the pleasantest things, I think, about hotels is the "night maid
service" furnished at fashionable places. When you come in you find your
light burning and so do not break your shins, and your bed is "turned
down" for you. Very softening to the spirit, this. In a kind of a sort
of a hazy way one's thoughts turn back to the maternal solicitude which
used to "tuck" one "in."
Good night!
CHAPTER II
A HUMORIST MISFITS AT A MURDER TRIAL
Are you in on the great Crime Wave, brother? Almost everybody is, I
guess, in one way or another. What's your particular line? Murderer,
bandit, burglar, mortally wounded innocent bystander, juror, witness, or
victim? The police are in on it, too; every once in awhile one of them
gets blackjacked, or something like that.
I had the flu bad enough, when that was the big thing going; but somehow
so far I myself have escaped being caught in the Crime Wave. This gives
me the great advantage over most people of being a detached spectator of
the rollicking game.
I have a friend, though, who was caught up just a few days ago. He has
been telling me all about it. Murder case.
This fellow is a sort of author. He had served a time or two as a juror
in the Supreme Court of New York County. In that building down by the
City Hall. But he says those cases bored him terribly. They were
chicken-feed sort of rows, generally concerned with the question of how
many dollars and fractions thereof X had occasioned the loss of to Z by
reason of his failure to deliver such and such a quantity of (say)
beeswax before the drop in the market of 39.7-1/4 cents, as called for
by telephone agreement, possibly. The "Court" (a nice, pink and grey old
fellow) would go to sleep, with his mouth open, during the drone of the
legal argument, and be awakened automatically (apparently by some change
in atmospheric conditions) at the moment required for him to begin his
charge to the jury. Occasionally, he would come semi-to for an instant
before this, and indistinctly utter the words, "Objection sustained."
My friend's chief impression of these proceedings is his recollection of
one phenomenon which he observed. Not long after the opening of the
presentation of X's side of the case he saw very clearly that Z hadn't a
leg to stand on. It was ridiculous that he had the face to come into
court with an attempt to question the truth of facts which were as
apparent to the naked eye as the Woolworth Building. My friend felt it
needless to pay any further attention to the foolish formalities of the
argument. If he had not had an uneasy feeling that he might get pinched
for this, he would have gone to sleep, like the Judge.
But those were dull days in the jury business.
A little later my friend gets some sort of a ticket instructing him to
call and talk things over with a gentleman having the university degree
of Commissioner of Jurors. This gentleman asks my friend if he has ever
been arrested on a criminal charge, if he is opposed to capital
punishment, and if he has any prejudice against Episcopalians. My friend
is a man of liberal mind, and replies that he would just as soon hang an
Episcopalian as anybody else. "You're on," said the gentleman, reaching
for a blotter; and signed him up. My friend didn't know exactly for
what. But the gentleman said everything was all right, they might not
call on my friend for a long time, and then perhaps it would be a short
case.
Sometime back was all this. My friend had almost forgotten about his
acquaintance with the Commissioner. Then all of a sudden the gong sounds
and the great Crime Wave is on. Detectives dash madly about with
shotguns. A jeweller is shot every day after lunch and a subway
ticket-seller is robbed directly after every train starts. My friend
hurries home early because everybody is fined who is caught on any paved
street after dark, and there in his letter-box is the summons from his
old friend the Commissioner, who apparently has borne him in mind all
this while.
On the document is printed by a printing-press, "Jack Hammond _vs._ The
People of the State of New York." And on it is written with a pen my
friend's name, before the printed words "Special Juror." It very
urgently invites my friend to appear at ten o'clock four days distant at
the Criminal Courts Building and there "await further order of the
Court."
You get off the subway at Brooklyn Bridge, you know, and go, past the
Municipal Building, up Centre Street. A district around behind the
"lanes" (as they say of steamship travel) of general traffic, and one
infrequently traversed by my friend. He was much interested in the
spectacle hereabout. Buildings labelled Public Health on this hand,
buildings labelled Public Records on that. Then you come to that prison
as gruesome in its name as the Tower of London is romantic in its
connotation--the Tombs. The structure itself, a cluster of rather
slender wings, rises from behind its dark walls with an element of
grace, in contrast to that chill, squat, mouldering pile which begot and
bequeathed the historic name. Ugh! though, those barred windows, row
upon row, give a fellow such qualms as do the ugly symbols of our
mortality. Even though you ain't done nothin', make you feel sorta faint
like inside!
There in the south wall is a little door, like a rabbit burrow, with a
little group about it, and quite a small bustle going on. Standing in
this bit of a doorway, as though she had something to do in the way of
belonging there, is a queer, oval body who looks much as though she
might be what is called an "apple woman." Marked "Visitors' Entrance,"
this door. What is it all the people on this side of the street are
pausing to look at over there?
A cab is drawn up. From this lightly steps (or flashes) a dizzy dream.
"Floppy" hat, scant skirt awhirl, pink-hued stockings gleaming to the
height of the full curve behind the knee, tall satin pump-heels dancing
the wearer on her toes--she swirls through the dark doorway. "They all
have their wimmin," remarks a blousy-looking loiterer to my friend.
At the north, three stories up, the prison connects with the courts
building by that fabled structure the "bridge of sighs."
Lively scene before the main entrance to this edifice on Centre Street.
Streams of figures hurrying up the broad front steps--on their way to a
busy day at the height of the crime season. Taxis flying up and
discharging chattering groups as at a theatre. Open pops a taxi door,
out leap three. A couple of very hard-looking young men, of that
sawed-off, stocky stature frequently observed in this type of very
hard-looking young man. Elegantly dressed, these; between them one of
"Oh!-you-beautiful-doll" type. Rapidly they make their way up the steps,
as though very well acquainted with the place.
Regular jam inside. My friend learned from an attendant that his
particular destination was two flights up. Great crush wedging into the
elevator. Elevator man calls out merrily to an acquaintance he observes
outside his door: "It's a great life if you don't weaken!"
Threads his way, my friend, around the balcony, so to say, upstairs.
Centre of building open from ground floor to roof. Effect: spacious,
beautiful, ornamented in the richness of a house of grand opera. Finds
the right door. Card on the wall nearby. Several persons (tough-looking
youths in caps and soft collars) reading it. It lists previous day's
proceedings in this court room. Says: So-and-so; Murder; Indicted (or
something like that). Then the names of attorneys for the defense given.
Second line: So-and-so; Murder; etc. Third line: So-and-so; Murder.
Fourth line: So-and-so; Grand Larceny. Next line: So-an-so; Rape. Next:
Murder. And so on. Sure, my friend thinks, I've got to the real shop
this time. He has a few moments yet, and so he strolls over to a door at
the opposite side of the building. 'Nother card there. Same sort of
thing: murder, murder, grand larceny, homicide, murder, murder. (If you
don't believe it, go down there and look at those cards.) "Holy cat!"
says my friend to himself, "comparatively little of this crime stuff
gets into the papers, after all, don't it? I never heard of any of these
cases."
Enters court room. Takes a seat. Room soon filled. Now in my friend's
experience as a petit juror he had found himself among a rather
grotesque company of very small characters, frequently somewhat seedy in
outward effect. Here he was much struck by the decidedly first-rate
quality in appearance of practically every man in the room. Also,
before, he had observed with a good deal of annoyance that a court of
law could consume about twenty-nine times the time in accomplishing a
very simple matter that would be devoted to a thing of similar
consequence in any practical business office. Here in this flourishing
mill for dealing with capital crime the clerk of the court (or whatever
you call him) began to call the roll of jurors present fifteen minutes
before the hour set for opening of court. And so did affairs proceed
with well-oiled despatch.
"Oyez-mumble-jumble-jabber-jabber-yah-meow-wow-jumble-jabber-jumble" (or
whatever the devil it is), sang out the attendant who cries out that.
Everybody at once gets to his feet. In comes his corpulent Honor,
swinging along briskly, his gown flowing out behind, and mounts to his
wooden-canopied throne. A large, glossy, rather handsome face, neatly
cropped dark moustache, eye-glasses swinging from a broad black ribbon.
General effect what might be called that of a heavy-weight "club man,"
looks as if he might be quite a hearty fellow when out with "the boys."
Door opens at back of room. Sound of marching steps. Then are seen
coming along through a zoo-like cage round two sides of the room three
figures, burly civilian-clothed one in the middle, uniformed officer
fore and aft. They line up this side of a rail fencing the jurors off
from an area before the Judge. Burly figure is very well dressed. Stands
solidly on his feet, eyes trained directly on the Judge. Holds a dark
soft hat in his hands which he clasps behind his back. What from a
position somewhat to the rear can be seen of the side of his face
reveals a heavy scar, the result evidently of a knife slash across one
cheek. The Judge puts his palms together and addresses this person. "You
are charged with murder," he begins. He says it rather gently, in a
somewhat chiding manner, as though he had said, "Bad fellow, bad
fellow." Just then, "For the defendant!" calls out an attendant, and
another figure hurries forward.
The defendant's attorneys have not appeared, it seems. Their case is not
quite prepared. A postponement is asked. "Why is it not prepared?" asks
the Judge. The defendant speaks out. Declares his attorney has not been
paid. Judge's reply is that the attorney provided for him is an able
man, who will see that all his rights are observed. Grants postponement
until the next morning, positively no further. Officer by his side
plucks defendant's coat tail, and starts him off back through the cage.
As he goes he is heard to say that his attorney will not be there in the
morning either.
And as he turns, my friend gets, with a shock, a full-face view of him.
He had never expected anybody off the melodramatic stage to _look_ so
much like a murderer. Scarey, that face, a countenance almost majestic
in its ruthlessness and force: gangster, gunman, typically personified.
Jurors excused until ten-thirty next day. As they move toward the door,
two attractively dressed young women arise from the rear. "Who are the
ladies?" asks one. "Friends of the defendant," says another.
Next day, game called sharp on the stroke of the clock. Following
preliminaries of the day before, attendant spins that little roulette
wheel sort of an affair. Looks at slip thus drawn. "John Cole," he
cries. Mr. Cole passes round behind jury box, reappears in far corner at
left of Judge. "Rigmarole-rigmarole-solemnly swear, rigmarole," chaunts
attendant there, thrusting very dilapidated Bible before him. Mr. Cole
takes what later will be the witness chair.
Assistant district attorney arises and explains the case to him. The
charge is murder in the first degree. The prosecution must rely largely
on the testimony of an accomplice.
Defendant sits in whispered consultation with his attorney, his arm
almost around him. As prosecutor seats himself, attorney for the defense
gets up to put Mr. Cole through his paces. A fat, oily-looking man, with
(it is evident) a browbeating manner in reserve.
Has Mr. Cole, or anyone "near and dear" to him, recently met with any
"accident" at the hands of robbers? No. He will not, then, have a
revengeful feeling toward any person charged with crime? Not at all.
Would he give the same weight to the "story" of a "self-confessed thief
and murderer" that he would to the testimony of a "man of probity"?
Probably not. Now, doubtless, Mr. Cole is a reader of newspapers. He
has, of course, seen this "literature" (with a sneer), this "newspaper
hysteria" about a "c-r-i-m-e wave" (tongue in cheek). Well, can Mr. Cole
go into the jury box and look at this case detached from the
"atmosphere" now "being created by the newspapers"? Finally, is Mr. Cole
acquainted with anyone connected with the police department?
Mr. Cole, for some reason, strikes out.
Third man accepted. He comes around from behind it to enter the jury
box. At the gateway, while defendant stands and faces him, some more
rigmarole-mumble-jumble business.
Suddenly my friend is called. His business? asks district attorney. A
writer, he replies. Defendant and his attorney exchange strange glances.
Undoubtedly there is something low and suspicious about a fellow with
such a business. Attorney for the defense comes forward hurriedly. Soon
takes my friend in hand. He at once adopts the sarcastic. My friend's
work must require unusual "observation." He must be "gifted" with "great
powers of de-duct-shun" (said out of one corner of his mouth). Of
course, he has too a "fine imagination." By the way, what is the nature
of his writing? Has he written any novels?
No, my friend says, he is a humorous writer. "A what?" exclaims the
lawyer, his mouth remaining open. Then, "Like Don Mark_ee_?" "Somewhat,"
says my friend. Lawyer visibly pales. Withdrawing toward counsel table,
looks back at the accused, who vigorously shakes his head.
"Excused by per-emptory challenge," utters lawyer, dropping into his
chair.
CHAPTER III
QUEER THING, 'BOUT UNDERTAKERS' SHOPS
Queer thing, that, about undertakers' shops! I don't remember to have
been struck by undertakers' shops in San Francisco. Maybe they have none
there--because, as you'll see, it's a queer thing about them.
Now in Indianapolis undertaking is a very fashionable affair. People
there, apparently, want "class" in the matter of being finally disposed
of. They believe, evidently, with the author of the popular little idyl,
"Urn Burial," that "Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous
in the tomb."
The most aristocratic street in that city is named North Meridian
Street. A street, until a short time ago, entirely of stately lawns and
patrician homes--mansions. Of late, a little business, shops of the most
distinguished character, has been creeping up this street from
down-town. Notably, de luxe motor car salesrooms, studios of highly
æsthetic photographers, and particularly palatial undertaking
establishments. They are, these last, wondrous halls, which surely none
could enter but those who (in life) had been rich in treasure. Features
of the city are they--"sights."
But here's the riddle:
Strolling about New York, from river to river, uptown and down, one
might readily fancy that here only the poor pass out of the world. Or
that if the rich and fashionable ever die their bodies are mysteriously
spirited away to destinations unknown; or are secretly preserved
(presumably by some taxidermal process) in their homes.
Why? Well, where on Fifth Avenue is an undertaker's? True, a man I know
declares there is a single one there. I am unable to find it. Where on
any fine street of the metropolis? Why, yes; as a rare phenomenon. You
do know, of course, that enormous place on upper Broadway. Sign says
branches in Paris, London, Berlin, Petrograd.
Viewed through the great windows interior presents somewhat the effect
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In foreground large harp, equally
huge Chinese vase--probably of the Tang Wang period, on great marble
pedestal enormous bronze of a mounted Diana repelling with spear attack
of ferocious animal resembling tiger. Appropriateness of this sculpture
somewhat puzzling. On wall, somewhat further within, immense tapestry.
One door labelled "Delivery Entrance." All of this, of course, is
magnificence as much as even the most covetous would crave.
But in New York this august undertaking hall is an anachronism. Here,
for some reason mysterious, it is in shabby neighborhoods that the
"parlors" of undertakers abound. You may find them sprinkled all about
the lower East Side. Frequent on Hudson Street, and, say, on Varick.
Quaint and curious places, these. Very human in their appeal. Tiny
places, most of them.
One such cozy crib I know on Greenwich Avenue. Has a stained glass
screen in the window, suggesting a good deal the style of window
ornamentation popular with that American institution lately
deceased--the saloon. The social spirit rife in small undertaking shops,
at least in some of them, is pleasant to observe. Business there not
being pressing, and life moving in these inns of death in a leisurely
and quiet current, neighborly amenities appear to be much cultivated.
This place of which I speak has, particularly in the evenings, much the
air of a club, where choice spirits of the locality foregather to
discuss politics, it may be, and the more engrossing forms of sport,
such as boxing. And perhaps relish a little game at cards. I often pass
this place at night and feel a warmth of spirit at the hum of jovial
social contact within.
I like, too, the way the undertakers' shops of the humble and obscure
carry on cheek by jowl with the familiar, homely, friendly things of
life. This gives Death a neighborly sort of air. On my walks in that
quarter I always give a friendly glance to the windows of a "Cremation
Ass'n" on Eighth Avenue, on one side of it a delicatessen shop, on the
other a "loan office," in the basement below a plumber.
Attractive, too, is it to consider how founders of tidy undertaking
houses have become personages and are held in revered esteem. For they
are not, it would seem, like unto those who have established just
ordinary businesses. This I will show you:
At a corner of Twenty-third Street, over a telegraph office, is an
establishment of some caste. Window legend reads:
"Undertakers--Cremations--Night and Day--Interments in all Cemeteries."
The last phrase reminds me of the way my old friend James Huneker used
to date his letters to me from Brooklyn. They began, "Flatbush by the
C--emeteries." But that's not the point. It's a pity the alert English
writer who recently visited us and discovered a statue of General Grant
in Grant Park, overlooking the Blackstone (where nobody had ever seen
one before), and that the huge bust of Washington Irving in Bryant Park,
behind the New York Public Library, was an effigy of Father George
Washington--it's a rotten shame E. V. Lucas missed this corner while
here.
Because when you go round this corner you are to look up just above the
level of your head. (Though I'm afraid you neglect to do this.) There on
a ledge is a grand sight. It's a bust of God. Fact! Anyhow, looks just
like pictures of God William Blake used to make. Old gentleman. Noble
brow. Patriarchal beard, flowing out in a pattern of rhythmical
waves--most realistically mildewed by time and weather.... But, no;
inquiry reveals that it's a likeness of the founder of this "old
established" undertaking concern.
Then there's that place a short step down Eighth Avenue. It declares on
its sign that it is the "original" house bearing the name of the
Reverend gentleman who conducts it. When you look through the glass in
the door you view just within, displayed on an ornamental easel, a
life-size crayon portrait, enlarged from a photograph, of a
distinguished-looking person wearing brown Dundreary whiskers and a top
hat. One corner of the portrait is gracefully draped in an American
flag.
Yes; you'd be surprised how strong undertakers are on patriotism. Hard
by here, next door to a dentist advertising "painless extraction," you
find a firm of "Funeral Directors" where conspicuous among such
ornaments as tall, bronze lamps with big shades, a spittoon, a little
model of a casket and an urn, is a large bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln.
A plate says: "No Charge for Rooms or Chapels for Funerals." And above
stairs is seen a row of somewhat ecclesiastical stained-glass windows.
Though we are given to understand by an advertisement that the
atmosphere of these chapels is "non-sectarian."
Then over on Third Avenue (where there are lots and lots of undertakers)
is a place. Always sitting just within the doorway, very silent, a
stout, very solemn individual wearing a large, black derby hat and big,
round, green-lens spectacles. Above him on the wall a framed lithograph
in colors of George Washington--beside it a thermometer. In the window a
rubber-plant. Rubber-plants varying in size from infant to elephant are
in the windows of all undertakers. The symbolism of this decoration I
know not. Beside the plant an infant's white casket, proclaimed by a
poster which leans against it to be composed of "purity metal." In some
places the casket, perhaps not of purity metal, is protected by being
enclosed in a glass case. The name of the proprietor of this shop, as
given on his sign, ends in "skey." Set in the door-frame is the usual
"Night Bell." And, as always in undertakers' shops, the card of a
"notary public" is displayed. Next door "Family Shoes" are featured.
Only yesterday afternoon I was looking in at the window of an undertaker
on Second Avenue, one I had just found. Along the curb before the door
a string of rather frayed and wobbly-looking "hacks," with a rusty-black
hearse at the head. Horses to these vehicles drowsy in disposition,
moth-eaten in effect as to pelt, and in the visibility of their
anatomical structure suggesting that they might have been drawn by
Albert Dürer in some particularly melancholy mood.
In groups along the edge of the sidewalk, conversing in subdued tones,
the Dickensesque drivers of this caravan. Tall and gaunt, some; short
and stout, others. Skirt coat on one, "sack" coat on another. Alike in
this: frayed and rusty and weather-beaten, all. And hard, very hard of
countenance. Each topped by a very tall, and quite cylindrical hat of
mussed, shoddy-black, plush texture. Hangovers, so to say, these
figures, from New York's hansom-cab days, or the time in London of the
"four-wheeler."
No, not altogether. There was something piquant--Villonesque, or
jovial--Rabelaisian, about the pickpockets of that tribe. These solemn
mummers strike a ghoulish note. But at the same time, out here in the
sane and cheerful sunlight, they don't look real. Create an odd
impression. Strikes you as about as queer, this bunch, as if a lot of
actors from a melodrama should turn up in the street with their makeup
on and gravely pretend to belong to real life.
"Perhaps," I thought, "there is a funeral, or something, going on
inside, and I should not be gaping in at this window."
Out of doorway pops little, rotund man, oily countenance. "Are you
looking for anybody?" he asks.
"Here," I said inwardly, "is where I get moved on." No, I told him, I
was just observing his window.
"Ah!" he cried, immensely flattered. He waved his hand back toward a
couple of little, marble crosses with hearts carved in relief on the
base. "You don't often see that, do you? Do you, now? They're sixty
years old. Made out of a single piece!"
But the saddest thing about undertakers' shops is to go by where was one
long familiar to you and find it gone. There was a splendid little place
which it was a great consolation to me to admire. That building is now
given over to an enterprise called "The Goody Shop." Its lofty dignity
and deep eloquence are gone! It looks like a department store. It is
labelled, with the blare of a brass band, "The Home of Pussy Willow
Chocolates."
CHAPTER IV
THE HAIR CUT THAT WENT TO MY HEAD
I did not expect anything in particular when I went in. Though, indeed,
it is a very famous place. That is, the hotel is--the Brevoort.
The name itself, Brevoort, is very rich in romantic Knickerbocker
associations. Probably you know all about that. Or, possibly, you don't
know--or have forgotten. Well, you do know how Broadway curves around
there at Tenth Street. That ought to recall Hendrick Brevoort to you.
His farm was all about this neighborhood. Caused this kink, he did, so
it is said.
This valorous descendant of the old burgher defied the commissioners to
destroy his homestead, which lay in the proposed path of Broadway. Or to
cut down a favorite tree which blocked the intended course of Eleventh
Street. Stood at his threshold with a blunderbuss in his trembling old
hands (so the story has it), when the workmen arrived to carry out their
instructions to demolish the house--and carried his point so
effectively that Broadway was deflected from its course, while Eleventh
Street between Broadway and Fourth Avenue was never completed. Grace
Church, which now stands at about where valiant Henry stood that day,
was built by a descendant of his, the architect also of St. Patrick's
Cathedral.
I like to think of these matters sometimes when I enter the cool cream
beauty of this ancient frame hostelry.
Also of another Henry Brevoort, a descendant of the original proprietor
of the farm in New Netherland, who built the substantial old double
house at the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. Fine iron
balconies, pillared door, within a small green enclosure, and a walled
garden to one side: all preserved.
Here was held (in 1840) the first masked ball given in New York. An
affair of picturesque celebrity, on account of the occasion it furnished
a famous beauty of the day, Miss Mathilda Barclay, daughter of Anthony
Barclay, the British consul, to elope in fancy dress, domino and mask
with a certain young Burgwyne of South Carolina, of whom her parents had
unamiable views. She went as Lalla Rookh and he as Feramorz, and in
this disguise they slipped away from the ball, at four in the morning,
and were married. That, it seems to me, is the way for a man who does
not enjoy solemn ceremonies to be happy while getting married.
Across the way, at the corner of Eighth Street, the mellow white hotel
maintains the distinguished name, and touches "the Avenue" with a very
aromatic French flavor. Famous for its cuisine, largely patronized by
the transient French population of the city, a habitual port of call of
many painters and writers, the scene of the annual Illustrators' Ball,
and so on.
I like within the frequent spectacle of gentlemen of magnificent bulk
and huge black beards, in general effect impressively suggesting the
probability of their all being Academicians. I like the fact (or the
hypothesis) that all the waiters are Looeys and Sharses and Gastongs. I
like the little marble-top tables with wire spindle legs. I like the
lady patrons (Oh! immensely) who are frequently very chic (and with
exquisite ankles). I like the young gentlemen customers, who (many of
them) look exactly as though their faces were modelled in wax, and who
wear the sort of delicate moustaches that are advertised in _Vanity
Fair_.
But even more I like the quaintness of the scene without doors. There
along the curb, you recall, stand (in summer beneath the pleasant
greenery of drooping trees), awaiting hire, a succession of those
delightful, open, low-swung, horse-drawn vehicles, victorias, which were
the fashionable thing at the period named by Mrs. Wharton "The Age of
Innocence." The romantically leisurely drivers of these unbelievably
leisurely craft are perfectly turned out to be, so to say, in the
picture. They affect coachmen's coats (piquantly tempered by age) with
large silver buttons and, in mild weather, top hats constructed of
straw, painted black. In some instances these coachmen are
"colored"--which is a very pleasant thing, too, I think.
This hotel, naturally, has figured in a number of pieces of fiction. In
Samuel Merwin's novel "The Trufflers" it is the Parisian, where
Greenwich Village, when in funds, dines, lunches, breakfasts in the
little rooms which you enter from the Avenue, directly under the wide
front steps, or from the side street through the bar, and where Upper
West Side, when seeking the quaintly foreign dissociated from squalor,
goes up the steps into the airy eating rooms with full length hinged
windows to dine. And where (in this book) the young lady whose blooming
presence in the barber shop in the basement invites you to manicure
attentions gives rise to some very dramatic occurrences. The place, this
shop, of Marius (as called in the story), "the one barber in New York
who does not ask 'Wet or dry.'"
Now I had plumb forgotten about this barber's celebrity in fiction when
the other day I entered this shop. And I was struck with embarrassment
by the immediate attentions of so very distinguished a figure as that
which sprang forward to assist me out of my coat. I thought surely this
gentleman must be some kind of an Ambassador, who had perhaps mistaken
me for the President. A slimmish man, obviously very French. Amazingly,
overwhelmingly polite. Fine, a very fine beard. Long. Swept his chest.
Pointed. Auburn. Wavy. Silken. Shot delicately with grey. Beautifully
kept. Responded gently to the breeze--waving softly to and fro. A most
beautiful beard--oh, my! And a glorious crown of hair! It rose from the
line of its parting in a billowing wave, then fell with a luxuriant and
graceful sweep to his ear. Only when he had tucked me in the chair could
I realize that this must be the head barber. I had never before had the
honor of being served by, or even of having seen himself, the proprietor
here.
Then I mentioned Mr. Merwin's book. He took from a drawer several copies
of _The Saturday Evening Post_, in which periodical the story had
appeared serially, proudly to exhibit them to me. So it was we fell to
chatting of his place. He had been here some sixteen or eighteen years.
Before he had opened his shop this room had been several tiny rooms;
Cleveland Moffett had for a time occupied them as a residence, and had
here written his first book. My friend gayly produced a copy of an old
magazine article by Mr. Moffett in which mention was given the shop.
* * * * *
Shaved, I was straightened up to have my hair trimmed. And, being for a
moment free to look about. I spied a card on the wall. It said:
SILK HATS IRONED
25_¢_
COUP-DE-FER-AU CHAPEAU
But, my goodness! That was not all. No, indeed!
_This very man who was cutting my hair_ had cut the hair of General
Joffre--when he had his hair here in the United States. At "Mr. Frick's
house," where they were guests, he had attended the distinguished party
on its mission here. He would go in the morning, stay until they had
gone forth for the day; return in the afternoon, and spruce them up for
their evening out.
And what did they say, these great men of might?
Well, Joffre didn't say much. They were always out late--hurry out
again. He shaved some of them "almost in the bath." That fellow, the
Blue Devil,--one leg--cane--but back and forth from his bath quick like
anybody. He was the most talkative:
"I could not but laugh at what he told me. I asked, 'Do you speak
English?' 'No,' he said, 'but I ought to.' 'How is that?' I asked.
'Because,' he said, 'I'm half American.' 'Oh!' I said, 'your father then
was American and your mother French?' 'No,' he said. 'Ah!' I say, 'then
your mother was American and your father was French.' Do you
understand? I say that to him. 'No,' he say; 'no.' 'What then?' I ask.
'Why,' he say, 'I have one leg in France and one leg in America.' I
could not but laugh. Do you understand?"
When the visitors had departed Mr. Frick asked my friend for his bill.
"Oh, no!" he said; "he would take nothing but the great honor for his
little services."
My hair cut was finished. As I paid him (there being in this case, I
felt, no such great honor for his little services), he showed me a
drawing on the wall of a poodle he had one time owned. It had died. Very
sad. He was very fond of dogs. Of bred dogs, that is. He bred them
himself. He handed me his card as a professional dog fancier. It read:
CHINK A TU KENNELS
CHOW CHOWS, PEKINGESES, POMERANIANS, ALL COLORS
FROM PRICE WINNING STOCK
MINIATURE SPECIMENS
AT STUD. PEKINGESE, WONDERFUL SON OF WENTY
OF HYDEGREE. FEE REASONABLE.
AT STUD. LORD CHOLMONDELEY III SON OF CHAMPION
LORD CHOLMONDELEY II.
TOY DOGS BOARDED
MME. HENRI GRECHEN
Yes, that morning he had done "some manicure work" for his dogs. She
looked up, the manicurist (milk-white blonde, black velvet gown), and
said, "Do you use the clippers?"
He: "Yes, of course. But not powder and polish. Quick, they want. Not
hold hands for hour--conversation about best show in town."
He bowed, very low, as I crossed his threshold. I turned and bowed, very
low, to him. A man of many parts and a barber illustrious in his
profession. It was some time before my head cooled off.
CHAPTER V
SEEING MR. CHESTERTON
Somewhat later in this article I am going to present an "interview" (or
something like that) with Gilbert E. Chesterton. At least I hope I am
going to present it. Yesterday it looked as though I might have to get
up my interview without having seen Mr. Chesterton. Though today the
situation appears somewhat brighter. "Seeing" Mr. Chesterton (on his
visit over here, at any rate) seems to be a complicated matter.
As anything which gives some view of the workings of the Chestertonian
machinery ought to be of interest to all who can lay claim to the happy
state of mind of being Chestertonites, I'll begin by telling the
proceedings so far in this affair. Then as matters progress to supply me
with more material (if they do progress) I'll continue.
I one time wrote an article in which I told with what surprising ease I
saw Mr. Chesterton several years ago in England. Without acquaintances
in England, some sort of a fit of impudence seized me. I wrote Mr.
Chesterton a letter, communicating to him the intelligence that I had
arrived in London, that it was my belief that he was one of the noblest
and most interesting monuments in England; and I asked him if he
supposed that he could be "viewed" by me, at some street corner, say, at
a time appointed, as he rumbled past in his triumphal car. Mrs.
Chesterton replied directly in a note that her husband wished to thank
me for my letter and to say that he would be pleased if I cared to come
down to spend an afternoon with him at Beaconsfield. Mr. Chesterton, I
later recollected, had no means readily at hand of ascertaining whether
or not I was an American pickpocket; but from the deference of his
manner I was led to suspect that he vaguely supposed I was perhaps the
owner of the New York _Times_, or somebody like that.
This escapade of my visit to Overroads I suppose it was that put into
the head of the editor of _The Bookman_ the notion that I was a person
with ready access to Mr. Chesterton. So I was served with a hurry-up
assignment to see him and to deliver an article about my seeing him for
the March number of the magazine before that issue, then largely in the
hands of the printers, got off the press. Thus my adventures, the
termination of which are at present considerably up in the air, began.
I at once wrote to Mr. Chesterton at the hotel where at the moment he
was in Boston. At the same time I wrote to Lee Keedick ("Manager of the
World's Most Celebrated Lecturers") at his office in New York. I had
picked up the impression that a lecture manager of this caliber owned
outright the time of a visiting celebrity whom he promoted, and that you
couldn't even telephone the celebrity without the manager's permission.
I didn't know that you couldn't telephone him anyway. Or that you
couldn't telephone the manager either.
Mr. Keedick very promptly replied that he would be very glad to do
everything that he could to bring about the interview. Or at least I
received a very courteous letter to this effect which bore a signature
which I took to be that of Mr. Keedick.
Mr. Chesterton was not to be back in New York until after a couple of
days. On the day set for his return to town I attempted to communicate
with Mr. Keedick by telephone. I am (I fear) a bit slow at the etiquette
of telephones, and I so far provoked a young woman at the other end of
the wire as to cause her to demand rather sharply, "Who are you?" This
matter adjusted amicably, Mr. Keedick it developed was so utterly remote
from attainment that I am not altogether sure such a person exists.
However, another gentleman responded cordially enough. Still, it seemed
to me (upon reflection) that in a matter of this urgent nature I had
been at fault in having failed to obtain more definiteness in the matter
of an appointment. So I went round to the manager's office. Very affably
received. Presented to a gentleman fetched for that purpose from another
room, where he had been closeted with someone else. Mr. Widdecombe, this
gentleman's name. Introduced as Mr. Chesterton's secretary. A pronounced
Englishman in effect. Said very politely indeed, several times, that he
was "delighted." Mr. Chesterton, however, was going away tomorrow. Would
return two days hence. Made, Mr. Widdecombe, very careful memorandum of
my address.
In due course of time thought I'd better look up Mr. Widdecombe
again--his memorandum might have got mislaid. Telephoned lecture bureau.
Satisfied young lady of honorable intentions. Explained matters all over
again to owner of agreeable masculine voice. Received assurance that Mr.
Widdecombe would be reminded at once of pressing state of affairs.
Disturbed by uneventful flight of time, called in at lecture bureau once
more. Learned that Mr. Widdecombe had not yet turned up. They, however,
would try to get him on the wire at the Biltmore for me. Yes, he was
there, but the fourth floor desk of the hotel said he had just gone into
Mr. Chesterton's room, and so (as, apparently, everyone ought to know)
could not be communicated with just now. He would call up shortly.
Lecture people suggested that I go round to the hotel. If Mr. Widdecombe
called in the meantime they'd tell him I was on my way over.
Thought I recognized the gentleman stepping out of the elevator at the
fourth floor. I did not know whether or not it was at all what you did
to lay hold of an Englishman in so abrupt a fashion, but concluded this
would have to be done. Mr. Widdecombe was all courtesy. The point,
however, was that "Mr. Chesterton had had an hour of it this morning.
Had had an hour of it." This afternoon he was getting off some work for
London. Then tomorrow, of course, would be his lecture. My matter _did_
seem to be urgent. But what could "we" do? Mr. Chesterton was a
"beautiful man." He had been so hospitable to the gentlemen of the
press. But if we should go in to him now he would say, "Dear me! Dear
me!" I readily saw, of course, that this would be an awful thing,
still....
Mr. Widdecombe was somewhat inclined to think that we "could do" this:
Suppose I should come to the Times Square Theatre the next afternoon, at
about a quarter to five, call for him at the stage entrance. Yes, he
thought we could arrange it that way. I could talk to Mr. Chesterton in
the taxi on the way back to the hotel. Perhaps detain him for a few
moments afterward. Mr. Widdecombe smiled very pleasantly indeed at the
idea of so happy a solution of our difficulties. And I myself was rather
taken by the notion of interviewing Mr. Chesterton in a cab. The fancy
occurred to me that this was perhaps after all the most fitting place
in the whole world in which to interview Mr. Chesterton.
So everything seems to be all right.
* * * * *
New complications! (This is the following day.) In the morning mail a
letter from Mrs. Chesterton, saying so sorry not to have answered my
letter before, but it had been almost impossible to deal with the
correspondence that had reached them since they arrived in America. Her
husband asked her to say he would very much like to see me. And could I
call at the hotel round about twelve o'clock on Sunday morning? No
difficulty about meeting Mr. Chesterton in the kindness of that. But
Sunday might be quite too late for the purpose of my article. So I'll go
to the theatre anyway, and I'll certainly accept all Chesterton
invitations.
* * * * *
A colored dignitary in a uniform sumptuously befrogged with gold lace
who commanded the portal directed me to the stage entrance. I passed
into a dark and apparently deserted passage and paused to consider my
next step. Before me was a tall, brightly lighted aperture, and coming
through this I caught the sound, gently rising and falling, of a rather
dulcet voice. A slight pause in the flow of individual utterance, and
directly following upon this a soft wave as of the intimate mirth of an
audience wafted about what was evidently the auditorium beyond. Just
then a figure duskily defined itself before me and addressed me in a
gruff whisper. I was directed to proceed around the passage extending
ahead, to Room Three. I should have passed behind a tall screen (I
recognized later), but inadvertently I passed before it, and suddenly
found myself the target of thousands upon thousands of eyes--and the
unmistakable back of Mr. Chesterton looming in the brilliance directly
before me.
Regaining the passage, I found a door labelled A 3. Receiving no
response to my knock, I opened it; and peered into a lighted cubby-hole
about one-third the size of a very small hall bed-room. The only object
of any conspicuousness presented to me was a huge, dark garment hanging
from a hook in the wall. It seemed to be--ah! yes; it was a voluminous
overcoat with a queer cape attached. So; I was in the right shop all
right.
I thought I ought to look around and try to find somebody. I wandered
into what I suppose are the "wings" of the theatre. Anyway, I had an
excellent view, from one side, of the stage and of a portion of one
gallery. The only person quite near me was a fireman, who paid no
attention whatever to me, but continued to gaze out steadily at Mr.
Chesterton, with an expression of countenance which (as well as I could
decipher it) registered fascinated incomprehension. I attempted to lean
against what I supposed was a wall, but to my great fright the whole
structure nearly tumbled over as I barely touched it. Perceiving a chair
the other side of the fireman, I passed before him, sat down, and gave
myself over to contemplation of the spectacle.
My first impression, I think, was that Mr. Chesterton was speaking in so
conversational a key that I should have expected to hear cries of
"Louder!" coming from all over the house. But from the lighted
expressions of the faces far away in the corner of the gallery visible
to me he was apparently being followed perfectly. I did not then know
that at his first public appearance in New York he had referred to his
lecturing voice as the original mouse that came from the mountain. Nor
had I then seen Francis Hackett's comment upon it that: "It wasn't, of
course, a bellow. Neither was it a squeak." Mr. Hackett adds that it is
"the ordinary good lecture-hall voice." I do not feel that this quite
describes my own impression of it the other afternoon. Rather, perhaps,
I should put the matter in this way. My recollection of the conversation
I had with him in 1914 at Beaconsfield is that there was a much more
ruddy quality to his voice then than the other day, and more, much more,
in the turn of his talk a racy note of the burly world.
Perhaps he feels that before a "representative" American audience one
should be altogether what used to be called "genteel." At any rate, I
certainly heard the other day the voice of a modest, very friendly,
cultivated, nimble-minded gentleman, speaking with the nicety of
precision more frequently observed among English people than among
Americans. There was in it even a trace of a tone as though it were most
at home within university walls. Though, indeed, I am glad to say, Mr.
Chesterton did not abstain from erudite, amused, and amusing allusions
to the society most at home in "pubs." And I cannot but suspect that
perhaps he would have been found a shade more amusing even than he was
if ... but, no matter.
One gentleman who has written a piece about his impressions of Mr.
Chesterton's lectures here felt that his audience didn't have quite as
much of a good time as the members of it expected to have. I heard only
a brief, concluding portion of one lecture. The portion of the audience
which came most closely before my observation were those seated at the
well filled press table, which stood directly between the speaker and
me. These naïve beings gave every evidence of getting, to speak
temperately, their money's worth.
Though Mr. Chesterton turned the pages of notes as he spoke, he could
not be said to have read his lecture. On the other hand, it was clear
that he did not appreciably depart from a carefully prepared
disquisition.
The tumbled mane which tops him off seemed more massive even than
before. It did not, though, appear quite so tumbled. I think there had
been an effort (since 1914) to brush it quite nicely. Certainly it is
ever so much greyer. I think in my earlier article I said something like
this: "Mr. Chesterton has so remarkably red a face that his smallish
moustache seems lightish in color against it." While Mr. Chesterton's
face today could not be described as pale, it looks more like a face and
less like a glowing full moon. The moustache is darker against it; less
bristling than before, more straggly.
A couple of our recent commentators upon Mr. Chesterton have taken a
fling at the matter of his not being as huge as, it seems to them, he
has been made out to be. I remember that when I saw him before I was
even startled to find him more monstrous than even he had appeared in
his pictures. He appears to take part a good deal in pageants in
England; and recent photographs of him as Falstaff, or Tony Weller, or
Mr. Pickwick, or somebody like that, have not altogether squared up with
my recollection of him. True, he has not quite the bulk he had before;
but it is a captious critic, I should say, who would not consider him
sufficiently elephantine for all ordinary purposes.
He was saying (much to the delight of the house) when I became one of
the audience, that he would "not regard this as the time or the occasion
for him to comment upon the lid on liquor." A bit later in the course of
his answer to the question he had propounded, "Shall We Abolish the
Inevitable," he got an especially good hand when he remarked: "People
nowadays do not like statements having authority--but they will accept
any statement without authority." He concluded his denunciation of the
idea of fatalism with the declaration: "Whatever man is, he is not in
one sense a part of nature." "He has committed crimes, Crimes," he
repeated--with gusto in the use of the word,--"and performed heroisms
which no animal ever tried to do. Let us hold ourselves free from the
boundary of the material order of things, for so shall we have a chance
in the future to do things far too historic for prophecy."
I darted back toward Room Three, ran into Mr. Widdecombe, we wheeled,
and saw the mountain approaching. Whereas before, this off-stage place
had been deserted, now the scene was populous--with the figures of
agitated young women. Mr. Widdecombe, however, with much valiance
secured Mr. Chesterton. "Yes, yes," he said, and (remarkable remark!),
"I had the pleasure of meeting you in England." He glanced about rather
nervously at the dancing figures seeking to obtain him, and led the way
for me into the dressing room. Mr. Widdecombe pulled the door to from
without.
I am far from being as large as Mr. Chesterton, but the two of us
closeted in that compartment was an absurdity. Mr. Chesterton eclipsed a
chair, and beamed upon me with an expression of Cheeryble-like
brightness. Upon his arrival in New York he had declared to the press
that he would not write a book of his impressions of the United States.
I asked him if, after being here a week or so, he had changed his mind
as to this determination. "Not definitely," he said, "not definitely.
But, of course, one could never tell what one might do." He might write
a book about us, then? Yes, he might. Did he think it at all likely that
he would take up residence over here? A very joyous smile: "One's own
country is best," he said. Rumors had several times been afloat that he
had entered the Roman Catholic Church. Would he say whether there was
any likelihood of his doing this? He was an Anglican Catholic, he
replied. Not a Roman Catholic--yet. That was not to say that he might
not be--if the English Church should become more Protestant. What was
his next book to be? Had he any project in mind of going to Turkey, or
Mexico, or some such place? No; the only books he was working on at
present were a new volume of short stories and a book (smiling again
widely) on eugenics. He knew Mr. Lucas, of course? "Yes, fine fellow."
Did he know Frank Swinnerton? No. What was.... But the door was popped
open. Several persons were waiting for him, among them Mrs. Chesterton.
I helped him into the cape-coat. Stood behind the door so that when it
was opened he could get out. "You know Mr. Holliday," he said to Mrs.
Chesterton. "Thank you, so much," he said to me. And was whisked away.
* * * * *
Sunday at the hotel. He was late in arriving. I thought it would be
pleasanter to wait a bit out in front. Expected he would drive up soon
in a taxi. Then I saw him coming around the corner, walking, rolling
slowly from side to side like a great ship, Mrs. Chesterton with him--a
little lady whose stature suggested the idea of a yacht gracefully
cruising alongside the huge craft. I wonder if, nowadays when most
writers seem to try to look like something else, Mr. Chesterton knows
how overwhelmingly like a great literary figure he looks.
When we were seated, I asked if he had any dope on his "New Jerusalem"
book. He began to tell me how surprised he had been to find Jerusalem as
it is. But the substance of this you may find in the book. He expressed
sympathy with the idea of Zionism. Remarked that he "might become a
Zionist if it could be accomplished in Zion." All that he could find to
tell me about his "New Jerusalem" was that it had been "written on the
spot." Seemed very disinclined to talk about his own books. Said his
feeling in general about each one of them was that he "hoped something
would happen to it before anybody saw it."
His surprise at Jerusalem suggested to me the question, Had he been
surprised at the United States--what he had seen of it? But he dodged
giving any "view" of us. His only comment was on the "multitudinous
wooden houses."
Had he met many American authors? The one most recently met, a day or so
ago in Northampton, though he had met him before in England, was a
gentleman he liked very much. He was so thin Mr. Chesterton thought the
two of them "should go around together." His name? Gerald Stanley Lee.
But there is not a particle more of time that I can spend on this
article.
CHAPTER VI
WHEN IS A GREAT CITY A SMALL VILLAGE?
How many times you have noticed it! Regular phenomenon. Suddenly, within
a few hours, the whole nature of the great city is changed--your city
and mine, New York or Chicago, or Boston or Buffalo or Philadelphia.
Though nobody seems to say much about it afterward. Just sort of take
the thing for granted.
It is just like Armistice Night, every once in awhile. Total strangers
suddenly begin to call each other "Neighbor." Voices everywhere become
jollier. Numerous passersby begin to whistle and sing. People go with a
skip and a jump. Catcalls are heard. Groups may be seen all around going
arm in arm, and here and there with arms about necks. Anybody speaks to
you merrily. Merrily you speak to anybody. All eyes shine. Roses are in
every cheek. Hurry is abandoned. Small boys run wild. Nobody now objects
to their stealing a ride. It is fun to see their swinging legs dangling
over the tail of every wagon. Sour human nature is purged. Good humor
reigns. Hurrah!
I mean on the night of a big snow.
This year it looked for long as though we were going to be done out of
this truly Dickensean festival. Seemed like we were going to be like
those unfortunate people in Southern California, who never have any
winter to cheer them up. How tired they must get of their wives and
neighbors, with it bland summer all the time. Perhaps that is the reason
there is such a promiscuous domestic life out there.
Young Will Shakespeare had the dope. He piped the weather for jollity
and pep. "When blood is nipp'd"--"a merry note!"
You remember how it was this time: Spring all winter--and spring fever,
too, a good many of us had all the while. (My doctor said it was
"malaria" with me.) We were congratulating ourselves that we were going
to "get by" without any "blizzards" at all this year. We became "softy."
We guarded ourselves with our umbrellas against the shower. We became
prudent. And what is it Stevenson says of that? "So soon as prudence has
begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first
expression in a paralysis of generous acts. The victim begins to shrink
spiritually; he develops a fancy for parlors with a regulated
temperature, and takes his morality on the principle of thin shoes and
tepid milk."
Then one night there came a tinkle in the temperature as of sleigh
bells. And the town, the world sank into a soft blanket of white. Were
you out then? Ah! you should have been. You were not, I hope, in a
parlor with a regulated temperature.
Well, anyhow, everybody else was out. The cross streets of the big city
had "all to oncet" taken on the air of a small town "sociable." Shadowy
multitudes seemed to sprout up out of the ground. The sidewalks,
especially those usually so deserted at this hour, now ahum with dark
busy bowing figures, rang and clanged gayly with the sound of scoop and
shovel. In the democratic, jovial, village-like spirit of the occasion,
many of the workers (those more staid and portly ones) removed their
coats. Every here and there an areaway held, in a holiday effect, a
cluster of bare-headed maid-servants--the "gallery" of the shovellers,
whose presence tended to make of the task of clearing the sidewalk a
night-hour lark.
Voices in the street, as you know, and laughter there, is never so
musical as above snow-stilled pavements. Then, too, cheery echoes are
abroad among the recesses between the houses, in the courts and down the
ways where packages are delivered. The shovellers good-naturedly banter
one another and pass a cordial jest with those who travel by. And every
here and there the rich contralto of negro mirth is heard.
I do not know that the city's parks are not a finer spectacle under snow
than in the summer--their dark glistening branches laden à la Christmas
card, and, after dark, their festoons of lamps more twinkling and more
yellow than at any other time.
Along Broadway what a whirl! The street like an arena, hordes of
gladiators in doughty combat with the onslaught of the storm, snow-carts
banging and backing about (horses seem to stomp and snort and rear more
in a snowstorm than at any other time), new ridiculously miniature
"caterpillar tractors" performing like toy tanks at war, traffic in a
hilarious tangle, street cars crawling along looking more than ever
before like prodigious cat-eyed bugs. Here with a terrific buzz comes
one all dark furiously thrashing the snow from side to side by means of
revolving brooms beneath. The crowds an animated silhouette against the
whitened air. One wants to hop and shout one feels so much alive.
Lots of funny things happen. A taxicab there has got stuck in a drift.
It whirs in a passion. Wallows forward. Runs its nose up a little
hillock of hard crusted snow. Stops. Makes a fine hubbub. Slides back,
stilled, exhausted. Tries again. Same thing repeated. A pounding is
heard on the inside of the door. Chauffeur reaches back his hand to turn
handle of door. Something is wrong. He climbs down. Pulls at door.
Nothing doing. Door has apparently been sprung somehow. Taxi is now
observed to be a bit listed to one side. Pounding, louder than before,
again heard from inside. Conductor from nearby car comes to side of
chauffeur. Also policeman. All lay hold of each other and pull with
united effort at taxi door. Door flies open. Closely knit group of
chauffeur, conductor and policeman nearly tumbles backward into snow.
From cab door descends tall, elegant figure in evening clothes and top
hat. Followed by even more elegant figure of slender lady in opera
cloak. For some reason she appears to be very angry, and shakes her fist
at her three humble liberators. The couple seek some path, from the
trampled oasis where they stand, through the drifts to the sidewalk.
There is none. Her dazzling skirt she has caught high from the mess
about her feet. Perhaps a yard of pale yellow silken hose is revealed
above her satin pumps. Finally in desperation the two plunge forward,
taking gigantic steps, sinking knee-deep at every onward move,
tottering, swaying and at length fairly scrambling toward the haven of
the curb. The dozens along the sidewalk who have been held spellbound by
what they have found to be so delicious a comedy turn to one another
with delighted smiles--and move along again on their way.
It is things like this always happening all about which make snow-storm
nights in the city such a hippodrome affair, and all the world akin.
Over on the Avenue busses are busily pushing plows hitched on before.
There one has got stalled in a drift. It whirs and buzzes and backs and
starts and whirs and buzzes over and over again. No use, it seems.
Still, draped along the curb, the spectators stand, unmindful of the
gale, as absorbed as if at a Yale-Princeton game.
Buzzzzzzzzz--Whirrrrrrrrrrr--and away. She's off! A feeble cheer goes
up. And everybody starts onward again in better humor with himself for
having seen so entertaining a show.
It snowed the night through.
In the morning banks of snow breast-high through the side streets.
Through a narrow aisle down the middle of the roadway trucks cars and
wagons slowly go in single file. Moving thus all in a single line they
have something the effect of a circus parade--elephants and lion cages
and so on.
And lions remind me. It is always well to look at public statues and
outdoor pieces of sculpture the morning after a heavy snow. You are
likely to find them very comical apparitions. The celebrated literary
lions before the New York Public Library, for instance, wore throughout
the day after the first big snow of this winter ridiculous tall caps
pulled down very rakishly over their eyes.
Streaming from the direction of the railroad station were coming the
swarms of our commuter friends, the legs of many of them hoisting along
those prodigious "arctics" which are all the vogue nowadays. Isn't it
curious? There was a time when if you were obliged to wear glasses you
got them as nearly invisible as possible. If you were a man you felt
there was something shameful about having "weak" eyes. If a woman, you
"just knew" that glasses made you look "horrid." And when you wore
overshoes you got them as inconspicuous as possible. Now you affect
shell spectacles that can be seen a block away, and having huge lenses.
Now there is nothing smarter, apparently, than for a young woman with a
trim foot to come into town swaddled in floppers which fit her slim
ankles like a bucket.
Men are still shovelling and scraping away at the streets, a motley
army. What is it so many persons are pausing to smile at, others
hurrying on but with grinning faces turned back? It is at a gentleman
shoveller. Here recruited somehow among this gang of husky laborers is a
slim eccentric figure in a--yes, a frock coat, a derby hat, kid gloves,
and very tight trousers ... a quaint picture of the shabby genteel.
Walking very briskly back and forth, very upright in carriage, the small
of his back curved inward, he pushes his scraper before him holding it
by the very tip of the long handle--and as well as can be observed
doesn't scrape anything at all. His fellow workers regard him with surly
disgust and roughly bump into him at every opportunity. What story is
there, in that absurd, pathetic scene, what O. Henry tale of mischance
in a great city?
A wagon on a side street has got its wheels ground into the snow bank at
the side of the narrow cleared way. Such accidents are all about, and
everywhere men may be seen leaving their own affairs to give a helping
hand to a fellow being in sore straits. The visitation of a great snow
storm strikingly unites the bonds of the brotherhood of man.
Stalled for interminable periods in suburban trains and in traffic jams
hurried men give themselves up cheerfully to the philosophic virtue of
patience.
Vagabonds sent on errands two miles away return after three hours with
tales of the awful slowness of trolley cars. And on days of great snow
storms meet with Christian forgiveness.
CHAPTER VII
THE UNUSUALNESS OF PARISIAN PHILADELPHIA
I discovered the other day that Philadelphia is a very great deal nearer
to Paris than New York is.
How do I figure out that?
Plain enough. It's because New York women, buds and matrons, thinking
they are got up (or as the English say, "turned out") smart as anything,
are parading around in fashions today altogether passée.
You know the New York scene. And how for some considerable time now its
most--well, most apparent feature has been a--er, a hosiery display ...
unparalleled off the gay stage of musical comedy. Very, so to speak,
exhilarating that once was--the glistening spectacle of, moving all
about, those symmetrically tapering lines of pink and rose and orange
and pearl and taupe and heather tan and heather green and purple wool
and sheen of black and gloss of mottled snake and--and all that.
But, I am afraid, the eye over-long accustomed to the great Metropolitan
movie thriller of the fashionable streets had become somewhat dulled.
The Parisienne knew about the peculiar character of the eye, and that it
ceases to see with any emotional response at all that which remains
within its range of vision for any extended length of time. So she
(roguish witch!) alertly changed the picture.
I picked up by chance, during my two-hour run on the train, a copy of
one of our most dashing fashion journals. It was the "Forecast of Spring
Fashions" number. I opened it, at random, at the headline: "The Short
Skirt Has Had Its Day in Paris." Below was a jolly photograph (of a
stunning lady at the latest races at Auteuil) illustrating "the new
skirt length." Visible beneath the hem--a trim foot, and a bit of tidy
ankle.
Who was the fellow (with a gifted eye for the lasses) who spoke with
such delight of the tiny feet that "like little mice run in and out"?
And there was that other poet (what was his name? I declare! my
literature is getting awful rusty), who sang with such relish the charm
of feminine drapery "concealing yet revealing." Anyhow, you know what
I'm getting at.
I closed the magazine and forgot about the matter--until shortly after I
had come out of the Broad Street Station.
The modish scene I apprehended was, to an eye accustomed steadily for
some time to the natty abbreviations of Fifth Avenue, a refreshing, a
charming spectacle. I seemed suddenly to have left my "orchestra seat."
And to have returned again to a view of, so to put it, ladies in private
life.
Though, indeed, occasionally in the distance I caught a flashing glimpse
of, according to Paris decree, the obsolete skirt length.
Come to think of it, isn't this so, too: that there are in Philadelphia
more rose-cheeked damsels of hearty figure and athletic-heel swing than
you usually come across in other cities?
At any rate, there are quite a number of very unusual things about
"Phila," as I believe intimate friends of the city affectionately call
the place. Things which it may be you have not noticed lately--perhaps
because you haven't been there recently, or maybe because you live
there, and so see them every day.
One of the unusual things about Philadelphia is that so many ladies and
"gem'men" who do light housekeeping on and around Manhattan Island (in
other words "New Yorkers") apparently find it easier frequently to get
to Chicago, or Palm Beach, or London, or Santa Barbara than to journey
to Philadelphia. I suppose the reason for this state of mind is the same
as the cause of my sometimes feeling that it would be about as simple
for me to undertake a trip from the Grand Central to Buffalo as to get
from Times Square down to Fulton Street for a luncheon appointment. A
place which is only half an hour, or two hours away, is a place, you
think, that you can run down to any time. And--well, just at the moment
with everything so pressing and all that. To become keyed up about
taking a "real" trip is another matter.
And when I myself do get there I always feel that it is an unusual thing
that I have allowed so long a time to lapse since I came before. Because
it is so unusually pleasant and restful a ride that it makes me sore to
think what an unusually deuce of a thing I am put to every night going
home in the rush hour to Dyckman Street on the subway.
It is an unusual thing (or, at least, so it seems to me) that in
Philadelphia cards in windows advertising rooms to let should be (as
they are) labelled "Vacancies."
It is an unusual thing that here so many undertakers' shops should be
conducted in what appear to be private residences. It is an unusual
thing that there should be so many ways of paying your fare on the
street cars--in some you pay when you get on, in others when you get
off. It is an unusual thing that in Philadelphia there are more
different kinds of street lamps than (I suspect) there are in any other
city in the world. There are powerful arc lamps, high on tall poles,
cold white in their light. There are lower down, particularly pleasant
in the twinkle of their numbers in Washington Square, gas lamps glowing
a mellow yellow through their mantles. Various other kinds of lamps,
too. But the ones I like best are those squat fellows throughout
Independence Square. Octagonal iron-bound boxes of glass, small at the
base, wide at the top, with a kind of ecclesiastical derby hat of iron
as a lid. They somehow suggest to me the lamps which I fancy before Will
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.
Here golden Diana with her bow does not poise high on her slender
Spanish tower. But from far above the "Public Buildings" Brother Penn
looks down on more banks, United States Mints, trust companies, firms
dealing in securities, places handling investments, and such-like
business concerns than (one has a feeling) can be found in any other
city in Christendom. There are too, I should guess, in Philadelphia
about as many different styles and periods of architecture as in any
other municipality between the two great seas: Georgian, Colonial,
bay-window, London brick row, ramshackle frame, modern mansion,
skyscraper, etc., etc., etc. And certainly I don't know where one could
go to count more different kinds of porches. Nor where one could find so
many such pleasant oddities of today as hitching-blocks, doorway
foot-scrapers, and those old friends of our childhood the front yard
stone storks.
And where, Oh, where! (not even in London) can one find so many alleys
to the square inch? Many of them, lanes of but a few blocks in length,
highly respectable, even aristocratic, quarters of the town. Such as
Camac Street, tucked away between Thirteenth and Twelfth Streets, one
block of it either side of Locust, and the home or haunt of those of
artistic persuasion. Here the famous Franklin Inn Club, the charming
Poor Richard Club, and divers other clubs of kindred spirit. Unusual
this quaint street of art in this: in fixing it up for its present
purpose its quaintness and its "artiness" have not been overdone. Far,
far finer in effect than New York's over eccentric alley of painters,
Washington Mews, its original loveliness has simply been restored. It is
as jolly to look upon as London's artist nook, Cheyne Row. Perhaps even
jollier.
Now another unusual thing about Philadelphia is that Philadelphians
standing within three blocks of the place can't tell you where South
Carlisle Street is. Professional Philadelphians, such as policemen,
firemen, postmen, street car men, can't do it. In the attempt they
contradict each other, and quarrel among themselves. For the benefit of
both Philadelphians and visitors to the city I will set down here
exactly the location of South Carlisle Street. West of Broad, south of
Pine, it runs one block from Pine to Lombard Street. After a jump, where
there isn't any of it, north of Market Street there is more of it.
But what the dickens is South Carlisle Street, and why should anybody
care where it is? Well, though it isn't in the books on Historic Shrines
of America it is a street you "hadn't ought to" miss. It's about twelve
feet (or something like that) from wall to wall. The doorways seem to be
about three feet wide. There, in South Carlisle Street, Philadelphia's
mahogany doors, fan-lights above, white pillars before, marble steps
below, her immaculate red brick, her freshly painted wooden shutters,
her gleaming brass knockers are in their most exquisite perfection.
A wealthy and cultivated gentleman or two "took up" the street a year or
so ago, decided to make their homes there, and it has become quite
"class." Same idea, more or less, that Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt has
concerning the "exodus" of her set from Fifth Avenue to unheard-of
Sutton Place over among the tall yellow chimneys by New York's East
River.
Considering the great wealth in Philadelphia and its environs,
particularly those patrician environs lying toward Harrisburg, it is, I
think, unusual that you never see on the streets there a Pekingese or a
Pomeranian attended by a personage in livery.
Unusual, too, that in a city of the first class along the eastern
seaboard so few canes are "worn."
And, by the way, that's an unusual railroad service from Philadelphia to
New York. Conductor calls out: "Train for Newark and New York. Newark
first stop." Train slides a few feet--halts at West Philadelphia. Spins
along a bit again, and pulls up at North Philadelphia. Stops later along
the way at Trenton, Newark, and Manhattan Junction. I really do not see,
putting a wreck out of the calculation, where else it could stop.
I took from a boy in the Pennsylvania station a copy of one of New
York's most popular evening papers. It came apart in the middle.
Straightening it out, I caught a headline on the "Talks to Women" page.
It read "Short Skirts Remain." Below a cut of a beaming lass attired,
the caption said, in "frock of navy blue ruffled taffeta with short
sleeves and 'shorter' skirt."
When I came out onto the street the temperature (in skirts) seemed to
have risen since my departure a couple of days before.
CHAPTER VIII
OUR LAST SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT AS A FINE ART
I have just witnessed a revelation. At least, it was a revelation to me.
I'm keen on telling you all about it.
One of my earlier articles in this series had to do with the
establishment here and there in a great city of those gentlemen engaged
in the estimable business of packing you up for keeps--that is the
"parlors" of various sorts of "undertakers." I had been much struck by
the vast number of cozy little places catering, so to say, to the poor
and humble who have forever (as Stevenson puts it) "parted company with
their aches and ecstasies." And I had wondered at how very few places
there were in evidence on the streets to take care of the "remains" of,
in a manner of speaking, the first-cabin passengers in life, those who
have travelled through their days in a fashion de luxe. The
establishments of this type which now and then I did see were very
palatial indeed--and didn't look at all as though they would
countenance the corpse of just an ordinary person such as you and me.
Also, all the undertaking establishments visible to me in my goings and
comings about town were quite obviously undertaking establishments. They
displayed within and without the air, the accoutrements, the
paraphernalia traditionally associated with one's last social engagement
on earth, his funeral. They varied only in this: some were rich and
haughty in general effect, others simple and perhaps dingy in
appearance. But each and all of them looked as much like an undertaking
shop as a barber shop looks like a barber shop. You could not possibly
have mistaken any one of them for a Turkish bath establishment, or a
Carnegie library, or an office for steamship tickets.
As I say, I wrote that article telling all this and that about what
anybody may see any day as he goes about on his rounds through the thick
of the city. But when the article appeared--originally--it soon
developed that I was not abreast of undertaking matters at all. I had
not in the least kept track of the remarkable advances which have to
date been made in the art of being buried--and a very fine art, in the
advanced phases of the affair, it certainly has become. I did not even
know the present-day, the correct, name for what I, in so old-fashioned
a condition of mind, called an "undertaker's." No.
That word, "undertaker," has long, long ago been discarded by the élite
of the profession. What a queer word as a business title it was, anyway!
How did it originally ever come to be used in its mortuary relation? No
one in the business that I have asked has been able to tell me. And why
in the dim past when names were being given to trades did not this word,
undertaker, seem to be equally descriptive of the career of physician or
attorney? Indeed, does not he that sets himself the highly hazardous
task of saving a living fellow being from disease or the gallows
undertake to do more than he who merely performs the quiet office of
laying us away?
And then, oddly enough for its tragic associations, the word acquired in
our minds something of a ludicrous turn. It was reminiscent of Dickens,
of hired professional "mourners," and that sort of thing. At mention of
the word, a picture popped into our mind of a grotesquely angular being,
of sallow, elongated features and lugubrious manner, garbed in a rusty
frock coat and "stove pipe" hat, who put together before him the tips of
black-gloved fingers and spoke with a hollow sound. We would say to our
friends when they were feeling blue: "What's the matter with you? You
act like an undertaker."
Well, as doubtless you have noticed, the term "funeral director" more or
less recently pretty well superseded the word undertaker among
progressive concerns. It is a phrase much more in the modern spirit,
like "domestic science" for (what used to be) "household work,"
"modiste" for "dressmaker," "maid" for "hired-girl," "psychic" for
"fortune teller," "publicity engineer" for "press agent," and so on. And
it has a good, business-like, efficient sound.
Still (I discovered) to be buried by a funeral director is not the very
latest, the most fashionable thing. The really smart way nowadays of
bidding good-bye to the world is to go to the establishment of a
"mortician."
Yes; that's what the gentleman said in his very cordial letter: would I
care to look over a "real mortician's establishment in New York City?" I
replied that nothing could give me greater pleasure. So at the time
appointed a couple of days later his car came round for me.
When I told people of the visit I was about to make, they all laughed,
very heartily. Now that brings to one's attention a curious thing: why
should they laugh? Honestly, between you and me, think hard and tell me
what really there is funny about going to see a burial establishment?
Paradoxical indeed is the attitude of mind of practically everyone
toward this subject of being ushered out of life. Sundry totally
contradictory emotions are aroused in the very same person by slightly
different aspects of the same subject. If you remark that you are going
to spend the afternoon at the undertaker's that is awfully amusing. At
the same time, is not nearly everyone down in his heart a bit scared of
undertakers' shops? Uncomfortable, gruesome places, would not most of us
feel, to have next door?
At any rate, as we glided along I was told by the gentleman who had come
to fetch me that the feeling was very general that the presence of a
funeral director's establishment depreciated the value of property in
the immediate neighborhood. Though, he asserted, this popular idea
frequently had not at all been borne out in fact.
It developed (from his lively conversation) that nothing so much annoys
a funeral director, or a mortician, as for a visitor to pull old gags
which he thinks are smart--such, for instance, as the remark: "I see
your business is pretty dead." I gathered that this jocular pleasantry
was the stock joke of all near-wits who visited undertakers--I mean
morticians.
No; there is another thing which annoys these gentlemen (morticians)
even more than such punk puns as that. They deeply resent, I discovered,
any disrespectful allusion to their silent clients, such as calling them
"stiffs," or something like that. How would you, they ask, like to have
someone of yours--someone who but yesterday returned your heart's clasp,
now dumb and cold--made game of by such ribaldry? Certainly, I cannot
say that I should like it.
Another paradoxical contradiction! Tell me (if you can) what strange
spring of his being prompts a man to think it big and bold and hearty of
him to speak with such cynical contemptuousness of a fellow man returned
to rigid clay.
We had arrived at our destination, I was told. But I saw nothing, but
what was (seemingly) a rather handsome private residence, set in a
pleasant lawn. Though I did discern by the door a modest plate which
read (as I recall the name) "Wentworth Brothers," nothing more.
Wentworth Brothers might have been, for all the exterior evidence to the
contrary, architects, or teachers of dancing and the piano, or breeders
of pedigreed dogs, or dealers in antiques, or physical instructors, or
almost anything you please.
This I soon learned was the fundamental principle of the sensitive art
of the mortician--to scrap all the old stage properties of the bugaboo
type of undertaker.
We passed into a charming hall, light and cheerful, furnished in
excellent taste, altogether domestic in effect. A number of bright
looking people, apparently attached to the premises, were lightly moving
about. I had somewhat the sensation of having come to a most agreeable
afternoon tea.
I was presented to my host, as cheerful, wholesome and cordial a young
chap as anyone would care anywhere to see. The senior, he, of the
brothers. I had been a little depressed that morning, having a bad cold
and being fretted by a number of gloomy things, but as we proceeded
through the house my spirits picked up decidedly. I experienced a
feeling of mental and physical well-being, so attractive was everything
about.
A dainty reception room opened off the hall at the front. My impression
was of a nice amount of charming Colonial furniture. Altogether such a
room as you might see in an illustration in the magazine _House and
Garden_. Secluded back of this rooms having a brisk atmosphere and
serving as offices. Peopled by very trim and efficient looking young
people.
We descended to the "stock room," a most sanitary looking place of
cement floor, ceiling and walls, where was a large store of caskets of
many varieties. Behind this a spick and span embalming room which
(except for the two tables) somewhat suggested an admirable creamery.
Here I discovered that to the mind of the mortician towels belong to the
Dark Ages. The up-to-date way of drying hands is by holding them before
a blast of air turned on from a pipe.
We ascended to the third floor. Here were the chapels, rooms which might
have been designed to accommodate fashionable audiences attending
literary lectures. In connection with them a tiny "minister's study,"
not unlike the sanctum of a university professor. Also here small hotel
suites, each with bath attached, available for the bereaved from out of
town. Here, too, snug quarters for wakes. And a spacious chamber wherein
friends may sit for a little last visit with the departed. The dominant
article of furniture in this room an Empire lounge such as we see
supporting the figure of Madame Récamier in the famous portrait by
David. A consummate refinement was shown me on this floor: telephones,
concealed behind panels in the wall, with no bells to jangle over-tried
nerves, but with a tiny red electric globe on the wall to light as the
signal.
The top floor a dormitory for male employees, having much the effect of
rooms for boys at college, gay soft cushions, pipes and mandolins
scattered about.
I lingered for a smoke and a chat with my host on the ground floor in an
oak panelled room like the library of a gentleman's club before leaving.
I came away with (I very much fear) an idea that I should like to go
back tomorrow and see some one of my friends so agreeably buried from
that place.
CHAPTER IX
WRITING IN ROOMS
I remember that I was somewhat surprised when E. V. Lucas expressed
surprise that I was writing in my room at the hotel where we both
happened to be at the same time for several days last summer. He
declared with an expression of sharp distaste that he could not write in
hotel rooms. But said he had no difficulty in writing on trains. That
rather got me, because I can't write at all on trains. And possibly
because I was a bit peeved at the easy way in which he spoke of doing
that exceedingly difficult thing, writing on trains, I asserted in reply
that anybody ought to be able to write in _any kind_ of a room. But I do
know, what every writer knows, that the particular room one may be in
can make a good deal of difference in the way one is able to write.
Of course, it does appear to be true that there are writers of a kind
that can write anywhere in any circumstances, apparently with equal
facility and their customary standard of merit, whatever that may be. I
suppose war correspondents must be like that, and reporters for daily
newspapers. We know that a good many war books were announced as having
been written in dugouts, trenches, pill-boxes, tanks, submarines,
hospitals, airplanes and so on. In the matter of some of them I should
not undertake to dispute that they had even been written in asylums.
I have known, and known well, men of that type of mind which seemed to
be so completely under control that at will it could be turned on or
off, so to say, like the stream from a water faucet. My friend Joyce
Kilmer had such a head. It has been told how some of his most moving
poems--for one instance "The White Ships and the Red"--were the result
of hurried newspaper assignments: how he could leave a poem in the
middle of its composition, go out and lunch heartily for two hours,
return and finish the writing of it; how early in his career he would
walk up and down a room of his home in suburban New Jersey at two in the
morning and dictate (without a pause) to his wife while carrying a
shrilly crying child in his arms; how one of the best of his "Sunday
stories" was dictated directly after having been taken to a hospital
with three ribs fractured by being hit by his commutation train--and how
much more. A young man with a brain in perfect practical working
condition. But even he was not free from the mysterious tricks of
creative writing. For we know that after a daily round sustained for a
number of years of high productivity, when he went into the war, which
inspired countless others to _begin_ writing, he suddenly ceased to
write, practically altogether.
Poets and trains being up, brings to my mind my friend the Reverend
Edward F. Garesché, S. J., a source of amusement to many of his friends
because of his method of composition. He travels continually. Frequently
he will excuse himself from a group with whom he is talking, go to his
own seat, request the porter to bring him a card table, get out his
travelling typewriter, rattle off several poems, return to his party and
resume conversation at about where he had left off. Some of his poems
are very good; some (I'm sorry to have to say) are--not so good.
And so round we come again to the matter of writing in rooms. We know
how Booth Tarkington writes: in what he calls a "work spree," in a room
upstairs at home, a pile of freshly sharpened pencils ready to his
hand--and that, doubtless, he wouldn't be able to write anything in an
office if he were to be hanged for not doing it. (Probably never goes to
an office.) Meredith Nicholson, on the other hand, declares that the
only way it is possible for him to write is to go regularly at nine
o'clock every morning to an office he has downtown; where he tells
anyone who may ask over the telephone that he'll be there until five in
the afternoon.
There are persons who like to have others around them, moving about,
while they write. And people there are who find it necessary to lock
themselves up, and can have no one else in the room. Though in some
cases such persons would not mind the bang of a bass-drum just the other
side of the door. I know a man who had an office in lower Manhattan
where for a considerable period just outside his open window a steam
riveter was at work. Terrific it was, the way the noise of this machine
smashed the air into tiny particles like a shower of broken glass.
Callers who found this man contentedly writing would hold their ears and
look at him with their hair on end from amazement. A man of highly
nervous organism, too; one who would be very upset if his typewriter had
a pale ribbon, or be spoiled for the day if he couldn't find the right
pen--worn over just to his liking at the point. But, after the first day
or so, Mr. Soaping (name of the gentleman I'm telling you about) I know
didn't hear the riveter at all.
Then those exist, Royal Cortissoz is one, who, dictating all they do,
can have in the room while they work only their secretary. Frequently is
it the case, too, that none but the amanuensis to whom they have been
long accustomed will do. A stranger throws 'em completely off. A
novelist I know, the writer of a very good style, who becomes very much
fussed up, and is practically destroyed, when he suspects a secretary of
giving critical attention to the manner of his prose. An embarrassing
thing about most stenographers, I have found, is that they are greatly
grieved if you say "'em" for "them," or anything like that. Or else they
won't let you do such things at all, and edit everything pleasant back
into perfectly good copy-book English. Some of them won't even let you
split an infinitive.
Who was it, Voltaire, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, somebody, who could
write only when elaborately got up in his satins and ruffles? It is what
not long ago was called a bromidium to say that humorists are sad
people. I'd probably be thought humorous if I should call myself any
particular flier as a humorist, but this I know: wherever in my writing
I may have approached being amusing that generally was written when I
was considerably depressed. Forenoon is the best time for some to write;
late at night for others. "Ben Hur," I seem to recall, was penned
beneath a noble tree. At any rate, we frequently see pictures of
novelists, particularly in England, at work in their gardens. The most
familiar photographs, etchings, medallions and so on of Mark Twain and
of Robert Louis Stevenson at work are those of them writing in bed. Now
I can't (as some so take their breakfast) eat in bed; and I'm quite sure
I should never be able comfortably to write anything there. I do not
tell you how it is with me because I regard it as of deep interest to
you to hear how it is with me, but merely to aid me in assembling a
collection of facts concerning the freakishness of writing, and to
suggest to you how very different it may be with _you_.
And I couldn't write under a tree. One writer, perhaps, writes more
easily in the winter than in the summer, or it is the other way round.
The mind of one, it may be, is stimulated by the companionship of an
open fire, and that of another (for aught I know) by the companionship
of an ice-box. Personally, I think that it is well in writing for the
weather to be cool enough to have the windows down; and that night is
the best time, for the reason that your mind (or, at least, my mind) is
more gathered together within the circle of light at your desk.
Frequently, however (as you know), after sitting for hours with your
mind plumb stalled, it is not until shortly before your bed time that
that eccentric engine, your brain, gets buzzed up. Then, probably, you
can't call the thing off if you want to. I will tell you a story:
A man there is, of some renown as a writer, who started a new book early
last spring. For some considerable time he had been much discouraged
about his writing. Hadn't been able to make it go. Could only lift
heavily and painfully one stilted sentence after another. Used to take
up now and then one or another of his early books and look into it.
Marvelled how it was that he ever could have written such clever stuff.
Like Swift when late in life he re-read "Gulliver," so did this man
exclaim: "What a genius I had at that time!" He felt that the fire had
gone out; his inner life seemed to have completely died; he was a hollow
shell; could now neither receive nor impart anything worth half a
jews-harp. When, one day, he heard rosy, young Hugh Walpole say of
himself that of course what he had written was merely a beginning to
what he felt he might do, this man looked at rosy, young Hugh Walpole
with a deeply gloomy and very jealous eye.
But, lo! as I say, this man started this new book. It began as a series
of articles for which he was to be paid--that was _why_ it was begun at
all. Now see! With him it was as Professor George Edward Woodberry says
of Poe in his admirable "Life"--for a time his genius had "slept." With
the start of the new book he awoke. It began to run right out of the
ends of his fingers. Took (that book) hold of him completely. He
couldn't leave it. Go to bed, have to get up and go at it again. Try to
go out for a round of exercise. After a block or so from his quarters,
walk slower and slower. Miserable. Tortured. Turn back. Immediately
happy again. Soon be back at work. Anybody who entangled him with an
invitation anywhere enraged him beyond measure.
New book finished. Everything fine. Got another commission. Easy enough
job. Set to at it. Empty vessel again! In despair. He'd make all sorts
of excuses to himself to leave his place early in the morning to
postpone beginning work. He'd go anywhere, with anybody, to keep as long
as possible from facing that task again. Couldn't give any sensible
explanation of his prolonged delay to the publishers. Kept putting them
off again and again, with one cripple-legged excuse after another, in
the hope that he'd come round. Matter became a disgrace.
Still queerer cases than that I know. Fellow who shared an apartment
with me one time. When according to the accepted law of nature his mind
should have been in a very bad way, then always was he at his best.
After leading a regular, wholesome life for a period his mind would
become dull, stale and unprofitable. When, following a very different
sort of period, he should in all reason have awakened with a splitting
head, a swollen eye and a shaking hand, he would get up at about dawn
one morning in rattling fine spirits, his mind as clear as a bell, and
with an impassioned desire to work. Could, then, write like a streak.
But doesn't William James touch upon such a matter as this somewhere?
And Stevenson, how wrong he got the thing! What is it he tells us as to
the years of apprenticeship to writing:
It is only after years of such gymnastic that one can sit down at
last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of
phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself
knowing what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit of a man's
ability) able to do it.
Only last night it was I was talking to Jesse Lynch Williams. He said
nothing of "legions of words swarming to his call," nary a mention of
"dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice."
Instead, he asked if I found that writing came easier as time went on.
No, he said, it seemed to him that writing became harder and harder the
longer one wrote. That he had torn up everything he had done for a long
while.
Always the paradox! Again, there are men who write with astonishing
ease, or at least with astonishing rapidity, and write well. Not so long
ago I began a novel in collaboration with a writer known and admired
from coast to coast, a frequent contributor to _The Bookman_, and one of
the best. We were to do this thing turn and turn about, a chapter by me,
then a chapter by him, and so on. For something like ten days I toiled
over chapter one. I labored and I groaned. When it was finished I was
spent. I handed him the manuscript; he stuffed it into his overcoat
pocket and went whistling away. Returned within a few days and handed me
a wad of copy covering, I think, three chapters. Again I toiled in the
sweat of my brow. Gave him another chapter. When, after a couple of
weeks or something like that, he returned and I had read what he had
done I discovered that he had got people married that I hadn't known
were yet born. The collaboration busted up.
My excellent friend does not like me to tell this story, because he
thinks it represents me as the conscientious artist and him as the
shallow scribbler. Well, that was not so; his chapters were far better
than mine. Nevertheless, his name I shall not give; I'll merely say
that it has very much the sound of a name borne by one of the
Elizabethan dramatists.
Then there is that sort of human head-piece which can only write when it
absolutely has to. I allude to the magical instrument of coercion known
as a "copy date." I know people, dozens of them, who having a month and
a half ahead of them in which to do an article can't possibly get
started on it until it is almost too late for them to get it in on time
to go to press--when a mad frenzy seizes them, their indolence vanishes
like mist before the rising sun, their minds open like a flower, and all
is well.
And the "galley slaves," those poor devils who for years have lived
under the whip of copy day every day. How they dream of the "real"
things they might do, given time. If (they think) the Lord would only
subsidize them! Now and then the Devil takes one of them and does this
very thing. The happy man gets some sort of a sinecure. All he has to do
is to go write. And (in all probability) that's all there is to that
story. He is like those things Riley tells about who "swaller
theirselves." He gets nothing written.
What do you write with? And why do you write with whatever it is you
write with instead of with something else? Why did Mr. Howells (in all
the writing of his which I have seen) use a script-letter typewriter
instead of a Roman-letter machine? Why does Mr. Le Gallienne do so much
of his copy (if not all of it) by hand? Why is it that Mr. Huneker could
never either dictate or learn to run a typewriter? How is it possible
for those Englishmen--Swinnerton and Bennett, for instance--to put forth
in a few months whole novels in the monkish hand of an illuminated
missal? (I have seen the original manuscript of "The Old Wives' Tale,"
every page like a copper-plate engraving, and hardly a correction
throughout.) And why is that it seems to me most natural to write some
things with a pen, others with a pencil, most things on a typewriter,
and yet again mix the use of all three implements in one composition? I
cannot tell you.
Some authors, if they are going to write about a slum, have to go and
live in a slum while they are writing about a slum. Other authors, if
they are going to write about life in an Ohio town, go to Italy to write
about life in an Ohio town. In his excellent book "On the Trail of
Stevenson" Clayton Hamilton says:
Throughout his lifelong wanderings, Stevenson rarely or never
attempted to describe a place so long as he was in it. For his
selection of descriptive detail he relied always on the
subconscious artistry of memory. He trusted his own mind to forget
the non-essential; and he seized upon whatever he remembered as, by
that token, the most essential features of a scene--the features,
therefore, that cried out to be selected as the focal points of the
picture to be suggested to the mind's eye of his readers.
The author of the thirteen volumes known as "The Chronicles of
Barsetshire," a detailed picture of the English clergy of his time, had
never associated with bishops, deans, and arch-deacons; he built them up
(to use his own expression) out of his "moral consciousness."
But round to rooms again. Often has it been told how Anthony Trollope
worked. How he accomplished so much--thirty-odd novels besides as many
tales--by a method he recommended to all who wish to pursue successfully
the literary career. In the drawing room of the Athenæum Club, in a
railway carriage, or on the ocean, wherever he might be he seated
himself for three hours as a limit, with his watch before him; and
regularly as it marked the quarter hour he turned off two hundred and
fifty words, undisturbed by any distraction about him. We know that the
unlettered man of genius, John Bunyan, wrote his immortal allegory "The
Pilgrim's Progress" in Bedford jail. And there is being advertised now a
book recently written in an American prison. And much writing has been
done in garrets. Then here's our old friend George Moore. Again and
again he has told of exactly the places it was necessary for him to live
in while he wrote certain books. I open at random "Ave"; and I find
this:
I descended the hillside towards the loveliest prospect that ever
greeted mortal eyes.... And I walked thinking if there were one
among my friends who would restore Mount Venus sufficiently for the
summer months, long enough for me to write my book.
Now, to be quite frank with you, I didn't intend to write this paper at
all. You may remember that when I set out I was merely in disagreement
with Mr. Lucas concerning the matter of writing in a hotel room. One
thing (as it will) led to another; and the upshot has been all this
pother. However, there are, I hope, no bones broken--and that's saying a
good deal for any kind of a discussion in these unsettled times.
What I am coming to is (the fashionable thing to come to nowadays) the
psychic. A fellow I know was much puzzled. He recently got back to 16
Gramercy Park from a trip around the world. I saw him there having some
toast and a pot of tea. He told me these interesting circumstances. He
would be at a superbly appointed hotel in some city. Beautiful suite of
rooms. Commodious bath-room with lovely bay-window. Everything to make
for perfect mental and physical well-being. Impotent to write there.
Later runs into some terrible dump of a lodging house. Horrible din of
low noises all about. One dirty window looks out on scene of squalor. So
cold at night has to put chair on bed and sit there to be nearer gas
jet. Gets on wonderfully with writing. Strikes another place, handsomest
of all; writes pretty well. Comes to most fearful place yet; can't write
at all.
Couldn't make head nor tail of the matter, this fellow. Discussed the
thing with many people. Finally found young woman who gave convincing
explanation. It's like this: Undoubtedly you are, in any room, affected
by something of the spirit which lingers there of former occupants.
Maybe they were persons, whatever their station in life, sympathetic to
your spirit--maybe not.
CHAPTER X
TAKING THE AIR IN SAN FRANCISCO
A few days ago, in the warm and brilliant winter sunlight there, I was
strolling along the Embarcadero. Now all my life I have been very fond
of roving the streets....
And that confession reminds me:
I one time heard a minister (a clergyman of considerable force of
eloquence) preach a sermon against streets. His idea seemed to be that
streets were not good for one--that they were very bad places. He
admonished mothers to keep their children "off the streets." He regarded
it as very reprehensible in a wife for her to "gad the streets." The
footpad (he said) plied the street at night, while the righteous were at
home in bed. What so sad as "a child of the streets"? If we wished to
describe a worthless canine we called it a "street dog." The outcast has
his home in the streets. The drunkard makes his bed in the street. It
was painful (I gathered) for a civilized being to hear the "language of
the street." And so on.
But I very much fear that the eloquence of this gentleman was greater
than his Christianity. If we are to love our neighbors as we do
ourselves, we will find him in greatest variety in the streets. If we
are to give away our cloak, the beneficiary, I should think, would be a
citizen much accustomed to the streets. And, as far as I can make out,
there is more rejoicing in heaven over the arrival of a sister who has
"walked the streets" than attends the reception of a nun.
Certainly I admit that roaming the streets (like everything else) can
doubtless be overdone. Nevertheless, to most people, people of ordinary
ways of life (like myself), I highly recommend the practice, as a most
healthful exercise, as a pleasant course of profitable education, as a
source of endless amusement, and as a Christian virtue. The trouble, I
think, with most of us is not that we see too much of the streets but
that we do not see as well as we might the streets we happen to be on.
We do not read as we run.
So I would write an article In Praise of Streets.
As I was saying (when that minister switched me off), I was strolling
along the Embarcadero. Among all the different sorts of streets there
are none I think more beguiling than those which lie along the water
front of a town or a city. The water-front streets of all seaport
cities, of course, partake very much of the same character. Particularly
in the picturesque aspect of the shop windows.
Here along the rim of San Francisco Bay you pass the sparkling pier
buildings (now and then of Spanish mission architecture) of the Toyo
Kisen Kaisha Oriental S. S. Co., of the American Hawaiian S. S. Co., the
Kosmos Line, and the Pacific-Alaska Navigation Co., among others. While
on New York's West Street you see the structures of the White Star Line,
the Cunard Line, the Red Star Line, erected in masonry of a sort of
mammoth and glorified garage architecture, funnels and masts peeping
over the top; and further down the frame sheds of the Morgan Line, the
Clyde Steam Ship Company, Savannah Line, Lackawanna Rail Road, Hoboken
Ferry, and so on. But the tastes of the sailor man as a shopper appear
to be very much the same whether he is along the London docks, on West
Street, by Boston piers or here on the Embarcadero. In this the West
and the East do meet.
The æsthetic taste of the water front inclines, very decidedly, to the
ornate. As (presumably) a present to a lady and a decoration for the
home the favorite object seems to be a heavy china plate. A romantic
landscape, or a moonlight scene, or perhaps a still life study of portly
roses is "hand painted" in very thick pigment on its face. Its rim is
plaited in effect, like the edge of a fancy pie, and through numerous
openings in this rim is run a heavy ribbon by which to hang it on the
wall.
Next in prominence in the window displays of water-front bazaars is the
set of bleary-colored glass ware (upper edges bound in gold) which I
take to be designed for the purpose of serving punch, or perhaps
lemonade--a large bowl of warty surface, with a number of cups to match
hanging from hooks at its brim.
The water front obviously is strong for the amenities, the arts and the
refinements of life. Bottles of perfume (with huge bows of ribbon at
their necks) are in great abundance in its shop windows; as also are
packets of boudoir soap (Dawn Lilac seems to be the favorite), toilet
powders, silk initial handkerchiefs, opera glasses, ladies' garters of
very fluffy design, feminine combs ornamented with birds in gilt,
exceedingly high stand-up collars for gentlemen, banjos, guitars,
mandolins, accordions (of a great variety of sizes), harmonicas, playing
cards, dice and poker chips.
As for the rest of the display, it is a multifarious collection: rubber
hip-boots, hair clippers, money belts, brogans, bandana handkerchiefs,
binoculars, tobacco pouches, spools of thread, pitch-black plug tobacco,
hand searchlights, heavy underwear, woolen sox, razor strops, tin
watches, shaving brushes, elaborately carved pipes, trays of heavy
rings, and here and there some quaint curiosity, such as a little model
of a sailing ship in a bottle which it could not have entered through
the mouth, or some such oddity as that.
One old friend of mine on West Street I missed on the Embarcadero. And
that is (very battered and worn are the specimens of him which remain as
the last of his noble race) the cigar-store wooden Indian.
And (I much regret) neither on the Embarcadero nor on any other water
front in America do we have the rich costume ball effects that you find
about the docks of London. There (as you remember) about the East India
and the West India docks may be observed tall, dark visaged figures in
loosely flowing robes and brilliant turbans solemnly pushing along high
laden trucks and, high above on the decks of ships, hauling away at
ropes.
But on the shore side of the San Francisco water front, my fancy was
much taken by the salt sea savor of the signs of the houses of
entertainment--signs reminiscent of the jovial days of briny romance,
echoed in the chantey in "Treasure Island," which has as its refrain:
Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum.
I passed, among others, the Marine Café, the Navy Café, the Admiral
Café, the Harbor Bar, and the Ferry Café.
I did not turn up Market Street, but went on around the nose of the
peninsula, which is the foundation of San Francisco. I passed a
three-masted ship, the _Lizzie Vance_, lying by her wharf, with men
aloft in her rigging. Then I clambered up endless relays of rickety
wooden stairs mounting Telegraph Hill. On either side of the ladder-like
steps, ramshackle cabins bedecked with lines of fluttering "wash." Like
the celebrated editor of _Puck_, H. C. Bunner, I might say that in my
travels I've missed many a cathedral but I never missed a slum.
I went along through the Latin Quarter, slid down the steep slope of
Kearny Street, and found myself wandering into that quaint little park,
Portsmouth Square, where R. L. S. in his most stressful days lounged in
the sun and listened to the tales of the vagabonds of the Seven Seas.
Somewhat bigger than tiny Gramercy Park, hardly as large as little
Madison Square, this park. In the center of the bit of rolling lawn,
before a towering screen of rustling trees, the graceful little stone
ship, buoyant on its curling stone wave, rides atop its tall stone
pedestal graved "To Remember Robert Louis Stevenson," and on the face of
which is cut that most fragrant of creeds, which (as everyone knows)
begins: "To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little and to spend a
little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence"
...
Behind the bench on which I rested was the establishment, so proclaimed
the legend printed on its front, of Wing Sun, Funeral Director. For, as
you know, Portsmouth Square is embraced on one side by prosperous
Chinatown, and on the other by the Italian quarter of San Francisco. And
the races, Latin and Oriental, mingle in the little park to take the
air.
What here is still more colorful and picturesque, frequently there is a
striking and amusing mixture of races in the costume of an individual
figure. A Manchu lady, it may be, of waxen, enigmatic features, draped
in flowing black silken trousers, hobbles along on high-heeled,
pearl-colored American shoes. And there a slim reed of an Oriental
maiden, with a complexion like a California orange, whisks by in the
smartest of tailored suits--without a hat, her gleaming black hair done
in Chinese fashion, long ornamented rods thrust through it, a vivid
pendant of bright blossoms at one side of the head.
Sitting there, I thought of the nature of public parks and what pleasant
places they are.
Splendid thing, elaborate park "systems," whereby you may go for miles
through a grimy city, and move among groves and meadows and bosky dells,
with inspiriting glimpses of mirror-like ponds and flashing streams all
the way. And of course I enjoy the great parks of a great city.
But more appealing to me than the gorgeous spectacle of Hyde Park, or
Van Cortlandt, or Fairmont, or Jackson, or Forest Park are the little
places tucked here and there in the seething caldron of the town. These
are a lovely department of the streets--they are the little parlors of
the streets. Here calls are made, and infants sun themselves--they have,
these parklets, their social and their domestic life, under the
democratic heavens.
Now soon is a time to watch with joy these plots of open space in the
city's rushing life. Spring is more winsome on Boston Common and at
Union Square than in the country. A tuft of green shoots seen against
canyon walls of steel and stone--one must be in the city to savor the
tenderness of spring.
And when summer comes and (in our eastern climate) all the town swelters
under a blanket of gritty dust and heavy heat, then one comes upon one
of these small areas of greenery with the refreshment of spirit with
which at the meal hour one greets the appearance of a nice, cool, green
salad.
I arose from my seat in Portsmouth Square and wandered off for the rest
of the day through the Streets.
CHAPTER XI
BIDDING MR. CHESTERTON GOOD-BYE
The note, which came altogether as a surprise, read: "My husband
suggests that if you have nothing better to do perhaps you would look in
upon us on Wednesday evening at about eight-thirty." Mrs. Chesterton
further said, in giving the address, that they had a little apartment
lent to them for the last week of their stay here. She had asked Mr.
Woollcott to come, too, and Gerald Stanley Lee.... "We can only promise
you smokes and talk."
I wondered, as I hurried for the 'bus, whether I'd have time to get my
shoes polished. It was precisely the hour appointed when I reached what
I took to be the door. The hall-man declared that he had "gone out." I
insisted that the hall-man telephone up. "No answer," he said, after a
bit, and hung up. Now what do you think of that! Well, I'd take a walk
and return a little later.
As I was rounding the corner coming back I saw an agile, rotund figure,
with a gleam of white shirt-front in the half darkness, mounting the
dusky steps instead of descending into the lighted areaway. Looked kinda
like Mr. Woollcott. If so, the gentleman was going wrong, so I called to
him.
"He has not come back," the hall-man asserted, but assented to our
demands to ring up again. No response. "It was about an hour ago he went
out," he replied to our question. Standing there, Mr. Woollcott and I
contrived several theories. One was that Mr. Chesterton had intended to
return by now but had lost track of the time. Another was that possibly
Mrs. Chesterton had invited us on her own hook and had overlooked
notifying Mr. Chesterton of the matter. "Has a third gentleman been
here?" we asked, meaning Mr. Lee. No. We went for a stroll.
It was nine o'clock. And Mr. Woollcott's manner indicated that he was
inclined to take some sort of revenge on the hall-man. Was he, the
hall-man, certain that he had everything straight? "Sure," he nodded;
"it's Mr. Cushman's apartment." Mr. Cushman's apartment! Had we, then,
been blundering in the wrong place all this time! "Mr. Chesterton!"
roared Mr. Woollcott. Yes, yes; he understood that ... the gentleman had
come in yesterday. That was right according to the note I had had from
Mrs. Chesterton; so we demanded that the man make another effort at the
telephone. Ah!... he heard something. "It's all right," he mumbled;
"they are there."
As we got out of the car Mr. Chesterton was cramming the tiny hall. He
was in an attitude which I took to be that of a bow, but I later
discovered, as he shuffled back and forth about the apartment, that he
walks that way all the time now when in the privacy of his own quarters.
Mrs. Chesterton greeted us as we entered the room, Mr. Chesterton
trailing in behind us and continuing a welcoming murmur which had
somewhat the sound of a playful brook. Mrs. Chesterton ensconced herself
behind a tea table. Mr. Chesterton lumbered about with cigars. He
disclaimed the great easy chair by the electric table lamp in which it
was unmistakable that he had been sitting, but was prevailed upon to
return to it.
In apology for the lateness of our arrival we mentioned our difficulties
in discovering that he was in. Mr. Chesterton seemed bewildered by the
circumstance. He shook his head and (evidently referring to the
hall-man) said he was not able to understand "that foreigner" at all.
"That foreigner?" we smiled at the Englishman. I think it most likely
that the explanation of his not having heard our earlier rings was that
he was not familiar with the system of bells in the apartment. They had
not been out, he declared; oh, yes! they had been out, too, a good while
ago, to get something to eat. "We are camping here," he said, "in a
rather Bohemian fashion." Didn't they enjoy that as a change from life
in fashionable hotels? Oh, yes! Very much.
They wondered if Mr. Lee were not coming. Yes; he had assured me that he
was, when I had seen him that afternoon at the club. In fact, we had
discussed what we would wear, and had agreed on dinner jackets. Mr.
Chesterton was wearing a braid-bound cutaway coat of felt-like material
(very much wrinkled in the skirt) and dark striped trousers of stiffish
quality, but not recently pressed. His bat-wing collar had a sharp
crease extending outward at one side as though it were broken. Though it
was a very warm night for early spring--a hot night, indeed--he wore
uncommonly heavy woolen sox, which were very much "coming down" about
his ankles. His comically small English eye-glasses, with a straight rod
joining them across the top, were perpetually coming off his nose. On
one finger he wore a rather large ring. I noticed that for so large a
man his hands were somewhat small, and were delicately made. At one side
of him were three ashtrays (one of them a huge brass bowl well filled
with tobacco ash) and at the other side of him one tray.
Well, what sort of a time had he been having? How far west had he got?
He had been as far as (I think) Omaha. "Halfway across," he said. He had
been much mystified by a curious character he had run into there: a
strange being whose waistcoat and coat front were covered by symbolic
emblems, crescents, full moons and stars. This person had accosted him
in the street saying, "And so you are a lecturer." The man had then
informed him that he also was a lecturer. He lectured, he said, on
astronomy. "Indeed, in my country," Mr. Chesterton had said, "it is not
the custom for astronomers to display on their person devices symbolic
of the science in which they are engaged." Next, the man had opened his
coat and exhibited the badge of a sheriff, or some sort of officer of
the peace. Mr. Chesterton had been astounded to discover the functions
of a man of science, a lecturer and a policeman united in one and the
same person. It was quite evident that this (as I assume he was)
harmless lunatic had made a most decided impression upon Mr.
Chesterton's mind; he took the eccentric individual with much
seriousness, apparently as some kind of a type; indeed, I feared that we
would never get him switched off from talking about him; and I have no
doubt that, in the course of time, this ridiculous astronomer will
appear as a bizarre character in some fantastic tale, a personage
perhaps related to Father Brown, or something like that.
Mr. Chesterton observed that he had enjoyed the opportunity of seeing
various grades of American life, that he had been in the homes of very
humble people as well as in houses of persons of wealth and social and
intellectual position. In a former article I noted how Mr. Chesterton
had been greatly startled to find (what he then called) "wooden houses"
in this country, and such multitudes of them. He now returned to this
phenomenon. What was his one outstanding impression of the United
States? Well, he remarked that he had said it before, but he continued
to be chiefly struck by the vast number of "frame houses" here.
Mr. Lee arrived. A gentleman who looks very much as though you were
looking at his reflection in one of those trick mirrors (such as they
have at Coney Island) which humorously attenuate and elongate the
figures before them. Or, again, perhaps more justly still, a gentleman
who looks as though Daumier had drawn him as an illustration for "Don
Quixote." In his evening clothes (to put it still another way), a
gentleman who looks much like a very lengthened shadow dancing on a
wall. Mr. Whistler would have made something very striking indeed out of
Mr. Lee in a dinner coat, something beautifully strange. I do not know
that I have ever seen anything finer, in its own exceedingly peculiar
way, than Mr. Lee, thus attired, with a cup of tea in his hand.
"Do you like wine?" Mr. Woollcott asked Mr. Chesterton, and told him of
a restaurant nearby where this could be obtained. Our prohibition, Mr.
Chesterton said, did not bother him so much as might be thought, as for
reasons having to do with his health he was (as you or I would say)
"off the stuff" at present.
One of us, Mr. Woollcott I think, commented upon the sweep of Mr.
Chesterton's fame in the United States. The opinion was advanced that
the evening of the day he landed his arrival was known in every literate
home in New York. Mr. Chesterton was inclined to think that his
"notoriety" in large measure came from his "appearance," his
"avoirdupois." Knowledge of him had spread through the notion that he
was a "popular curiosity." It was contended that his writing had been
well-known over here ten years before his pictures became familiar to
us. (Though, of course, I myself do think that the pictorial quality of
his corporeal being has been very effective publicity for him.)
Then there was another thing which Mr. Chesterton thought might to a
considerable degree account for his American celebrity. That was this
"tag" of "paradox." People loved "easy handles" like that, and they went
a long way. Somehow or other we let this point pass, or it got lost in
the shuffle, and the discussion turned to the question of whether there
was an American writer living whose arrival in England would command
anything like the general attention occasioned by Mr. Chesterton's
entrance into the United States. We could not think of anyone.
Mark Twain, of course; yes. O. Henry, doubtless, too. And, indeed, in
the matter of years O. Henry might very well be living now. Mr.
Chesterton quite agreed as to the English welcome of Mark Twain or of O.
Henry. Tom Sawyer and Huck, he said musingly, certainly were
"universal." Then, ponderingly, he observed that English and American
literature seemed to be getting farther and farther apart, or more and
more distinct each from the other. That is, he remembered that when he
was a boy his father and his uncles simply spoke of a new book having
come out whether it had been written in England or in the United States.
As in the case of the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table": when it
appeared it was enjoyed and talked about by everybody in England; but
not spoken of there as a new American book: it was a new book, that's
all. Now, however, with Englishmen impressed by the "Spoon River
Anthology," "and rightly so," or by "Main Street," "it would not be that
way."
He had much liking for O. Henry. But he had begun by not liking him. He
had been puzzled by the "queer commercial deals" on which so many of the
stories turned--"buying towns, selling rivers." He had, even now, to
re-read much of the slang to get the meaning. And so we talked awhile of
slang.
"You have an expression here," said Mr. Chesterton, shaking his head as
though that were something very remarkable indeed, "_a bad actor_" Much
mirth from Woollcott, Lee and Holliday. "Now in England," Mr. Chesterton
continued, "we mean by that one who has mistaken his vocation as to the
stage. But I discovered that here it has nothing to do with the
theatrical profession." Then, it developed, some reporter in the West
had referred to him as "a regular guy." At first Mr. Chesterton had been
for going after the fellow with a stick.... Certainly a topsy-turvy
land, the United States, where you can't tell opprobrium from flattering
compliment.
Then one of us told Mr. Chesterton a story of a prize line of American
slang. He (the teller of the story) had got a letter in which a friend
of his had been spoken of in a highly eulogistic fashion. Thinking this
opinion of him would please his friend this man showed the letter to
him. The gentleman so much praised in it read the letter and remarked:
"Well, whenever I get the hand I always see the red light." Mr.
Chesterton looked dazed. "You'll have to translate that to me," he said.
It was explained to him that the meaning of this was that whenever this
person heard applause of himself he always scented danger. "Oh, oh! I
see!" crowed Mr. Chesterton, "the hand, the hand," and he began clapping
his hands in illustration of the figure with much glee.
"Glee," yes. And "crowed," also. They are the words, some of the words,
to describe Mr. Chesterton's sounds. His utterance was rapid, melodious.
The modulations of his softly flowing voice had curiously somewhat the
effect of a very cheerful music-box. His easy and very natural command
of a great multitude of words was striking. And yet there was something
decidedly boyish about the effect of his talk. I think the cause of this
was, for one thing, the rather gurgling enjoyment with which he spoke,
and for another thing, in his impulsive concern for the point of his
idea he frequently did not trouble to begin nor end sentences. He just
let 'er go. But the fundamental source of this boyishness of spirit I
think was this: I do not believe I have ever seen a man who had borne
the brunt of life for some forty-five years and still retained such
complete, abounding, unaffected and infectious good humor as Mr.
Chesterton.
"As I believe I have said somewhere before," Mr. Chesterton was saying,
"it seems to me that the best known character in literature is Sherlock
Holmes." Mr. Woollcott was inclined to consider Svengali. Dear me!
Svengali may have been in the running at one time, but it strikes me
that today he has pretty much gone by the board, somewhat to mix the
figure.
As to detective stories: "They are essentially domestic," declares Mr.
Chesterton. "Intimate, all in the household, or ought to be. The
children's nurse should murder the Bishop. These things where the
Foreign Office becomes involved and" (chuckling) "Indian rajahs and
military forces come in are never right. They are too big. The detective
story is a fireside story."
Had Mr. Chesterton been much to the theatre while here? No; the only
thing he had seen was "The Bat." Something like anguish on the face of
the dramatic critic of the New York _Times_. Why, he, Mr. Chesterton,
had liked "The Bat," a good deal. Speaking of plays, the American
presentation of "Magic" came into the conversation. It was remarked that
the extremely mystical character of the setting rather crushed the
mysticism of the play itself. The idea was advanced that a very simple,
matter-of-fact, even bleak setting, would have been the thing to act as
an effective foil to this play. Mr. Chesterton seemed to be not the
slightest interested in stage-settings. And he knew next to nothing at
all about the career of "Magic." He wasn't even sure whether or not he
held any proprietary rights in the play. There was, he said as though
fumbling around in his mind, something involved about the matter. Friend
of his wanted a play. Necessary to finish it in a hurry. He didn't
really know, answering a question to this purpose, whether or not he
received any royalties from it.
Mrs. Chesterton again handed about some fudge. The collection of
ash-trays and bowls surrounding Mr. Chesterton had become jovially
freighted with tobacco ash and cigar ends. He smoked his cigars in an
economical fashion, down as far as they could comfortably be held.
There was one thing (the talk had turned to his lecturing) Mr.
Chesterton "wished you wouldn't do in this country, or that we didn't do
in England, either." That was for the gentleman who "introduced" a
lecturer to refer to his "message." In his own case, for instance, how
ridiculously was this term misapplied. The word "message" conveyed
something "quite the opposite of personality." Or, that is, before its
popular corruption it had meant something very different. It meant that
something was carried. One with a message was a messenger, a vessel, an
envelope. It was hard to think of a figure who could rightly be said to
have a message. The Old Testament prophets, Mohammed, perhaps. Whitman,
now certainly you couldn't say that Whitman had a message.
A ring; and Mr. Cushman came in. Youthfully cropped grey hair. A
gentleman who looked like a habitual first-nighter.
Yes, Mr. Chesterton was telling us, it was a curious thing. He had
always heard that Americans worshipped machines. A machine everywhere
here, and a machine brought to an amazing state of mechanical
perfection, was the elevator, as we called it. When he had first got
into an American elevator he had been arrested by the fact that the men
entering it took off their hats and stood silently with bared heads as
it ascended. It is so, he had said to himself, they are at worship, at
prayer, this is some religious rite, mystic ceremony, the elevator is
their temple.
Had he been in our subway? was asked. No; he had been down in a station
one time, but he had not ridden on one of the trains. I wish now that I
had thought to cut into the rapid battledore and shuttlecock of the
conversation to learn why he had not been. Was he scared of 'em?
What were the things which Mr. Chesterton particularly liked in the
United States? Well, for one thing, he very much liked the "elevated."
He thought it was grand up in the air that way.
And what had be especially _disliked_? Mr. Lee apparently had knowledge
of a memorandum book kept by Mrs. Chesterton, known to their ultimate
little circle as her "Book of Likes and Dislikes." She was, with some
difficulty, prevailed upon to read from this--which she did very
guardedly, clutching the book very firmly before her. Among the things
put down in it as not liked were ice cream, ice water, "American boots"
(by which was meant women's high-heeled shoes), and interviewers,
reporters and camera men. Things especially liked included parlor-car
seats. Mr. Chesterton: "I don't dislike it, now. I've got the evil habit
of ice water."
"Lift," it was generally agreed, was a happier word than "elevator."
Mrs. Chesterton thought that the scientific, technical, correct, or
whatever you call them, words for things always took all the feeling of
life out of them. "Aviator," for example, had no color at all. But how
fine in the spirit of the thing was the popular term "flying-man," or
"fly-man"!
The conversation had got momentarily divided into groups. Mr. Chesterton
was heard saying to Mr. Woollcott, "The time I mean was when Yeats was
young--when mysticism was jazz."
Just how he got started in on them I do not recall. He began with
Belloc's most entertaining and highly vivacious ballad which has the
refrain, "And Mrs. James will entertain the king"; a kind of a piece
among friends, which unfortunately is not in any book. He recited with a
kind of joyous unction, nodding his head forward and back from side to
side, thus keeping time to the music of the verse, punctuating the close
of each stanza with bubble of chuckles. On and on and on and on he went
through goodness knows how many bits of rollicking literary fooling.
It was half past eleven. I saw Mr. Chesterton, when someone else was
speaking, yawn slightly now and then. The four callers arose to go. Some
one of us asked Mr. Chesterton if he expected to be back in America
soon. Through a wreath of smiles he replied that he was not getting a
return ticket on the boat.
The two of them were framed in their doorway as we got into the
"foreigner's" car. Mrs. Chesterton called to us that she hoped to see us
all in England, "singly or together." As the car dropped from their
floor both were beaming a merry, friendly farewell.
Suddenly it struck me that they were very like a pair of children--they
were so happy, so natural, so innocent of guile, and obviously so fond
of one another.
CHAPTER XII
NO SYSTEM AT ALL TO THE HUMAN SYSTEM
I think I'll tell you about myself. Maybe it's the same way with you.
Anyhow, it's a mighty queer thing. And we ought to try to get some light
on the matter--why there is, apparently, no reason or logic at all about
our systems.
You see, I go along a pretty fair amount of the time feeling all right;
nothing wrong with my system; nothing, at any rate, that I can notice.
Everybody says: "How well you're looking! Great color, you've got." And
so on.
Then, maybe, I see in the paper that there is an epidemic scheduled to
devastate the city pretty soon. This news lays hold of me right off. The
paper goes on to say that it behooves all citizens to take thought to
fortify their systems against the ravages of this terrible disease which
is rapidly approaching.
Or I read, say, that Thrift Week was such an enormous success (for
everybody else) that a campaign is under way to inaugurate a Health
Week, which (I read) will greatly reduce the mortality in the community.
The way to reduce my own mortality (I read with considerable attention)
is for me to Stop, Look and Listen in the matter of my health. And To Do
It Now! I don't like those profane words, like mortality. They disturb
me. And occasionally get me into no end of trouble--as you'll see.
Or, perhaps, I notice around in cars and places an unusual number of
advertisements instructing you what firm to consult in order to
"safeguard the interests of your heirs." A died (one of these cards may
say) and left his estate to B, his widow, naming C as executor. C died
suddenly shortly afterward. B (the widow) met E, with oil lands in
Hawaii--and so on. The advertisement winds up: Are you A?
Not yet; I'm not! But I'd better watch out. I know this is a good
advertisement because it gets into my mind the way it does.
Or, again, perhaps there are just a number of little things that I come
across. A gentleman one day tells me at luncheon, we'll say, that he
can't drink tea because it gives him uric acid so bad. Good gracious!
And I (maybe) subject to uric acid!
An octogenarian (we'll suppose) is interviewed. He attributes his
longevity to abstemiousness in the use of inexpensive cigarettes. (I at
once put mine out.)
A chemist (very likely) gets a lot of publicity by declaring that you
are to Look Before You Leap in the matter of drinking water. (And but
the night before I drank from the spout in the kitchen!) And so on.
Well, things such as these set one to thinking.
I say to myself when I get that way (to thinking, I mean) a stitch in
time saves nine; there's no loss so bad as the loss of your health,
because if you have that you can obtain aught else; a word to the wise
is sufficient; make hay while the sun shines; little drops of water wear
away the stone; take heed for the morrow while it is yet May; be not
like unto the foolish virgin who spilt the beans. And many other things
of this kind, which (doubtless in wise measure) are both good and true.
Well, in short, I determine to "build up," to get myself in thoroughly
"good shape."
I swear off smoking. I put away the home brew. I do not eat fresh
bread. I procure myself overshoes against the rain. I rise with the
lark. I (religiously eating an apple first) go to bed betimes. I walk so
many miles a day--also skip a rope. I shun all delicacies of the table.
I take those horrid extra cold baths, for the circulation. I do "deep
breathing." I "relax" for twelve minutes each day. I shun the
death-dealing demon "worry." I "fix my mind on cheerful thoughts." I
"take up a hobby," philately, or something like that. I eat the skins of
potatoes. I watch the thermometer at the office, and monkey continually
with the steam radiator. Everything like that.
When you undertake a thing (even if it's only shelling peas) be thorough
in it, that's my motto. I don't, indeed, in this regimen get much work
done, but it's better to be slow and sure.
Well, what happens?
When I set out to build up this is what happens to me: First thing,
maybe, I get pimples. No; no maybe about it. I sure get pimples. Then,
very likely, I get a carbuncle. (I have just asked my assistant how you
spell that word. She inquires if I mean the gem, or--or the other. I
have told her I mean the other.)
Next, very probably, I "contract" (as they say) a cough. This cough
"develops" into a cold.... You have (I trust) had that sort of cold
which hangs on for months. Nothing recommended is of any help to you.
You become resigned (more or less) to the idea--just as a man who has
lost a leg (or his mind) must resolve to do the best he can with the
rest of his life without his leg (or his mind), so must you adapt
yourself to the stern condition imposed by Fate of always having a cold.
That's the kind of a cold I mean that I get. (Only worse!)
My cold branches out into several little side lines, such as acute
neuralgia and inflammatory rheumatism. Stiff joints impede my agility in
getting down the hill to my morning train to the city. I slip on the ice
and break my glasses.
Not having my glasses causes me at the office to greet Mr. Sloover as
Mr. Rundle, and this sort of error breathes a chill upon the nice
nuances of business.
Or in my personal correspondence (if I were that kind of a person) I
might put my letter for Penelope into the envelope for Pauline. This,
when I had discovered the calamity, would doubtless perturb my thoughts.
My thoughts being perturbed, I might walk out of the restaurant without
my change of three dollars and eighty cents. Thoroughly upset by now, I
walk under a ladder. Realizing that I have done this, my nervousness is
the occasion of my dropping my watch. Enough! I recognize that there is
no use in my going back to the office that afternoon. I telephone in
that I have gone home to bed with my cold.
On coming out of the cigar store where the telephone booth is, I see
Christopher Morley, Don Marquis and Franklin P. Adams walking down the
street arm in arm. (I can see very little without my glasses, but well
enough to recognize such a spectacle as that.) Something, I say, must be
on. And I cheer up considerably. Some cheering up certainly is just what
I need. I overhaul the company. And I ask it (the company) where it is
bound. It says: "For 'Mecca.' Come along." Don hands me a pocket flask
(largely empty), Chris presents me with a large green cigar, and Frank
gives me a match. It is agreed that we roll a little pool for a few
hours while waiting for the cab.
Well, you see, I've been led to abandon the idea of building up my
health--but I don't care, one may as well die happy.
I have a great time at that show. (My cold is immensely better.) I fix
on one eye-glass so as to see something desirable. And I cut up a lot.
But--when we turn to leave I discover the president of my company going
out just ahead of me. Well, I suppose I'll have to take what is coming
to me tomorrow.
That one good meal, anyhow (after the pool), has strengthened my spirit
immensely. I plan to have a regular, genuine breakfast in the morning.
The kind I used to enjoy before I started in to get myself in fine
shape. A breakfast of sliced pineapple, eggs, steak, fried potatoes,
cottage-cheese, hot rolls, and two pots of good strong coffee. A pipe
afterward.
When I get out to the house I find that my uncle (from whom I had been
estranged for years) has died, and left me his fine, ninety carat, forty
jewel, repeater watch.
I wake up bursting with joyous life. The girl tells me that those
especially handsome glasses I lost last New Year's Eve have been found.
Down at the station the station-master comes out to greet me. He says
so many people have slipped on our hill that next week the railroad is
going to install a free coach service. I see by the morning paper that
the horse I took a twelve to one shot on in the Buenos Aires derby came
out the length of the stretch to the good. On the train into town I
smoke a couple of packages of cigarettes--as I become a bit bothered
about the situation at the office.
A girder, or something, had fallen across the track. The train is held
up. For a couple of hours it stands there. I become more than decidedly
nervous. Now this is awful bad doings. Everything had been coming so
right again. It seems as if there is no reward in this world for
anything. Here for a whole month or so I had been subjecting myself to
the most rigorous and unpleasant kind of discipline solely in order to
make myself more efficient in my work, and so more valuable to the
house. Nothing else. Then by an accident I am kept away from the office
one afternoon, and this has to go and happen just to keep me away
probably the whole of the forenoon. Everything will, of course, be
misunderstood and misinterpreted. Instead of getting just credit for
what I've done, I'll probably get bounced. If anyone wants to have the
moral of this story pointed out to him: it is that there is not much use
in trying, you can see that.
When I do get to the office my secretary is in quite a flurry. She tells
me that Mr. Equity, the president, has been inquiring for me. In
fact--she hesitates--wants me to step in to see him as soon as I arrive.
So, there you are!
Mr. Equity (a most unusual thing in any circumstances) shakes my hand
with great cordiality. He smiles, not benignantly but rather
deferentially. Says that he has recognized for some little time that I
have not had a salary commensurate with my services. Times, however, are
not of the best. Would I be willing to continue with the firm at--a
pause--well, double my present salary? Everything, he adds, would be
made as pleasant for me as possible.
His secretary whispers to me in an outer office: "He has been so
flustered. He was scared you weren't ever coming back."
I discussed this matter of the strange workings of the human system with
a friend of mine outside the office. "Ah!" he said, "you didn't
persevere long enough in looking after yourself. If you had kept it up
for a year instead of only a month, you'd be a well man today. And," he
added seriously, "a successful man, too."
CHAPTER XIII
SEEING THE "SITUATIONS WANTED" SCENE
"What a lot of things they put in the papers!" Hilaire Belloc observes
somewhere in one of his essays. Indeed, it is so!
I fear, however, that one of the features "they" put in the papers does
not have anything like as popular a reading as it deserves to have.
Those of the governing class, personages who employ people, probably
consult fragments of this department of the newspaper now and then. But,
it may fairly be claimed, nobody reads, with the delicious pleasure and
the abundant profit he might read, that part of the paper fullest of all
of, so to say, meat and gravy.
The story it tells is probably the deepest grounding in life to be found
in print. There as it stands in today's paper Shakespeare (I fancy)
could not have written it, nor Balzac, nor Dickens, nor Arnold Bennett,
nor O. Henry, nor Sinclair Lewis. This newspaper feature is called
"Situations Wanted." It might just as accurately be called "The Human
Scene," or "The Heart of the World," or "The Cry of the Soul." Its tale
is of what all men are seeking (and have ever sought), each in his own
degree, and after his fashion--bread, a place in the sun, a level higher
than that of today.
Let us, briefly, survey this Page of Life.
The most conspicuous figure in the vast and motley throng is the Bold
and Confident Man. He that knows his superior worth and does not propose
to hide his light, he that has the spirit to attack the conqueror. His
method is to fling a large and arresting headline across his "ad." "I AM
THE MAN YOU WANT!" he begins. Or, "PAR-EXCELLENCE," he announces in big
type. Or, "Mr. Busy Manufacturer," he says in good sized "caps"; in
smaller letters asks: "Are you in need of _a competent manager_?" If Mr.
B. M. is in such need, it is squarely put up to him: he "will do well to
address X." To the employer who hesitates this vital opportunity is
lost. The ad says: "Write now--_Right Now!_" Undoubtedly this is the
horse to put your money on; the hero to marry your daughter to. He will
not want.
Our bold, aggressive friend frequently writes, barring a bit of
"bounce," an admirable, clean-cut account of himself. He has, he
declares, acted for some of the leading concerns in the country; he has
never yet failed to give satisfaction; every employer he ever had will
testify to his ability and character. He invites the closest
investigation of his record, and he is open for any engagement where
faithful work, absolute integrity and devotion to his employer's
interests will be productive of "a fair living salary." It is, indeed,
difficult to avoid the impression that this man "has the goods."
Akin to him in his method of a bill-board-like headline is another, of
whom one is not so sure. He does not so much command attention as seek
to beguile it. His particular "lay" is the Ingenious. Here is one
example of his style:
AN ADVERTISING ADVENTURER
offers 16 years' experience
(scarred by a few notable defeats and a thorough knowledge edge of
what NOT to do) to a manufacturer, for whom he will SAVE more than
his wages; a bad man, who does not drink, never was out of work, is
married and proud of it; age 32; would rather work than eat.
Address: Alert.
Then there is the Challenge Not to Be Denied. Here is a sample:
"_Accountant_.--Are you one of the progressive firms? If you are, you
want----" etc. Frequently one comes across the Facetious Advertiser. He
runs some such headline as this: "_Editor for Rent._" Or perhaps he
says: "'_Secretarial Services' For Sale._" In contrast to him is the
advertiser with the Tremulous Appeal. He may begin: "_Who Wants My
Services?_" And go on to say: "I am hard worker and steady, and willing
to go anywhere. Salary about $12 a week." Or perhaps he says:
"_Privilege_ of meeting man who can utilize my services." Or maybe it is
thus: "$15 per Week and an Opportunity." Such a very human ad as this is
likely to continue somewhat like this:
Can you use a young man of twenty-one--one of really serious
purpose? I have had enough business experience and training to know
that to be of help I must do well whatever I am given to do. Of
course I am looking for a future--but I know that it does not
matter so much what I do as how I do it. Therefore, I believe any
reputable business holds a future. I am from Kansas, in New York on
my own resources and so must have $15 per week to start. I have a
high school education, and have read a great deal, and have
attended Business School.
Next is the Poignant ad. The purest example of this which in my studies
I have discovered is headed: "_Who Will Talk With Me?_" A step beyond
this we come upon the Altogether Pitiful. I mean like the one I here
copy out:
WILL you please find or give office employment to an educated, with
physical defect, young man; just a chance to work two weeks without
salary desired?
Akin to the poignant situation-wanted advertisement is the Urgent:
"_Advertising Writer_, college man (Princeton), urgently needs
situation." Or: "_Proofreader_, educated young man, requires position
_immediately_." It is, such is the inference, defective philanthropy in
an employer to delay. A touching figure, too (because he does not
suspect that he is a touching figure), is the Cheery and Hopeful. We
have him here: "_Ambitious_ young American (28) desires position; will
try anything; moderate salary to start."
A wily fellow is the Ingratiating advertiser. Sometimes he is a "Spanish
young man" who offers to work altogether without salary as Spanish
correspondent in some export house "where he could practice English."
Occasionally he is a "copy writer" who, wishing a position with an
agency or mercantile firm, is "willing to demonstrate ability for two
weeks before drawing salary." Now and then a still more positive
character baits the hook with the offer of gratis services. In this
morning's paper a stenographer releases the seductive declaration that
"one trial will demonstrate my value to you."
A rôle played on the stage of the "Situations Wanted" page which I have
always much admired is that of the Highly Dignified. The Bold and
Confident Man, the Ingenious, the Tremulous, the Poignant, the Hopeful,
the Ingratiating--the voices of all these figures touch one with a sense
of the harsh clash of life, its trickiness, its vicissitudes, its pathos
and its tragedy. But "_A Gentleman_ of 50," who, "having a considerable
private income, desires dignified occupation; salary unimportant,"
revives the poetic idea that (at any rate, now and then) God's in His
heaven and all's right with the world. The highly dignified advertiser
certainly is a very enviable character. It must be very nice to be able
to say, as in this advertisement before us: "_Light Occupation of an
Important Nature_ is sought by middle-aged gentleman capable of assuming
control and conducting any normal business enterprise."
A very colorful feature of the "Situations Wanted" page is the
interesting qualifications frequently set forth. Glancing at the paper
in hand I find a young man of twenty-five who seeks a "permanent
position" with a publisher recommending himself as being "affable." Also
here is a "refined gentleman" who desires a "compatible" position and
lists among his accomplishments skill in the art of "tasty drawing." A
"keen discreet American" looking for a job with a "corporation" mentions
his "suave manners." A butler unemployed regards himself as "very nice."
A college graduate of twenty-eight who wants to "begin at the bottom"
asserts that he is a "fluent talker." A "young man with literary
ability" flings out the intimation that he "desires position where it
will be of some use." A dressmaker states that in her calling she is
"perfect." A clerk is "very smart at figures." A nurse puts forward her
asset as a "plain writer." You are pleased to discover that so many
people have a "pleasing personality." And that among stenographers there
are so many who may be described (they say) as an "attractive young
girl." Here is one who introduces herself as both "prepossessing" and
"brainy." A "woman of education" who seeks occupation at "anything
useful if there is friendliness" gives as her leading characteristic a
"sense of humor." Now and then the recommendations offered somewhat
mystify me, as in the advertisement of the lady, "age 29, fine
personality (widow of P. M. of F. and A. M.)." Then there is that great
company who have but one merit to display. They may be represented in
the "Female" column by the "_Respectable_ young woman" who "wishes day's
work." And in the "Male" column by the "_Sober_ man" who (simply)
"desires position." Sometimes here it is difficult to determine the
degree of sobriety maintained, as in the frequent advertisement of the
chauffeur who discreetly states that he is "temperate."
In case you should write down your idea of your own "appearance," what
would you say? I confess that such a problem would puzzle me. It does
not puzzle some. "Situation Wanted" ads record that there are numerous
young men of "exceptional appearance." Though occasionally we come upon
a young man of almost painful conscientiousness who feels that he should
not go further than to say that he is of "fair appearance."
The queer dissimilarity of human aspirations echoes through the
"Situations Wanted" page. Here is a "_Gentleman_, excellent education
and personality, linguist," who wants a position as a companion, or
"courier, &c." A "_Highly_ educated French lady would gladly take a
child for walks every day from 10 to 12." A "_Lady_, 27, of literary
bent desires position as companion around the world." It is remarkable,
the number of persons there are in the world of "literary" tendency.
Remarkable, too, how many people with an inclination to travel. Here is
a "_Cornell Graduate_" who has, apparently, no aversion whatever to
spending the winter in "a warm climate." There are "_Two_ young men,
partners," who "wish to join an expedition, any destination." But there
are home-keeping souls, too. A "_Cultured_ elderly man, neat," craves
"household duties." And so on.
What a rich variety of characters throng the populous scene of the
"Situations Wanted" page! Here, in today's paper, following the
advertisement of a "sculptor" comes that of a "former policeman." A
"_Physician_, practicing twenty years in Paris, speaking English,
French, Spanish, German, Italian, seeking situation," is cheek by jowl
with a "_Plumber_, good all round man." A young man who has "put 9 years
at sea as steward" nonchalantly asks "What have you?" A "_Former
College Professor_, 30, seeks field of occupation in advertising." And a
"_Cavalry_ man, excellent record, wishes position at anything." A
"_Cultured Visiting Governess_ of good family, social position, trains
ladies, English, grammar, literature, elegant correspondence, art of
conversation, current events, social etiquette." A remarkable
"gentleman" presents himself as "qualified to do most anything." And a
"Christian, age 38," wishes a position as "manager of a laundry."
A strategic device frequently employed by the humble is that of getting
someone whose position has weight to present them. For instance, "Rev.
Dr. Moffett recommends a colored man for janitor of a loft building."
And numerous are the gentlemen who, laying up their cars, are interested
in placing their chauffeurs elsewhere.
"_Boy_" is perhaps the word which dominates the page. Most boys,
apparently, are not particular in their choice of a calling. They are
"willing to do anything." Now and then one declares that he is a "good
fighter," or something like that. Here is one who demands a "position
where mental ability will be necessary." Here is another who is very
specific, thus: "15-1/2 years old, 5 feet 8-1/4 inches tall."
Sometimes one meets a very extraordinary character in these columns. The
other day no less a distinguished person than this put in an ad:
I am compelled, through severe strain, to discontinue my work
(involving the mental faculties) with which I have puzzled the
scientific world for several years, and which has netted me a
weekly income of over $200; I have no other source for a livelihood
and consequently appeal to the business world for an opportunity to
grow up in a new endeavor. WHY NOT MEET ME AND TALK IT OVER?
A genuinely touching ad, sensible and obviously quite sincere, in which
you hear the appealing voice of a fellow being in trouble, but an ad
which I fear is rather futile, is one like this:
Am 43 years old; defective hearing prevents continuation of
salesman's career; I want situation where this impairment does not
prevent satisfactory discharge of required duties.
A great, and a grave, lesson may be learned from the "Situations Wanted"
page. And that is to be found mainly in the section where the first word
of each advertisement is simply "MAN." Men there are in it of every age.
I mean in considering the plight of the world one should ponder that
great army whose business is "anything."
CHAPTER XIV
LITERARY LIVES
"My God!" exclaimed the old lady in the railway carriage to Mr. Le
Gallienne, "Tennyson is dead!"
Have not many of us as we have turned the daily papers these last
several years frequently experienced the sensations of this dear old
lady? Whistler, Swinburne, Meredith, Henry James, Howells. They are
dead. Walt Whitman (wasn't it?), when he heard that Carlyle was dead,
went out, and looked up at the stars, and said he didn't believe it.
We have been stirred to these emotional reflections by chancing to come
early this afternoon in the Main Reading Room of the New York Public
Library upon what would commonly be called a well-known book of
reference. We had no intention of doing more than peer into it. Night
found us there--the book still open before us.
The excellent Solomon Eagle (otherwise known as J. C. Squire), in one of
his delightfully gossipy, though erudite, papers contributed to _The New
Statesman_ of London (collected, many of them, into a volume, bearing
the title "Books in General"), remarks of works of reference that they
"are extremely useful; but they resemble Virgil's Hell in that they are
easy things to get into and very difficult to escape from." He
continues:
Take the Encyclopædia. I imagine that my experience with it is
universal. I have only to dip my toe into this tempting morass and
down I am sucked, limbs, trunk and all, to remain embedded until
sleep or a visitor comes to haul me out. A man will read things in
the Encyclopædia that he would never dream of looking at
elsewhere--things in which normally he does not take the faintest
interest....
"Who's Who" takes me in the same way. Ordinarily I have no
particular thirst for it. I should not dream of carrying it about
in my waistcoat pocket for perusal on the Underground Railway. But
once I have allowed myself to open it, I am a slave to it for
hours. This has just happened to me with the new volume, upon which
I have wasted a valuable afternoon. I began by looking up a man's
address; I then read the compressed life-story of the gentleman
next above him (a major-general), wondering, somewhat idly, whether
they read of each other's performances and whether either of them
resented the possession by the other of a similar, and unusual,
surname. Then I was in the thick of it.
Even so. But an afternoon spent in reading, straight along, the work of
reference we have in mind could not be called wasted. Indeed, quite the
contrary; such an afternoon could be nothing less than one of those
spiritual experiences which suddenly give a measure of growth to the
soul.
The work which we came upon, in the circumstances indicated, was "The
Dictionary of National Biography"; and the volumes which, by chance, we
took down were Volumes II. and III. of the Second Supplement of the
Dictionary. They contain, these volumes, memoirs of 1,135 noteworthy
English persons dying between January 22, 1901, and December 31, 1911.
The alphabet extends from John Faed, artist, to George, Lord Young,
Scottish Judge. The contributors number 357; the list of these names is
a roll of the most distinguished, in all departments, in the English
Nation of our day. This publication, we should say, is the most
interesting to English-speaking people, as in all probability it is the
most important, generally, issued within at any rate the year of its
publication. And though we cannot rid ourselves of a melancholy feeling
in contemplating this survey of the great stream of brilliant life
ended, we feel there is more good reading for the money in these pages
than in any other book one is likely to come across at random.
The toll these ten years have taken! The chronicle is here of some born
to greatness, like Queen Victoria; of those, like Cecil Rhodes, who have
achieved it. And the stories are told of some whom the world's fame
found but within the last hour, then dead: John Millington Synge
(contributed by John Masefield), and Francis Thompson (by Everard
Meynell).
The proportion of biographies of men of letters predominates in
considerable measure. Science follows in the list, then art. The least
but one, sport, is the law. Among the names of women, forty-six in
number, are Florence Nightingale, Kate Greenaway, Charlotte Mary Yonge,
and Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes).
Three illustrious lives entered the twentieth century in England as full
of years as of honors. Meredith, Whistler, and Swinburne were born in
the Spring of the nineteenth century, in 1828, 1834, and 1837
respectively, and the bloom of their days was with the giants, now
legends, of the Victorian reign. The Kings in the history of art and
letters have been--have they not?--gallant men. We suspect that it takes
a gallant man to be a King in these callings. Of these three--two
wished to be soldiers--the most gallant spirit was the great-grandson of
a rather grand tailor.
He won what men can and he bore what men must, is some ancient line.
The most extensive article in these volumes is the "Meredith," by Thomas
Seccombe. It is the richest. Twelve pages is its compass. As a biography
we are disposed to rank it with--let's see?---Froude's "Carlyle" (4
vols. 8vo.). Perhaps, on the whole, it is better. To go into any detail
in our notice of the appearance of these books, and maintain any
perspective, would carry us to a vast length. The bibliographer is
deeply impressed with the character of Meredith, as a man, throughout
his life, of noble aspect. His critical verdict reduced to one word is:
"Thoroughly tonic in quality, his writings are [as Lamb said of
Shakespeare] essentially manly." This is one of the pictures which most
brightly sticks in our head:
On the terrace in front of the chalet, whence he descended to
meals, he was often to be heard carrying on dialogues with his
characters, and singing with unrestrained voice. Whimsical and
sometimes Rabelaisian fabrications accompanied the process of
quickening the blood by a spin [a favorite word with him] over
Surrey hills. Then he wrote his master works, ... and welcomed his
friends, often reading aloud to them in magnificent recitative,
unpublished prose or verse.
If there is anything upon which an article could be "based" not included
in Mr. Seccombe's list of sources, it's a queer thing.
The "Swinburne" is furnished by Edmund Gosse, whose adequate equipment
for the task includes "personal recollections extending over more than
forty years." Passages of his portrait of the radiant poet are the most
colorful in these volumes of the Dictionary. By way of critical
discussion the writer says: "It is a very remarkable circumstance, which
must be omitted in no outline of his intellectual life, that his
opinions, on politics, on literature, on art, on life itself, were
formed in boyhood, and that though he expanded he scarcely advanced in
any single direction after he was twenty. If growth had continued as it
began, he must have been the prodigy of the world. Even his art was at
its height when he was five and twenty." The Whistler article is by Sir
Walter Armstrong (who writes also on Holman Hunt) and is, one feels, the
most judicial summary that has appeared on the most controversial
subject, one can readily recall, of the epoch closed. A very clear
statement of a principle of the art of painting is this: "For years his
work bore much the same relation to Japanese art as all fine painting
does to nature. He took from Japanese ideals the beauties he admired,
and re-created them as expressions of his own personality."
There is one delightful anecdote, in E. V. Lucas's sketch of Phil May.
His Punch editor, Sir Francis Burnand, tells a story to the effect that
on being asked at a club for a loan of fifty pounds, May produced all he
had--half that amount--and then abstained from the club for some time
for fear of meeting the borrower, because he felt that "he still owed
him twenty-five pounds."
Sensible persons will read with satisfaction the just article by T. F.
Henderson on that fine figure Henley, "one of the main supports," said
Meredith, "of good literature in our time." Many good folks will like to
look up Leslie Stephen, the first editor of this Dictionary, "who
enjoyed the affectionate admiration of his most enlightened
contemporaries." The article is by the present editor, Sir Sidney Lee.
Æsthetically minded persons may read about William Sharpe. Among the
painters are Watts (biographer, Sir Sidney Colvin) and Orchardson. The
"Seymour Haden" is furnished by A. M. Hind. Memoirs of Sir Henry Irving,
Sir Theodore Martin, and Herbert Spencer come in this supplement. And so
on. A piece of American history is related here, too, in the account of
Edward Lawrence Godkin, founder of _The Nation_.
A subject of emotional literary controversy at the present moment is
treated by Thomas Seccombe in his article on George Gissing. The general
qualities of the Dictionary may be clearly observed in this notice. When
the first volume of this second supplement--A to Evans--was issued not
long ago rumors reached us of some agitation occasioned in England by
the unepitaphical character of the memoirs of Edward VII. Well,
discrimination was not made against a King. The frankness of this high
tribunal in its calm recital of facts is striking.
After some steady reading of the great Dictionary we wonder if printed
forms had been sent to the contributors, upon which they composed, in
answer to the questions there, their articles: the order of progress of
all the memoirs is, in effect, so uniform. Each says at (it appeared)
about the same point: His appearance was this. Each seems to conclude
with a list of the portraits.
And this idea recalled to us a story. A foreigner entering our country's
gates, upon being asked to fill out papers setting forth his
nationality, age, color, and so on, wrote beside the query,
"Business?"--"Rotten." In this intelligent interpretation of the
question, the "business" of many whose lives are recorded in honor here
was "rotten" for many a long year.
The story of literature has not ceased to be a sorry story; still, as
was said on a time, comparable to the annals of Newgate. A tale it
continues, in a large measure, of outcast experience, of destitution,
"seeking a few pence by selling matches or newspapers," or development
through suffering, of hospital sojourns, of contemplated suicide, of
unfortunate "amorous propensities," of "ill-considered" marriage, of
that immemorial "besetting weakness," of "a curious inability to do the
sane, secure thing in the ordinary affairs of life," of "ordering his
life with extreme carelessness in financial matters," of the weariness
of reward for work of high character long deferred, of charitable
legacies "from a great-aunt."
Mr. Wells speaks somewhere of the amazing persistency of the instinct
for self-expression. Where it exists, one reflects in musing on these
biographies, you can't kill it with a club.
Very imposing we felt the literary style of this Dictionary to be. It
treats of a man much as if he were a word, say, in the Century
Dictionary. This is the sort of biographical writing, we said, that a
man with whiskers can read. It does sound something like a court
calendar. Its tone is omniscient, indeed. But the Recording Angel here
does not drop a tear upon the oath of any Uncle Toby and blot it out
forever. No. He says, of one we tremble to name, "his language was often
beyond the reach of apology." Fine is the dignity with which sordid
things are related. "The return journey he was under the necessity of
performing on foot." Almost grotesque is the neglect of the caressing
touch of sentiment. "His own wish was to be a jockey." The treatment of
the theme of love is entertaining. "At the age of nineteen he married."
August is the passivity in the presence of the Reaper who mows the
golden grain. Without poetry, oh, Death, where is thy sting! In these
volumes, of none is it sighed: At twilight his spirit fled. Had he but
lived ...! It is: He died December 14, 1908. He left no issue. A fair
portrait of him by Charles Ricketts is in the possession of Mr. Edmund
Gosse.
We arose after several hours' reading with a sense of having perused for
a space two recent volumes of the Book of Judgment. We were full of
emotion. We felt the mystery of the destiny of man. How admirable he is
and how pitiful! Throbbing, we went forth into the throbbing city.
CHAPTER XV
SO VERY THEATRICAL
There is a young woman I thought of taking there for luncheon the other
day, but when I called for her it did not seem to me that she had used
her lip-stick that morning--and so we went somewhere else.
She is pretty good-looking and was dressed not at all unfashionably. She
would have done all right at the Waldorf, or at the Vanderbilt, or
Biltmore, or Ritz-Carlton, or Ambassador. Indeed, I don't know but that
at some such place as that I should have been rather proud of her.
But, you see, for the place I had in mind her skirt was a little too
long--it came almost halfway to her ankles. Her bosom was quite covered.
She moves with fair grace, but without striking sinuousness. And I
suddenly recollected that she does not smoke much.
No; I saved myself just in time; I should have been chagrined,
embarrassed, most decidedly uncomfortable; she would have been
conspicuous. I should probably have lost caste with the waiters, too;
and not again have been able to get a table after the plush rope had
been thrown across the entrance to the dining-room; which, so keen is
competition for places there, is shortly before one o'clock.
If you know where this place is, why, of course, all right. But nobody
has any business to go shouting all over the housetops exactly where it
is. People who aren't just naturally by temperament a part of the
picture oughtn't to know how to find it. Though it is a perfectly good
bet that bunches of them would like to know.
But that's just the way so many of these havens of the elect get ruined.
A lot of curious "visitors" go piling in right along; the scene soon
loses all its authenticity; and shortly becomes bogus altogether. Why, I
can remember when artists--painters and writers--lived in Greenwich
Village. There, in those days.... But all that was years ago.
This much only will I tell you about the location of the most
_distingué_ place there is in which to have luncheon. The centre of the
inhabited world is, of course, Longacre Square, that widened curving
stretch of Broadway looking north several blocks from the narrow stern
of the gracefully towering Times Building, rising from its site of a bit
of an island surrounded by four surging currents of traffic. A few miles
away (from Longacre Square) the provinces begin. But there, the most
gleaming spot on this our globe under the canopy of the purple night, is
the quintessence, the apex of human life.... I am here speaking, of
course, in the spirit of those of that nomad race whose hopes for gold
and fame lie through the "stage entrance"--I mean the ladies and
gentlemen of the theatre.
To the east just off Longacre Square along the crosstown streets is a
medley of offices of divers theatrical and screen journals, chop-houses,
and innumerable band-box hotels whose names doubtless only a district
messenger boy could recite in any number. The particular one for which
we are headed is famous enough to those familiar with fame of this
character. Here the "Uncle Jack" of the American stage, Mr. Drew, for
some time made his residence. It is always the stopping place in New
York of perhaps the finest of our novelists, Joseph Hergesheimer. That
mystical Indian gentleman, Mr. Rabindranath Tagore, has found it a not
unworthy tent on his western pilgrimages. And so on.
You cannot be long in its rich little lobby without overhearing struck
the high note of its distinctive clientele. "Where do you open?" asks
someone of someone else. And the answer is not unlikely to be: "At
Stamford. When do you close?" In the subdued light bare satin arms and
enspiriting lengths of colorful stocking flash from the deep chairs
where feminine forms are waiting. A graceful hand opens a telephone
booth to expel a smoking cigarette.
Here enters Walter Prichard Eaton, come down from his Berkshire farm for
the height of the theatrical season. A tall, leisurely, very New
Englandish, smooth-shaven young man, now coming decidedly grey just over
the ears. Entering the dining-room we come plump against our old friend
Meredith Nicholson lunching with a bevy of friends. A youthful fifty
perhaps now, the author of one of the best sellers of any day, "The
House of a Thousand Candles." Clean-shaven, with a physiognomy
suggesting that of a Roman senator. What has brought him just now from
Indiana? Well, he is revolving in his mind the idea of writing a new
play, as soon, he adds, as he "can find the right ink." Hasn't been
able to get hold of any that just suited him.
But much more important to his mind, apparently, than this play is
another mission in which he has become involved. He is going to have
himself "mapped," that is, have his horoscope cast. Yes, by one of the
ladies of his party, who, it appears, is eminent as a professor of this
science, now rapidly coming into a period of great vogue. When he has
supplied her with the data concerning his birth she will reveal to him
the course of his career through 1922.
On a number of the tables are cards marked "Reserved." Around two sides
of the room upholstered seats running the length of the wall seat
couples in greater intimacy of tête-à-tête side by side before their
little tables. Most of the young women present--but could you really
call many of them young women?... Their most striking feature, after the
dizziness of their beauty, and the ravishing audacity of their clothes,
is the bewitching tenderness of their years. More than several of these
dainty, artfully rose-cheeked smokers look to be hardly past seventeen.
Their foppishly dressed male companions frequently are in effect far
from anything like such youth; and in a number of cases are much more
likely to remind you of Bacchus than of Apollo.
Two of these misses nearby are discussing with one another their
"doorman." "Isn't he," exclaims one, "the very dearest old doorman you
have ever seen in all of your whole life!" Yes, it would seem that,
peering down the long vista of the past, from out of their experience of
hundreds of theatres, neither of these buds of womanhood could recall
any doorman so "dear" as their present one.
The dominant group in the room is a gay and populous party about a large
round table in the centre. And undoubtedly the dominant figure of this
party is, you recognize, Alexander Woollcott, dramatic critic of the New
York _Times_, invariably at this same table at this same hour, a very
spirited, a very round plump young man, very dapper to the end of every
hair in his trim little black moustache. Next to him who is that? Why,
goodness me! if it isn't Edna Ferber, who, though I doubt not she would
not want to be counted in the fledgling class of some of our soubrette
friends here, indeed does seem to be getting younger all the while.
Joining this party now is an odd and rather humorous looking figure,
tall, amusingly stooping and amusingly ample of girth for a character of
such apparently early manhood, an intensely black crop of hair and a
very blackish streak of moustache, soft collar, unpressed clothes. Sits
down, hooping himself over his plate with a suggestion of considerable
shyness. Gives you an impression, perhaps by the brightness of his eyes,
of Puckish mirth playing within his mind. Heywood Broun.
At the table on our right we perceive a very popular lady known to us,
Miss Margaret Widdemer, or, as she now is, Mrs. Robert Haven Schauffler.
Her general air breathing the simplicity of a milkmaid amid this scene.
Under her mammoth floppy hat reminding you of an early summer rose. She
is discussing with a spectacled person who looks as if he might have
something to do with book publishing whether her next book should be a
light romance on the order of her "Wishing-Ring Man" and "Rose Garden
Husband" or she should come into the new movement of serious "Main
Street" kind of realism.
And there, on our left, certainly is a publisher, Mr. Liveright of the
firm of Boni and Liveright. Young fellow, thirty-five perhaps. Maybe he
is talking about some of his striking successes, such as "Potterism" and
"From Mayfair to Moscow." With him Ludwig Lewisohn, literary and
dramatic critic.
Back of us we detect young Burton Rascoe, former literary editor of the
Chicago Tribune, newly arrived in New York as managing editor of
_McCall's Magazine_, and to whom (by the way) the suppressed novel
"Jurgen" was dedicated. You wouldn't think anybody would be so frowning
as to want to suppress Mr. Rascoe. He looks as if he might be twin
brother to any dewy bud here.
Who is that he is with? Theodore Maynard, I declare. Young English poet,
critic and novelist. And the other side of him is a gentleman, Oliver
Saylor by name, who at the height of the revolution went to Russia to
study the Russian drama, and engrossed in æsthetics lived for a time in
quarters midway between the contending military forces. Beyond we see a
young lady recently come on from Ted Shawn's song and dance studio in
Los Angeles.
And yonder you see a young man who is just as dear and sweet as he can
be. He served his country during the war by knitting a sweater and a
"helmet" for a poet he knew in the army in France. He, this dainty
youth, looks pretty much lip-sticked himself. In order not to sin
against daintiness this young person has a habit of powdering his nose.
A coarse friend of his forbade his doing this, and the next time he met
him neatly powdered rebuked him for it. Whereupon the young man replied:
"Oh! You wouldn't (would you?) let a little powder come between
friends."
And, finally, here most happily we are ourselves.
CHAPTER XVI
OUR STEEPLEJACK OF THE SEVEN ARTS
There is a rather frisky looking apartment house there now, a pastry
shop and tea room occupying the ground floor--behind it, the other side
of a venerable brick wall, a tiny, ancient burying ground. But in days
of yester-year here stood a tavern of renown, the Old Grape Vine, which
on this site, Sixth Avenue at Eleventh Street, had given cheer since
Sixth Avenue was little more than a country road. A sagging, soiled
white, two-story frame structure, with great iron grill lamps before the
door. Within, the main room was somewhat reminiscent of London's Olde
Cheshire Cheese.
The proprietor was a canny Scot, one MacClellan. ("Old Mac"! Whither has
he gone?) I was coming along by there the other day, and I asked a man
with whom I chanced to walk if he remembered the Old Grape Vine. "Ah!
yes;" he said; "they had mutton pies there." They did. And excellent
ale, also, served in battered pewter mugs. "They" had here, too (some
fifteen years ago), excellent society beneath the dingy light. Roaring,
roistering George Luks (as he was then) very much to the fore. At the
rickety mahogany table where Frans-Halsian George held forth frequently
was to be found the painter William J. Glackens and his brother "Lew,"
humorous draughtsman for _Puck_. Ernest Lawson sometimes came in. A Mr.
Zinzig, a very pleasant soul and an excellent pianist and teacher of the
piano, often was of the company. A Mr. FitzGerald, art critic in those
days of the _Sun_, sometimes "sat in." And a delightful old cock, Mr.
Stephenson, art critic then of the _Evening Post_. Among the most
devoted habitués of the place was an old-school United States army
officer turned writer of military stories. (When the proceedings had
progressed to a certain stage of mellowness it was his habit to go home
and return directly arrayed in his uniform.) There was, too, a queer
figure of a derelict journalist associated with _Town Topics_. There was
an inoffensive gentleman of leisure whose distinction was that he was
brother to a famous Shakespearean scholar. (As the hour grew late he
would begin to whistle softly to himself through his teeth.) There was a
rotund being of much reading who perpetually smoked a very old pipe and
who was editor of a tobacco journal. There was a man of the sea who
continually told stories of Japan. (After eleven he was somewhat given
to singing.) There was an illustrator for a tu'penny magazine, who (so
as to seem to be a large staff) signed a variety of names to his work.
From the land of R. L. S., he. One time while in a doze (somewhere else)
he was robbed. His comment upon his misfortune became a classic line. It
was: "By heaven! As long as whiskey is sold to lose ten dollars is
enough to drive a Scot mad!" (This was long before anybody had ever
heard of the now illustrious Mr. Volstead.) And many more there were.
Ah, me! ah, me! How the picture has changed!
Well, the point of all this (if it have any point) is that it was in the
Old Grape Vine (of tender memory) that I first saw James Gibbons
Huneker. I think that, in his promenades as an impressionist, he was
there but seldom. Though we know that high among the Seven Arts he rated
the fine art of drinking Pilsner. The old places of Martin's and
Lüchow's (headquarters on a time for the musical cognoscenti) were ports
of call on his rounds; and he moved freely, I believe, among the places
of refreshment along the foreign quarter of lower Fourth Avenue. At the
Grape Vine, I understand, he was an especial friend of Luks, and
probably of Glackens and Lawson. And, though he was a very famous man,
he seemed to like the motley company.
Ten or twelve years ago I was earning a living more honestly than
perhaps I have been making one since. I was a clerk in a book store--the
retail department, it happened, of the house which publishes Mr.
Huneker's books. And there, from my position "on the floor," I
frequently saw him moving in and out. Moving rather slowly, with the
dignity of bulk. A distinguished figure, quietly but quite neatly
dressed, very erect in carriage, head held well back, supporting his
portliness with that physical pride of portly men, a physiognomy of
Rodinesque modelling--his cane a trim touch to the ensemble. He was, I
distinctly remember, held decidedly in regard by the retail staff
because he was (what, by a long shot, a good many "authors" were not)
exceedingly affable in manner to us clerks.
The moment I have particularly in mind was when Samuel Butler's volume
"The Way of All Flesh" first appeared in an American edition. We all
know all about Butler now. But, looking back, it certainly is
astonishing how innocent most all of us then were of any knowledge of
the great author of "Erewhon." Even so searching a student of literature
as W. C. Brownell was practically unacquainted with Butler. He was
taking home a copy of "The Way of All Flesh" to read. Mr. Huneker was
standing by. In some comment on the book he remarked that Butler had
been a painter. "A painter!" exclaimed Mr. Brownell, in a manner as
though wondering how it came about he knew so little of the man. "But
this," said Mr. Huneker, referring to the novel, "is not his best stuff.
That is in his note-books." Brownell: "And where are they?" Huneker: "In
the British Museum." Mr. Brownell made a fluttering gesture (as though
to express that he "gave up") toward Mr. Huneker: "He knows everything!"
he ejaculated.
We should, of course, be surprised now that anybody _did not_ know that
Butler had been a painter. When, just a short time ago, W. Somerset
Maugham adapted for the purposes of his sensational novel "The Moon and
Sixpence" the character and career of Paul Gauguin, it was in the pages
of Huneker that many first looked for, and found, intelligence
concerning the master of the Pont Aven school of painting. Well, Gauguin
is now an old story. And Ibsen, Tolstoy, Wagner, Richard Strauss,
Rimbaud, De Gourmont, Nietzsche, Meredith, Henry James, William James,
Bergson, Barrès, Anatole France, Flaubert, Lemaître, Huysmans,
Maeterlinck, Baudelaire, Stirner, Strindberg, Faguet, Shaw, Wilde,
George Moore, Yeats, Synge, Schnitzler, Wederkind, Lafargue, Rodin,
Cézane, Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, George Luks, that wondrous "flock of
Unicorns"--they all are old stories, too ... now. But it was our
Steeplejack, James Huneker, who was our pioneer watcher of the skies.
And what in the large sweep of his vision of the whole field of the
world's beauty he saw, he reported with infinite gusto. "Gusto," as H.
L. Mencken in the Huneker article of his "Book of Prefaces" says,
"unquenchable, contagious, inflammatory."
The extent of the personal contact which Mr. Huneker enjoyed and
maintained with the first-rate literary men of the world was amazing.
While I was with the book shop I speak of, "presentation copies" of each
new book of his, to be sent out "with the compliments of the author,"
were piled up for forwarding literally several feet high. They went to
all the great in letters, in every country, that you could think of.
Anatole France, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, George Brandes, Edmund
Gosse, George Moore--people like that.
Vast was the incoming stream of books to him, presentation copies,
review copies, "publicity" copies; so great a flood that it was
necessary for him periodically to call in an old book man to clear his
shelves by carting away a wagon-load or two of--genuine treasure. A
catalogue I one time saw of such volumes "from the library of James
Huneker" was sufficient in riches to have been the catalogue of the
entire stock of a very fair shop dealing in "association" volumes, first
editions, and so forth. And a survey of the books themselves made it
quite apparent that a reader who has read every word that Huneker ever
printed (and that would be a person who had read a good deal) may yet
(very likely) be a reader who has not read some of the best of Huneker.
I refer to "Jimmie's" humorous, pungent marginalia.
Mr. Huneker's close friends have taken occasion since his death to speak
warmly of his kindness toward obscure, struggling talent. There was a
side to him, akin to this, which I have not seen commented upon.
Huneker's fame as a critic had been for years accepted throughout
Europe. When his "New Cosmopolis" was published (a book I did not myself
think so highly of) Joyce Kilmer, then newly come to journalism,
reviewed it for the New York _Times_, very eulogistically. Mr. Huneker
went to the trouble of looking up Kilmer to thank him very simply for
his praise.
Mr. Huneker was a loyal and disinterested servant of good literature
wherever he found it, and his happily was the power to be an ambassador
to success. So short a time as about four years ago very few people had
heard of William McFee. "Aliens," his first book, had met with no
appreciable success. The manuscript of "Casuals of the Sea" (or the
English "sheets" of the book, I do not recall which) came into the hands
of a publishing house at Garden City. A member of the editorial staff of
this house at this time was Christopher Morley. And I happened at the
moment to have a job as sort of handy man at editorial chores around the
premises. Morley immediately became a great "fan" for the book.
Undoubtedly a fine book, and it was accepted, but (there was a question)
could it be "put across"? It was very long, not of obviously popular
character, and the author's name commanded no attention at all.
The first "advance" copy of the book sent out went (at Morley's
direction) to Mr. Huneker. He was then writing regularly critical
articles for something like a half dozen publications. "Casuals of the
Sea" (such things did not turn up every day) was a "find" for his
enthusiasm, He "pulled" two columns of brilliant Hunekerean firecrackers
about it in the New York _Sun_; wrote another article of length on the
book for the New York _Times_; gave the volume a couple of paragraphs of
mention in his department on the Seven Arts at that time running in
_Puck_, and perhaps mentioned the book elsewhere also. With the weight
of such fervor and authority "Casuals" was most auspiciously launched.
It could not now, by any chance, be passed by.
I do not, of course, mean to imply that there was anything artificial or
"manufactured" about the "vogue" of "Casuals." First, Mr. Huneker was
not a reviewer but a critic, if not thoroughly a great one, certainly a
very real one; and about the last man going who could be got to "push"
anything he did not whole-heartedly believe was fine. And secondly,
"Casuals" had "the goods."
Through my connection with the matter of "Casuals" I suppose it was that
a correspondence came about between Mr. Huneker and me. And in all my
days I have never seen so energetic a correspondent. It seems to me that
I got a letter from him about every other morning. I dropped out of the
publishing business and went to Indiana for a time. I let him know when
I got there, my motive in this being mainly to notify him that I _was_
out of the publishing business and so was no longer in a position to
give any business attention to letters relating to books. But letters
from him continued to reach me with the same regularity. While, I
hardly need say, I enjoyed this correspondence enormously, I was
decidedly embarrassed by it, as I could not but keenly feel that I was
taking up his time to no purpose. Still, of course, I felt that I should
answer each letter of his without an impolite delay, and no sooner did
he get my reply than he answered back again. Gradually, however, we got
the thing slowed down.
His letters were prodigal of witty things. I am afraid I have not kept
them; if so I do not know where they are--I move about a good deal. One
neat play of words I remember. I do not know whether or not he himself
ever used it elsewhere. I did use it in a book, giving due credit to Mr.
Huneker. I had told him that I was going in for writing on my own. His
comment was: "He that lives by the pen shall perish by the pen." Some of
his letters, I recall, were signed, "Jim, the Penman."
And it was no simple trick to read them. He used a pale ink. The
handwriting was small, curious, and to me almost illegible. Why
compositors did not mob him I do not know. He wrote everything by hand;
never would learn to use a typewriter, and declared that he could not
acquire the faculty of dictation.
This leads me to the story of one of the articles he contributed to _The
Bookman_. When, upon my return to New York, I became (for a time) editor
of this magazine I pursued him for contributions. Yes, later on he would
send us something, but always it was later on, later on. I had about
given up hope of ever getting anything from him when a bulky wad of
closely-written "copy" on yellow paper arrived. Expecting that it would
take me a couple of days to decipher the manuscript, I joyously
acknowledged receipt of it at once, without a thought of questioning the
nature of the article. When I tried to read the article, after I had
held the first page sidewise, next upside down, then examined it in a
mirror, I "passed the buck" and sent the copy straight on to the
printers. If printers had read him before printers ought to be able to
do so again. I advertised the article to appear in the next number of
the magazine. When I got the article back in galley proofs--I got a
jolt. It wasn't "_Bookman_ stuff" at all, all about a couple of "old
rounders," as Mr. Huneker called them, taking a stroll.
I do not think that Mr. Huneker has as yet since his death, to the time
these rambling remarks are being written, received anything like
adequate recognition in the press. The "obituary" articles in the
newspapers have carried the air that he was hardly more than an
excellent "newspaper man"--somewhat older, but something like (dare I
say?) Heywood Broun or Alexander Woollcott. Ah! no; James Huneker was a
critic and an artist, and a figure, too, in our national life. Though he
was all his days until almost his last breath a hard-working journalist
with an immediate "copy date" before him. And though he most naturally
thought of himself, with common-sense pride in his calling, as a
journalist. I remember his one time speaking of Arnold Bennett as "a
hard-working journalist as well as a novel writer." Indicating his great
esteem for the character of journalist. And he used to speak, too, with
fraternal pride and affection in inflection, of young men who had
written good books, as being among "our men," meaning associated with
the same paper as himself.
At the remarkable funeral service held in the new Town Hall in New York
high and touching honor was done his memory by the stage and the musical
profession, but literature seemed to be officially represented by the
person of Richard Le Gallienne alone, and painting and sculpture not at
all. The articles by Mr. Huneker's colleagues among music critics have
seemed very largely to claim him as quite their own. True, no doubt, his
most penetrating writing was done in the field of musical criticism.
But, also, Huneker was an evangel who belongs to the Seven Arts.
One thing should be added. It is a sad thing, but it is of the nature of
life. A good editorial in _The New Republic_ began: "James Huneker named
one of his best books 'The Pathos of Distance.' In a single day his own
figure is invested with the memorial gentleness there described." No,
not altogether in a single day. He had already begun, and more than
begun, to recede into the pathos of distance. His _flair_ was for the
championship and interpretation of the "new" men. And, for the most
part, his new men had become old men. His stoutest admirer must admit
that Mr. Huneker's work was "dated."
But where (and this is sadder still) is his like today?
CHAPTER XVII
FORMER TENANT OF HIS ROOM
There are certain things which must be done, to yield their best, when
one is young. For one thing, there is only one time in life to run away
to sea. If you did not run away to sea when you were a lad, it is too
late now for you to get any sport out of it. 'Tis something the same
with living in a garret or in a hall bedroom. If you did not read
"Robinson Crusoe" when you were a boy there is no use for you to read it
now; you will not understand it. There are some other things you can
enjoy when you are old--grandchildren, for instance. But the time to
come up to a great city is when one is young. The time to walk up
Broadway at night, and feel a gusto about it, and Fifth Avenue by day,
is when one is young. That is an enchanted time, when it is a fine
dashing thing to be doing, to live at a second-rate boarding house; when
discouragement is adventure; when it is worth while even to be poor;
when one makes life-long friends at sight; when young love is sipped;
when courage is ever stout in one's breast; when one's illusions are
virgin yet; and all's right with the world. At that season one can swell
with a rich personal pride in "Shanley's" and, almost at the same time,
eat one's own theatre supper in a "Dairy Lunch" room, where every
customer is his own waiter as well, and where his table is the broadened
arm of his chair against the wall.
Richard Day, student at the law, munched his egg sandwich (egg sandwich
was the favorite dish at the "Dairy Lunches" until eggs got so high) and
drank his coffee from a cup that remarkably resembled in shape a shaving
mug and was decorated in similar fashion. The blocks of sugar (two for
Richard) for this stimulating beverage (made out of chicory) were taken
by the customer with his fingers from a heaping-full sort of great
punch-bowl mounted on a pedestal in the middle of the room. It was drawn
from a nickel-plated engine with glass tubes by a young man in a white
coat like a barber's, who served it, with crullers, piece of pie, or
sandwich, across a kind of little bar at the rear end of the long room.
Day scorned the packed, parading trolley cars, and swung vigorously up
the street. Far up the thoroughfare an enormous electric sign (in its
size suggesting that it had been somehow brought back by Gulliver from
the country of Brobdingnag and mounted here upon a sturdy little
building for awful exhibition) its gigantic illuminated letters spelling
"Arthur Pendennis Ten Cent Cigar," lighted the mist for blocks
approaching it, and marked the north boundary of the dominion for
revelry. The sidewalks were much quieter now. One of those birds of the
urban night deftly wheeled his vehicle alongside our pedestrian and
pulled his clattering quadruped violently back upon its haunches until
it slid along the slippery pavement. "Cab, sir? Cab?" Then he whisked
away again. It was not long before Richard had entered into the district
of slumbering residences, and not much longer until he ran up the steps
before his own door, or, speaking more literally, his own landlady's
door. It is not much to mount three pairs of stairs in the brave days
when one is twenty-one, and Day was in the little room, where, rich only
in the glory of his rising sun, in his youth, he weathered it so long.
This apartment was the width of the dark hall, which was face to face
with it, about fourteen feet long, and furnished in tune, so to speak.
An uncommonly small, old-fashioned, wooden bedstead, a bantam-size
"dresser," a washstand its shorter brother, a small table or "stand,"
and two half-grown chairs, mature before their season, were the
principal articles of furniture. The room was heated by an oil stove
that had passed the age of vanity in one's appearance; it was lighted at
night by a gas-jet, without a globe; by day through a single window,
which occupied between a half and a third of the wall space of the front
end of the room, and which balanced in decorative effect with the door
at the other end. A row of books was arranged along the dresser top
against the lower part of the small looking-glass. Two pictures (the
property of Day), one of Lincoln and one of Roosevelt squinting in the
sunlight (this is a land where every young man may hope to be
President), were tacked on the walls. In company with these were a
combination calendar and fire-insurance advertisement and a card
displaying a lithographed upper part and idealistic legs of a blithe
young woman wearing, stuck on, a short, bright skirt made of sandpaper
and streaked with match-scratches, who in fancy letters was ingeniously
labelled "A Striking Girl." These bits of applied art were properties of
Mrs. Knoll's establishment.
Day's dresser had several small drawers and a little square door. He had
one day discovered adhering to the back of this door a hardened piece of
chewing gum, and from this he had deduced that a former tenant of the
room had been a woman, presumably a young one (for surely there is an
age after which one knows better). He sometimes speculated on the
subject of the former tenant, and he was of three minds about her
vocation. Sometimes he thought she had been a school-teacher, sometimes
he thought an art student, and again a clerk in a store. He
reconstructed her as having had red hair and having been a bit frowsy.
But whatever she had been she had slept on a mighty hard little bed, and
he felt something like a tenderness for her on that account.
When he had got home from the theatre, Richard sat on the edge of his
bed (it seemed always somehow the most natural place in the room to
sit), and smoked his pipe. One Christmas Day he and his bosom friend had
gone together and bought pipes exactly alike, then each had given his
to the other. Years later Day was compelled to give up smoking, and he
was never exactly the same again. But when he was young the gods blessed
him. He smoked his pipe out, then he slowly pulled off his shoes. That
is, he pulled off one shoe and sat abstractedly a considerable while
with it in his hand. He had many thoughts, mainly associated with an
unknown young lady he had seen that evening at the theatre. He wished he
had had on a different style of collar--and he would have had if his
laundryman had kept his word. However, he thought rather sadly what
booted it to him now. Then he roused himself, slowly undressed, put on
his pajamas (his mother had made them for him), turned off his light,
pulled up his window curtain (so the morning light would waken him), and
got into bed.
Richard fell into a great many adventures in his night's sleep. He
fought bandits, with never any cartridges in his gun; he travelled
across plains that appeared to be constructed on the principle of a
treadmill; he visited sundry peculiar places and did divers queer things
with solemnity and without surprise. After a while it seemed to him
that he was somewhere talking with, or rather to, the former tenant of
his room. But the former tenant did not have red hair; her hair was the
loveliest brown; nor was she the least bit frowzy; she was the very
opposite extreme to that. Nor clerk nor teacher nor student was she. She
was a bright princess. Her complexion had rather more of the rose than
of the lily. Her pure and eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks. She and
the lady he had seen at the theatre were one and the same person. He
could not make out exactly how he came to know she was the former
tenant, but that seemed to be considered so very well understood he felt
ashamed to speak about it.
He was saying to her some of the cleverest things he had ever heard. He
surprised himself as he listened to himself; and he was much elated; for
if ever he wished to speak well, now was the time. Now Day was really a
very clever fellow, as well as a comely one (this is only a story of his
youth, but in after life he became a distinguished man), and, like all
very clever fellows, he was never perfectly happy except when his
talents were recognized and appreciated. Here in his dream he had come
into his own. It was a night to be marked with a white stone. One of the
things that particularly impressed him in this dream was his impression
that it was not a dream.
In the morning it was always colder in Day's room than at night, and
always it seemed somehow lonesomer. It was bare then, and not cozy. To
come directly from such an especially comfortable dream into the cold,
grey dawn, and find one's window opaque with frost and one's breath like
steam in the air, requires a little time for one to adjust oneself to
the transition. Richard lay a little time generating courage to get up.
He did not immediately shake off his dream entirely; but crumbs of it
stuck to his mind, like the last of a fine cake on the face. But it was
as if his cake had turned cold in the mouth. He squirmed in bed with
embarrassment when he reviewed those clever things, on which he had so
plumed himself, that he had said to the former tenant. They were so very
poor and flat that he tried to stop his mind against the recollection of
them. And even the former tenant herself, as she faded now more into the
night, and he came more out into the morning, was like Cinderella as
she fled from the hall back to her kitchen. But Richard caught up the
crystal slipper that remained to him and in his bosom bore it forth into
the day.
CHAPTER XVIII
ONLY SHE WAS THERE
Directly in the intense emphasis of white light from an arc lamp
overhead, and standing about midway in the long, dark, thickly-packed
line of people waiting, was a young man decidedly above the middle
stature, in a long outer coat. He was broad in the shoulders, formed in
excellent proportion, apparently in about the first or second and
twentieth year of his age. His forehead was intelligent, his nose
exceptionally good, his mouth rather big and lips full, his chin round
and with a cleft in the centre. His hair, chestnut, moderately cropped,
discovered, what of it was visible below his hat, a decided inclination
to curl. He was redolent of health and the unmined masculine vigor
pertaining to his time of life. As the earliest ancestor of this kind of
historical writing would have said, "He was one of the handsomest young
fellows that hath ever been seen"; in short, he was not unlike one
Jones, Christian-named Tom. This young man was Richard Day, student of
the law, and he had come from his silent "furnished room" to refresh
himself, at a minimum cost, at the dramatic presentation of an immortal
story of love.
On the occasions when the entertainment to be is of a superior order,
the price of admission is doubled or trebled, and the patrons of the
theatre gallery are of an exceptional character. They comprise school
teachers in abundance, miscellaneous students, matinée girls driven high
by the prohibitory prices below, young clerks, and a sprinkling from the
usual ranks of the gallery-god, the better sort of them, however, the
more wealthy and more aspiring. The original line containing Richard Day
had assembled an hour or so before time, to be on the spot at the
opening of the doors at a commendable production of "Romeo and Juliet."
There came a sudden jolting, like the coupling of railroad cars, then a
denser packing of the line, a being pushed off one's balance and being
pressed back into it again, and slowly, jerkily, the crowd began to move
forward; then swept toward the entrance. The doors had been opened. As
the throng began to move, a woman's voice rose near Day ejaculating
breathlessly, "Oh! Oh!" Simultaneously a shrill cry arose, "Oh, there's
a sick lady here! a sick lady! Oh, please! Oh, please! Won't you make
room for a sick lady!" Day with all his force made what room he could,
conceiving that the thing desired was to get the stricken lady out in
the open as quickly as possible. A little peaked woman in a light coat
took instant advantage of the slight breach then opened, impetuously to
advance herself in the line. When the momentary gap had closed again,
piteously the crying was resumed, and it continued at intervals almost
the entire distance to the box-office, though it was in a slightly
different neighborhood and observably proceeded from exactly the point
of vantage gained by the little peaked woman; who, it might be inferred,
was a dual personality, comprising in the same lady both a sick lady and
another who was her good Samaritan and assumed the care of her.
Nothing railed the crowd into a straight line on one side, though on the
other a wall held them so. The impatient crowding forward from the rear
convexed the outer edge of the line of people, much against the will of
those persons who found themselves being swept out of the direct way
and felt the main current surging past them. What was yet more agitating
to these was that ahead of them an iron railing did begin, at the foot
of some steps, fencing in a narrow approach to the ticket office. If
they should be swept past the mouth of this lane on the outside, their
chance of admittance was hopeless. Day stemmed the swerving current
himself by the strength of his body and by a kind of determined exercise
of his will. But he felt directly behind him someone less strong losing
hold with every step of advance; then suddenly this despairing someone,
realizing herself pushed quite to one side, with a little scream, caught
at his crooked arm; which he instantly, involuntarily clapped firmly
against him, hooking on in this manner and towing safely and rapidly
along someone frailer than himself. When they had come to the rail he
saw that he would get in by so narrow a margin himself that, himself
inside, he would then but tow her along outside, which of course would
be a less than useless thing for her. So he backed water, so to speak,
with all his might, bracing himself against the end of the rail, until
he had got a little space before him, around into which he drew her
whom he thought robbed of her place by the frantic selfishness of the
crowd.
But in doing this, it seemed he had inadvertently held back for a moment
the little peaked woman, who was at his inside elbow. She, finding
herself delayed for a brief period almost at the goal in her desperate
bargain-counter sort of rush for the ticket-window, blew out into a
spitting cat kind of impotent fury. "Ain't you got no semblance of
decency! you great big brute!" she screamed in his ear. "Ain't you got
no ideas of gentlemanliness at all! If I was a man I'd teach you some
shame, tramplin' on a woman, a poor weak woman! a woman!" She fairly
writhed with scorn at this depravity. Day attempted to humble himself to
her, for her pacification; but another woman's getting in ahead of her
at that instant drove her almost mad, and her frenzy interfering for the
moment with her articulation she could only glare at him with an
expression suggesting some kind of feline hydrophobia. When her breath
returned more to her command she continued to revile him as they went
along. Although Day had done nothing to merit shame, he squirmed
inwardly with something not unlike that feeling, and he blessed the
general commotion which drowned a vixen's voice. He felt ashamed, too,
to be where he was, though he had not thought of it that way before; he
should not have brought himself into a crowd more than half of women.
His reflections became rather abstract and levelled themselves somewhat
against the feminine temperament in general. He felt the littleness of
it (so he saw it), the peevishness of it; its inability to take
punishment good-naturedly; its incapacity for being a "good loser"; its
lack of the philosophic character which accepts humorously discomforts
and injustice, real as well as imagined; its lack of broadness of view;
its selfish lack of the sense of fair play; its
not-being-square-and-above-board way; its sneakiness, its deceitfulness;
the contemptible devices that it will resort to, assuming them to be its
natural weapons against a superior strength, both physical and of the
understanding. He knew that in a crowd of men if anyone of them had had
the despicable disposition of this woman his dread of the hearty,
boisterous ridicule of his fellow brutes which would inevitably have
followed his meanness would have forced him to stifle his temptation in
silence. He knew that there is no place where one may better learn to
appreciate what may be called the good-natured easy-goingness of the
male animal generally than in an uncomfortable crowd of men. He thanked
heaven he was of the superior sex. When a young man thanks heaven that
he is of the superior sex it may not be uninteresting to observe in what
manner he conducts himself subsequently.
As fast as the crowd was served with tickets it ran up the multiplied
flights of stairs, moved in single file past the ticket-chopper, then on
to come out, high up, into the vast bowl of the theatre. Here from one's
seat the impression of the weird, ship-at-sea like effect of the curves
of the galleries, balconies, and tiers of boxes, sweeping back from the
light in front, dropping away from the vaulted ceiling; the impression
of being high up close under a great roof and far from the stage; the
impression of the myriads of vague elusive faces in the half-lit, thick,
scintillating atmosphere of the hot, crowded place; the impression of
the playhouse scheme of decoration, red walls and tinsel in the dusk,
cream color and tinsel bas-relief in the highly artificial yellow light,
casting purplest shadows, and the heroic mural paintings in blue and
yellow and green, the sense of the infinite moving particles of the
throng; the sense of its all facing one way, of the low hum of it, and
of its respiration--all this is stuff that puts one in the mood for a
play. The keen actualities fade and become the shadows; sense of one's
own life and vanity and disappointment slips away; one is to enjoy a
transmigration of soul for a brief time. "Now for the play!" thought
Richard.
A man was climbing up the steps of the aisle, some distance away,
flinging an inadequate number of fluttering programs into the crowd.
None fell in Day's neighborhood, to the indignant consternation of all
there. A chorus of exclamatory sighs went up from a feminine flock just
settled at his right, all faces following the disappointing program
distributor. A stocky young man at Day's left hand arose, and clambering
out between the parallel two rows of seats, occupants getting on their
feet to allow him passage, started after the disappearing man of
programs.
A full-throated feminine voice burst almost in Day's right ear: "Oh,
please tell him to get one for us!" Day lunged after the stocky young
man, reaching for his coat-tails, and cried out, "Hey there! Hey!
Fellow! Hold on!" until it was quite hopeless to continue. The sea of
people closed in between him and his quest; the stocky young man, his
ears plugged with the multitude of voices, shook himself free from the
narow, clogged passage, and was gone. Day turned to the owner of the
feminine voice, "He will bring a lot, I think; if not I'll get you
some," he said. And he caught an elusive impression of cheeks precisely
the color of cheeks that had just been smartly slapped, suggesting the
idea that if one should press one's finger against them one's finger
would leave streaks there when taken away; and he caught an impression
of eyes that were like deep, brimming pools reflecting lights; and an
impression of a cloud of dusky brown-like hair which reminded him of a
host of rich autumn leaves. She of these cheeks and eyes and this hair
was, apparently, in a party with two companions, whose peering faces
showed indistinctly beyond her. In one significance of the word, she
might have been called a girl, or she was a young woman, a miss, a lass,
a young lady, as you please; as were they her companions. Merry
school-girl spirits lingered in them all, supplemented by the grace and
dawning dignity of young womanhood. She was at that sweet nosegay
period when young ladies are just, as it is sometimes said, finishing
their education. Her age was that enchanted time, holiest of the female
seasons, which hangs between mature girlhood and full womanhood. Day
felt a suspicion, though without perceptible foundation, that this was
the very person he had towed along outside.
The stocky young man returned presently, showing an uncommonly blunt
face and with the programs, which proved sufficient in number. There was
an interval in which to read them; then the huge place fell suddenly
much darker, except directly to the fore, which burst into great light;
the immense curtain majestically ascended, and the time was that of the
quarrels of the houses of Capulet and Montague in the sixteenth century.
Richard Day passed out of his body sitting upright on the seat and lived
in this incarnation of the master dramatist.
But unwittingly he had inhaled a liquor, that was even then feeding his
blood; he was even then continuing to inhale it; it crept in at the
pores of his right side; it was stealing its sweet breath about his
brain. This liquor was the magnetism of a powerful pleasant young
feminine presence near to him--too near. Too near for a clean-cut young
man, in his second and twentieth year, redolent of health, with
moderately cropped chestnut hair inclined to curl, intelligent forehead,
good nose, rather big mouth, full lips, and round chin with a cleft in
the centre--too near for him even to remain in the hands of the master
dramatist. A warm glow suffused him. His intellectual perception of the
illuminated, noble spectacle before him in a frame of night numbed in
his brain and he was conscious only of the rich sensation that
circulated through him. Metaphorically, senses and emotions lolled on
rich colored divans, spread with thick rugs, in the tropical atmosphere
of his head. The magically spoken lines of Shakespeare became as so much
unfelt, unrecognized, distant sounding jargon. What he had come to be
thrilled by, as the dark, breathless audience like a sea about him was
thrilled, was in a moment nothing to him. And yet he had not touched
her, nor again spoken with her, nor glanced at her.
Only she was there!
CHAPTER XIX
A HUMORIST'S NOTE-BOOK
I admit that (though, indeed, I can claim a very fair collection of
authors as acquaintances) I share the popular interest in the
idiosyncratic nature of the literary profession. I am as curious as to
the occult workings of the minds of authors, the esoteric process by
which subtle insinuations of inspiration are translated into works of
literary art, as though I had never seen an author--off a platform. I
would read the riddle of genius. I am fascinated by its impenetrable
mysteries. I would explore the recesses of the creative head.
Therefore, in the presence of the treasure of such incalculable value
which is before me, I experience tense intellectual excitement. In the
thought of its possession by myself I find the uttermost felicity. What
it is is this: it is _a humorous writer's note-book_.
I must tell you the wonderful story--how this came into my hands, and
how, romantically enough, it is, so to say, by the bequest of the author
himself, your own possession. The strange circumstances are as follows:
Something like a week ago I received through the post at my place of
residence an oblong package. It was similar in shape to an ordinary
brick; not so heavy, and somewhat larger. I had ordered nothing from a
shop, and so, as the parcel was plainly addressed to myself, I concluded
that it must contain a present. As I am very fond of presents, I was,
with much eagerness, about to open the package, when I suddenly
recollected the newspaper reports of the recent dastardly Bolshevist
bomb plots; the sending through the mails, by some apparently organized
agency, to prominent persons in all parts of the country these
skillfully disguised engines of death and destruction. They were
outwardly, I recalled, innocent looking parcels, which when opened blew
housemaids to bits, demolished dwellings and, in some instances,
accomplished the murder of the personage who had incurred the enmity of
the criminals.
I bounded some considerable distance away from the object before me.
Though, after a moment, I did, indeed, reflect that I was not what
would probably be regarded as an eminent citizen, and had never felt a
sense of power in the government of my country, I could not dissolve a
decided distaste toward my undoing this mysterious parcel. Also I did
not enjoy seeing it remain there on my table. And, further, I had no
inclination to carry it from the room.
In this dilemma it occurred to me to summon the janitor of the apartment
house where I reside. When I had explained to him that, because of my
having a sore thumb (which made it painful for me to handle things), I
wished him to open this package for me--, when I had explained this to
him, he told me that he was very much occupied at the moment mending the
boiler downstairs, and that he must hasten to this occupation, otherwise
the lower floors would shortly be flooded. And he withdrew without
further ceremony.
I sat down to consider the situation. I realized that it was a
bothersome moral responsibility--placing the lives of others (even if
janitors) in jeopardy. But something must be done; and done
soon--perhaps there was a time fuse in this thing. A thought came to me
(the buzzer of our dumb-waiter sounded at the moment); I decided to go
further down the scale in the value of human life to be risked. So I
communicated down the shaft to our iceman (one Jack) that I desired his
presence in the apartment. Well, the upshot of the matter is that Jack
showed no hesitation whatever about coolly putting the package in a pail
of water and afterward undoing it.
The parcel proved to be an ordinary cigar-box (labelled outside, in the
decorative fashion of cigar-box labels, "Angels of Commerce"); within
was a letter resting upon a note-book, and beneath that the manuscripts
of two short stories. The submersion of the box would have (most
disastrously) obliterated, or gone near to obliterating, the message of
the letter and the writing in the note-book and the manuscript, had not
(happily) these things been packed tightly into the box by surrounding
waste paper.
The letter was from Taffy Topaz, known to us all--a humorist if there
ever was one. I cannot say that I had been on intimate terms with Mr.
Topaz; indeed (to admit the truth) all my acquaintance with authors is
slight. I admire authors so much that it is the joy of my life to be
acceptable to them in any degree. I put myself in their way at every
opportunity. I regard it as a great privilege (as, certainly, it is) to
spend freely of my income in entertaining them at meals. And in this way
and that it is that I have attained the honor of hobnobbing with a
number of writers, when they are not otherwise engaged.
As I say, I had not been on intimate terms with Mr. Topaz; and so I was
no little surprised (and, I admit, no little flattered) at this decided
attention (whatever it might mean) to me. The letter was not (oh, not at
all!) a humorous letter. It was a very solemn letter. It said that Mr.
Topaz was just about to go to the war. I was, naturally, puzzled at
this: the war is (theoretically) over. I hunted round and found a piece
of the wrapping paper which had enclosed the box. On it was the postmark
(the paper had dried somewhat); and the stamp bore the date of October
1, 1917. I was still more puzzled as to where the box could have been
all this while. Then, I recollected the heroic labors of the post-office
in maintaining any kind of a schedule of delivery during the war. My
poor friend's box had been goodness knows where all this time!
The letter stated (as I have said) that Mr. Topaz was about to go to
the war--as a newspaper correspondent. It said (oh, it almost made one
weep, so solemn was it!) that he might never return from "over there."
In case he did not come back (the letter continued), he (Mr. Topaz)
wished me to undertake the charge of placing the enclosed manuscripts
with some magazine or magazines; the money got from them, though it was
inadequate he knew (so he said), he prayed that I would accept as
payment for the advances which I had made him from time to time. (Alas!
my poor friend, what were those miserable loans compared to the wealth
of his society! How I remember that proud day when he called me, so
pal-like, a "poor fish"!) But this is not a time to indulge one's grief;
I must press on with my story.
The remainder of his literary effects, he said (meaning, of course, the
note-book), he desired me (as he knew I had some connection with a
certain magazine) to present to the editor of that journal. Little more
remains to be said here of Mr. Topaz (my friend). He was not called upon
to lay down his life for his country (or his paper); after the armistice
he went valiantly into Germany; and there (as the papers have reported)
he contracted a marriage; and is little likely again to be seen in these
parts.
The first page of the note-book contains these entries. It is headed
JOTTINGS
"Good name for a small orphan--Tommy Crandle.
"Fat person--shrugged his stomach.
"Name for a spendthrift--Charles Spending.
"Aphorism--Fear makes cowards of us all.
"Billy Sparks--Fine name for a lawyer.
"Nice name for a landlady--Mrs. Baggs.
"Humorous Christian name for a fat boy--Moscow.
"Name for a clerk--Mr. Fife.
"Good name for someone to cry out on a dark night--Peter Clue! Peter
Clue!
"Good name for a sporting character--Bob Paddock.
"Aphorism--A fool and his foot are soon in it.
"Good name for a tea room in Greenwich Village--The Bad Egg.
"Epigrammatic remark--Though somewhat down in the mouth he kept a stiff
upper lip."
* * * * *
Then follows this on umbrellas, evidently the opening of an unwritten
essay:
And, like umbrellas, with their feathers
Shield you in all sorts of weathers.
MICHAEL DRAYTON.
"Among all the ingenious engines which man has contrived for his
ornament and protection none, certainly, is more richly idiosyncratic
than the umbrella. Literary genius has always instinctively recognized
this; and doubtless the esoteric fact has been vaguely felt even by the
unthinking; but it is a profound truth which, I fear, has had but slight
popular appreciation.
"The use of this historic and peculiarly eloquent article of personal
property, the umbrella, illustrates pictorially a proverbial allusion to
the manifestation of intelligence: it shows that a man has 'sense enough
to go in out of the rain.' It reveals not only the profundity of his
judgment but the extraordinary play of his cleverness, as it exhibits
him as the only animal who after crawling into his hole, figuratively
speaking, pulls his hole in after him, or, in other words, carries his
roof with him. Further than this, in the idea of carrying an umbrella
you find the secret of man's striking success in the world: the
intrepidity of his spirit in his tenacious pursuit of his own affairs
defies both the black cloud's downpour and the sun's hot eye."
* * * * *
There is this, headed
HUMOR
"There was once a man who was nearly dead from a disease. One day while
taking the air a friend cried to him encouragingly, 'Well, I see that
you're up and about again.' 'Yes,' replied the sick man good-naturedly,
'I'm able to walk the length of the block now.' This notion was so
irresistible that both the quick and the dying burst into laughter."
* * * * *
Among the longer entries in this note-book is the following remarkable
psychological study, having as its title
TEMPERAMENT
"That morning Kendle had seen himself famous. As he worked he began to
feel good in his brain and in his heart and in his stomach. He felt
virile, elated, full of power, and strangely happy. The joy of creating
a thing of art was upon him. Thrills ran down his spine and into his
legs. As he looked at his work he admired it. He knew that this was good
art. He felt that here was genius. He saw himself in a delectable
picture, an idol applauded of the multitude, and loved by it. For he
believed that the multitude was born, and ate and slept, and squabbled
among itself, and acquired property, and begot offspring, but to await
the arrival of genius. And the only genius he knew was genius in
eccentric painting. The only genius worth while that is, for there is a
genius that invents labor-saving machines, telephones, X-rays, and so
forth; but nobody loves that genius. It occurred to him that he was a
very lovable man, with all his faults (his faults were the lovable ones
of genius), and he would soon have achieved a distinction that would
make any woman proud of him. He determined to renew his addresses
to----.
"Somehow in the evening his intoxication had died down. He felt very
sad. His work lay before him with so little eccentricity to it that he
was ashamed. His sense of power had quite departed. And now he dismally
felt that he would never amount to anything. He was a failure. An idle,
wicked, disgraceful fellow, no good in the world, and not worth any
woman's attention. His heart felt sick when he thought this. He was very
miserable. He despised himself. So he sighed. It would have been better,
he thought, if he had apprenticed himself to the plumber's trade in his
boyhood. He would in that case have grown up happy and contented,
remained at home and done his duty, respected by his neighbors and
himself, though only a plumber. A plumber is a good honest man that pays
his debts.
"At home! Why was he not there, anyway? What good was he doing away from
there? There was his mother, in her declining years. Was his place not
by her side? He would never desert his mother, he thought. And Sis!
there was Sis. He would never desert Sis. How good they had been to him!
How they believed in him! (he squirmed) how they believed in him still.
He imagined them showing his most sensible pictures around to the
neighbors. 'My son is an artist,' he heard his mother say. His flesh
crawled. How mad he had been! How contemptible he was! Still a man was
not hopeless who had a soul for such feelings as he had now. He would
reform. He would henceforth eschew the company of such as Walker. He
enumerated his vices and renounced them one by one. He began life over
again. He would bask in the simple domestic pleasures of his mother in
her declining years, and Sis. He would get up very early every morning
and go to his humble toil before it was quite light. He felt himself
walking along in the chill of dawn--the street lamps still lit. He would
work hard all day. He would always tell the truth. Every Saturday night
he would come home tired out, with fifteen dollars in his pocket. This
he would throw into his mother's lap. 'Here, mother,' he would say in a
fine manly voice, 'here are fifteen dollars.' His mother would put her
apron to her eyes, and look at him through tears of pride and joy. He
would wear old clothes and be very honest and upright looking, the sort
of young man that Russell Sage would have approved, that Sis might
dress. He would not mind the sneers and gibes of the world, for he would
be _right_.
"He looked defiantly around the room for a few sneers and gibes."
CHAPTER XX
INCLUDING STUDIES OF TRAFFIC "COPS"
The other day it was such a pleasant April day I thought I'd take the
afternoon off. It was such a very pleasant day that I didn't want to go
anywhere in particular. Do you ever feel that way? I mean like you just
wanted to be by yourself and sit down and think awhile.
Later on, you have an idea, you'll come back into things much refreshed.
But the thought of answering these letters now, or of doing this or
doing that, kind of lets you down inside your stomach. Your brain seems
to have dropped down somewhere behind your ears. If that fellow across
the office comes over to pull another of his bright ideas on you you
think you'll probably scream, or brain him, or something. He's getting
terrible, anyhow.
You have any number of excellent friends, and (ordinarily) you are quite
fond of them. Perhaps you will go to see one of them. There's Ed, you've
been wanting for you don't know how long to go round and see him. Never
seemed to have time. But no; you don't want to see Ed--today. Same way
with all the others, as you go over the list of them in your mind.
Couldn't bear to see any of 'em--not this afternoon. For one thing,
they're all so selfish.... So interested in their own affairs.
As I was straightening up my desk an idea came to me about jobs. Seems
to me that when I have a job I'm all the while worrying about how to
break out of it. I think: Well, I'm tied up here until the first of the
year; but I'll sure shake it after that; too cramped and limited. And
then when I am out of a job I immediately begin to worry about how to
get another one. That's Life, I guess.
I turned uptown and floated along with the current of the Avenue throng.
It was a glittering April throng. The newest stockings were out. I had
not seen them before. The newest stockings (you will have noted) are so
very, very thin and the pores (so to say) in them are so large that they
give the ladies who wear them the agreeable effect of being bare-legged.
At Thirty-fourth Street the traffic policeman on post at our side of
this corner, by an outward gesture of his arms pressed back the
sidewalk stream for a couple of moments of cross-town vehicular traffic.
He stood within a few inches of the front row of the largely feminine
crush. Whenever an impatient pedestrian broke through the line he had
formed and attempted to dart across the street he emitted a peculiar
little whistle followed by the admonishment, "Hold on, lady!" or "Hey
there, mister!" Thus having returned the derelict to cover, he would
smile very intimately, with a kind of sly cuteness, at the more handsome
young women directly before him--who invariably tittered back at him.
And thus, frequently, a little conversation was started.
Now as a vigilant historian of the social scene this matter of the
gallant relations of traffic policemen to perambulating ladies of
somewhat fashionable, even patrician aspect, I find highly interesting.
It is a subject which does not seem to have been much examined into.
Why, exactly, should flowers of débutante-Bryn-Mawr appearance look with
something like tenderness at policemen? Seems to me I have read now and
then in the papers strikingly romantic stories wherein a mounted
policeman in the park (formerly a cowboy) saved the life of an
equestrienne heiress on a runaway mount, and was rewarded the next day
(or something like that) with her hand. Such a story my mind always
gladly accepts as one of the dramatic instances where life artistically
imitates the movies. Crossing Thirty-fourth Street, however, seems to me
another matter.
And what system of selection operates in the Department whereby this
officer or that is chosen from among all his brethren for the
paradisaical job of being beau of a fashionable crossing? And would you
not think that a more uniform judgment would be exercised in the
election of men to such Brummellian duties? Adonises in the traffic
force I have, indeed, seen (there is one at Forty-second Street), but
this chap of whom I have just been speaking (the whimsical whistler)
certainly was not one of them. He was what is called "pie-faced."
Hunched up his shoulders like an owl. Yet his ogling of loveliness in
new spring attire was completely successful, was in no instance that I
observed resented, was received with arch merriment. Indeed, his heavy,
pink-tea attentions were obviously regarded as quite flattering by the
fair recipients! As he let the tide break to cross the street it was
plain, from bright glances backward, that he had fluttered little hearts
which would smile upon him again. And so, in such a Romeo-like manner,
does this bulky sentimentalist, armed with concealed weapons, have
dalliance with the passing days. What you 'spose it is about him gives
him his fascination in flashing eyes haughty to the rest of the
masculine world--his bright buttons, or what?
Yes; these curious and romantic little relationships between traffic
cops on social duty, so to say, and their dainty admirers are not (in
some instances at least) so transient as to be merely the exchange of
roguish words and soft glances of the moment. There is that really
august being of matinee-idol figure at--well, let us say at Forty-second
Street. Sir Walter Raleigh could not with more courtliness pilot his
fair freight across the Avenue. So it was the day after Christmas I saw
not one but several of his young friends blushingly put dainty packages
into his hands.
Is there not an excellent O. Henry sort of story in this piquant city
situation?
Well, floating like a cork upon a river I drifted along up the Avenue. I
passed a man I had not seen for several years. Yes; that certainly was
the fellow I used to know. And yet he was an altogether different being
now, too. The sort of a shock I got has perhaps also been experienced by
you. Only a short time ago, it seemed to me, this friend of mine had
been robust and ruddy, masterful and gay, in the prime of his years. I
had somehow innocently expected him always to be so. Just as I find it
very unreal to think of myself in any other way than I am now. Don't
you? As to yourself, I mean. He was quite grey. His shoulders hung
forward. His chest seemed to have fallen in on itself. His legs moved
back and forth without ever altogether straightening out. He had a
whipped look. Wrinkled clothes and dusty black derby hat, he was
conspicuous in the peacockean scene. And yet on a time he had been, I
knew, as much a conqueror of hearts as any policeman. So would it
sometime be with me--like this?
What do you know about that! In the next block another acquaintance of
old I saw. But when I had known him he was stooped and little and thin
and dried up and cringing. He worked in a basement and did not wear a
collar, at least by day. He used to look very old. Now here he was
swinging along looking very much like Mr. Caruso, or some such personage
as that.
How may this phenomenon be accounted for, what was the misfortune of one
of these persons and the secret of the other? I know a man who has a
theory which, at least, sounds all right. It is not buttermilk nor
monkey glands, he contends, which will keep a man young and stalwart so
much as (what he calls) an objective in life--a distant rampart to take,
a golden fleece to pursue. That is why, he declares, scientists and
artists frequently live happy and alert to such a great age: Thomas A.
Edison, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Jap chap (what's his name? Hokusai)
who at a hundred and ten or thereabout was called "the old man mad about
painting."
Maybe it was thinking of that idea, maybe it was the fearsome thought of
that dusty derby hat of my friend's which haunted my mind, or maybe my
competitive instincts had been aroused from spring slumber by the
spectacle of my Caruso-like friend careering along, anyhow a decidedly
bugged-up feeling began to flow through me; I wavered in my loitering, I
turned, my sails (so to speak) caught the wind, and I laid my course
abruptly back to the office. I had suddenly a great itch to get at all
those letters.
I was very glad to see that fellow across the office from me. He is a
good fellow and very helpful. I said to him, "Look here, what do you
think about this idea for getting business?"
"Oh, my goodness!" he said; "it's altogether too fine a day to think
about work. I'd just like to go out and wander up the Avenue with
nothing on my mind but my hair."
CHAPTER XXI
THREE WORDS ABOUT LITERATURE
A friend of mine (and aside from this error a very fine friend he is,
too) not long ago published a book which he declared, in his Preface,
should be read in bed. He insisted, to such an extent was he the victim
of a remarkable and pernicious fallacy which I find here and there, that
this book could not otherwise be properly enjoyed.
Now the difficulty about this particular book, that is the circumstance
wherein my friend has got me in a position where it is not so easy for
me to overturn him all at once, is this: one, not knowing any better,
might take the author's advice, and find pleasure reading the book in
bed, not being aware that this simply was because here was a book that
one would find pleasure in reading anywhere. But because you have got
hold of a book which it is possible to enjoy reading in the wrong way,
it naturally follows (does it not?) that you'd enjoy it much more
reading it in the right way. That, I should say, was simple and logical
enough.
I know, I know! I'm coming to that: there are plenty of other people who
have this ridiculous reading-in-bed idea. There, for instance, is
Richard Le Gallienne. I had a letter from him awhile ago, in which he
remarked that it was his practice to do most of his reading in bed. Then
I had a letter recently from Meredith Nicholson, in which there was some
such absurd phrase as "going to bed and reading until the cock crows."
Also I one time read an essay, a very pleasant essay outside the
mistaken notion of its main theme, by Michael Monahan, which was largely
about the pleasure of reading in bed. Spoke of the delights of being
tucked in, with what satisfaction you got the light just right, and all
that.
It must, of course, be acknowledged that all these gentlemen are, if
perverse in their method, persons of some reading. However, a fact such
as that, an accident as you might say, cannot be permitted to upset the
course of a profound argument. Why! as to that, a suspicion just occurs
to me that maybe someone could dig up Lamb, Hazlitt, Mark Twain,
Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Cowper (perhaps all of them, and more) to the
effect that it is pleasant to read in bed. Didn't Thackeray have some
nonsense about "bedside books"? _I_ haven't time to refute each of these
persons separately. It is sufficient, I take it, to roll into one point
of attack all this bed-reading heresy, from whatever quarters it comes,
and put an end to that.
Understand me; I have no complaint against the reading in bed of persons
confined there through physical disability. The world war which brought
more people to bed for indefinite periods than any other matter since
time began thereby probably got more souls into the way of reading than
seventeen times several hundred schools ever did. All of them, however,
would find that they were much better off in the matter of reading when
they had got out of bed. What I say is that, in a manner of speaking,
there is no use in taking the air in a wheel-chair if you can take it on
horseback. Why do a thing in a halfway fashion when you can go to it
right?
Another thing. There are people (I've seen them at it) who read on
porches. Sometimes in swings, rocking to and fro. Even in hammocks,
slung above the ground from trees. On trains, too. I have (with my own
ears) heard people say that they would "take a book" and go out into the
park, or into the woods, or out in a boat, or up on the mountain, or by
the sea, or any conceivable place except where one should go to read.
All of these ways of reading are worse, if anything can be worse than
that, than reading in bed. Because in bed you do, at least, have your
mind sandwiched within doors. You do not feel the surge and rumble of
the world--the sound and movement of the things of which literature is
made; but any contact with which (at the moment of reading) is
destructive to the illusion which it is the province of literature to
create.
For literature (reading it, I mean here) is, in this, like love: Richest
are the returns to that one whose passion is most complete in its
surrender. And a man lapping his frame in soft indolence, though he have
a book in his hand, is indulging in sensuous physical pleasure at least
equally with intellectual receptivity or aesthetic appreciation. No.
Reading should not be taken as an opiate.
The way to read, then--but, a moment more; a couple of other points are
to be cleared up. There is much babble of slippers and dressing-gowns,
easy chairs and "soft lights" in connection with the comments about the
pleasures, the "delights" as I believe some people say, of reading.
What is wanted to _know_ the relish to be got from reading is, first (of
course), an uncommon book. And by that term is meant merely one
uncommonly suited to the spirit of the reader. (The only perfect
definition, that, of a "good book.") Some people still read Stevenson.
Well, there's no great harm in that. Providing you read him (or anybody
else) as follows:
You should read as you should die--with your boots on. You take a wooden
chair, without arms, such (this is the best) as is commonly called a
"kitchen chair." It has a good, hard seat. You sit upright in this,
crossing and recrossing your legs as they tire. Nearby you is a good,
strong light, one with a tonic effect, a light that keeps your eyes wide
open. You sit facing a dull, blank wall. No pictures or other ornaments
or decorations should be on this wall, as, in case such things are
there, and you happen to raise your eyes for an instant, in ecstasy or
in thought, your vision lights upon one of these things; and the heart
which you have given your author is, certainly in some measure,
alienated from him. Maybe, indeed, you go back to him almost at once.
But then harm has been done--you have not read with supreme abandon.
CHAPTER XXII
RECOLLECTIONS OF LANDLADIES
There is no figure in the human scene which makes so unctuous an appeal
to our relish of humanity as the landlady. When the landlady comes upon
the stage at the theatre, we all awaken to an expectation of delight in
the characteristic manifestations of her nature, and seldom are
disappointed. The genius of the greatest of authors always unfolds with
particular warmth in the presence of their landladies. A moment's
reflection will recall a procession of immortal landladies. Whether it
is that the colorful calling of landlady cultivates in one a peculiar
richness of human nature, or whether landladies are born and not
made--those with characters of especial tang and savor instinctively
adopting this occupation,--I cannot say, but the fact is indisputable
that landladies are not as other persons are. No one ever saw a humdrum
landlady. A commonplace person as a landlady is unthinkable.
Now I think I may say that all my life, or nearly all, I have been an
eager and earnest student of landladies. I am, indeed, much more
familiar with the genus landlady than with courts and kings, or with
eminent personages generally such as supply the material for most of
those who write their recollections. Thus I am competent, I think, to
speak on a subject curiously neglected by the memorist.
One who makes a culture of landladies comes in time to have a flair for
these racy beings, and is drawn by a happy intuition to the habitats of
those most resplendent in the qualities of their kind. Of course, one
never can tell what life will bring forth, but it seems to me that my
present landlady marks the top of my career as a connoisseur, an
amateur, of landladies. She is strikingly reminiscent of an English
landlady. And England, particularly London, is, as all the world knows,
to the devotee of landladies what Africa is to the big game
sportsman--his paradise. There the species comes to luxuriant flower, so
that to possess with the mind one or two well-developed London
landladies is never to be without food for entertainment. My present
landlady, to return, is of course a widow. While it may be, for aught I
know, that all widows are not landladies, with very few exceptions all
landladies worthy of the name are widows. Those who are not widows
outright are, as you might say, widows in a sense. That is, while their
husbands may accurately be spoken of as living, and indeed are visible,
they do not exist in the normal rôle of husband. The commercial impulses
of the bona-fide husband have died in them, generally through their
attachment to alcoholic liquor, and they become satellites, hewers of
wood and drawers of water, to the genius awakened by circumstances in
their wives.
I one time had a landlady of this origin in Norwalk, Connecticut. She
was a woman of angular frame, with a face of flint, a tongue of vinegar,
and a heart of gold. This, I have found in my travels, is the type of
the semi-widowed landlady. I had another such an identical one in
Topeka, Kansas. The asperity, doubtless, is occasioned by biting
disillusionment in the romance of long ago, but it is external; frost on
the window; at the heart's core wells the sense of universe-embracing
maternity which makes the character of the landlady by vocation
sublime. All semi-widowed landladies have (it is their divine
inspiration) large families of half-grown sons. My landlady of Norwalk
grumbled continually; she could be heard out in the kitchen complaining
in a shrill, querulous tone that, with things as high as they were,
people would be crazy to expect meat twice a day. Yet she had at her
board the meanest, most low-down, ornery, contemptible, despicable cuss
in human form I ever knew, and the only fault I ever heard her find with
him was that he didn't eat enough.
The erudite in landladies have, of course, cognizance of a class which
are in no degree widows. Those of this department of the race, however,
frequently are not landladies in fibre, but merely incidentally. They
are young wives who for a transient period seek to help out in the
domestic economy by taking a few lodgers who come with unexceptionable
references. As wives doubtless they are meritorious; but no monument
need be erected to them as landladies. Though I should like to see in
the principal public square of every town and city a monument designed
by an artist of ability placed to the enduring glory of the landladies
of that place. For are not landladies ancient institutions fostering
the public weal, and in their field not a whit less deserving of homage
than governors and soldiers? I would say to a nation, show me your
landladies and I will tell you your destiny. I should be remiss,
however, in my chronicle did I not note that among these partial and
ephemeral landladies occasionally are to be found pronounced landlady
potentialities. I recall a landlady I had on Montague Street, Brooklyn
Heights, whose passion for cleaning amounted to a mania. This young
person's housewifery frenzy always put me in mind of another soul who
could not rest--Hokusai, who at about a hundred and ten was spoken of as
"the old man mad about painting."
Hovering about, tortured by a desire to begin, when I left for my
breakfast, she was still at it upon my return from my morning stroll, my
door barricaded by articles of dismembered furniture; still at it when I
came back a bit impatiently from a second walk; still at it while I read
the paper in her dining-room. And so without surcease throughout the
march of days and seasons. She unscrewed the knobs of the bed to polish
the threads thereof; she removed penpoints from penholders and made them
to shine like burnished gold. I had another landlady moved by the same
springs of feeling, on Spruce Street, Philadelphia. Later, I heard, her
husband died, and she espoused her latent career.
There is in the galaxy of landladies quite another type, an exotic plant
in the wondrously competent sisterhood, specimens of which may be found
blooming here and there like some rare orchid. I mean the fragile, lady
landlady, the clinging vine bereft of the supporting husband oak. Such
was Mrs. Knoll, of Central Avenue, Indianapolis, a little, plump,
rounded body, exceedingly bright, pleasant, intelligent, amiable, and
helpless; all of which qualities shone from her very agreeable face and
person. In her youth no doubt she was a type of beauty, and she remained
very well preserved. "Life and vanity and disappointment had slipped
away" (in the Thackerian words) from Dr. Knoll some years before; and
his widow and only child, Miss Knoll, were left in possession of the old
family home, and nothing more. They could not bear to leave it, that
would "break their hearts," said good, ineffectual Mrs. Knoll; so it was
viewed by them, unfortunately somewhat fallaciously, in the light of a
possible support.
The Doctor evidently was a man of books, and his widow had sought, more
and more, companionship in reading. Life--the actual world about her,
that is--, and vanity, but not disappointment, had, in a manner of
speaking, slipped from her, too. And she had turned to that great world
of shadows. "In books," she said, "I can choose my own company." She had
plighted her troth in youth to Dickens and to Thackeray, and to these
she had remained ever faithful. In a world of false books and unsafe
friends she knew that she had by the hand two true spirits. Jane Austen
she loaned me with tremulous pleasure. And she was very fond of Mr.
Howells, with whom, she said she lived a great deal; and the Kentons,
the Laphams, and the Marches, were characters better known to her "than
her next-door neighbors." But it must be confessed that the tender
perfume of Mrs. Knoll was not altogether an equivalent in the sphere of
her passive efforts to the homely vegetable odor of the authentic
landlady.
In great cities, amid the sheen of civilization is to be found just
adjacent to smart quarters of the town the tulip in the variegated
garden of landladies--the finished, polished stone gathered from the
mine, the bird of plumage of the species; I mean, of course, the
landlady _du beau monde_, the modish landlady, or perhaps I should say,
the professional hostess, as it were. For it seems rather vulgar, a
thing repellent to the finer sensibilities, to touch this distinguished
figure of immaculate artificiality with the plebeian term of "landlady."
The personages of this type are, so to say, of the peerage of their
order. Such a Lady Drew it was whose guest I became for a time on
Madison Avenue, New York. With silvered hair like a powdered coiffure;
softly tinted with the delicate enamel of cosmetic; rich and stately of
corsage--this expensive and highly sophisticated presence presided, in
the subdued tone of the best society, over the nicely adjusted machinery
of her smart establishment by the authority of a consciousness of highly
cultivated efficiency and an aroma of unexceptionable standards.
This consummate hostess type of landlady is, of course, one which the
passionate collector will preserve in the cabinet of his mind with
tremulous happiness in the sheer preciosity of it. I cannot but feel,
however, myself, that this type fails of complete perfection as a work
of art in this: that in every work of the first genius, it cannot be
denied, there is always a strain of coarseness. And perhaps I should
confess that my own taste in landladies, though I hope it is not
undiscriminating, leans a bit toward the popular taste, the relish of
the Rabelaisian.
Stevenson has observed that most men of high destinies have even
high-sounding names. And anyone who has reflected at all upon the
phenomenon of landladies must have been struck by the singularly
idiosyncratic character of their names. Indeed, an infallible way to
pick out a competent landlady from an advertisement is by her name. Is
it a happy name for a landlady? Go there! As her name is, so is her
nature. I one time had a landlady on Broome Street, New York, whom the
gods named Mrs. Brew. I one time had a landlady (in Milligan Place,
Manhattan) of the name of Mrs. Boggs. One time I had a landlady just off
the East India Dock Road, London, whose name was Wigger. I shall always
cherish the memory of the landlady I had down in Surrey, Mrs. Cheeseman.
One and all, these ladies, as landladies, were without stain.
Regarded as a bibelot, Mrs. Wigger was, I think, of the first
perfection. In her own genre, so to say, she was as finished, as
impossible of improvement, as an Elgin marble, a Grecian urn, a bit of
Chinese blue and white, a fan of old Japan, a Vermeer, a Whistler
symphony, a caricature by Max Beerbohm. She was of massive mould and
very individually shapen. Her face was very large and very red and
heavily pock-marked. In her bizarre garments, in some indefinable way
she imparted to the character of the born slattern something of the
Grand Style. Her utterance was quavered in a weird, cracked voice, which
had somewhat an effect as of the wind crying high aloft in a ship's
rigging. She slipslod about, always a bit unsteadily. Her movements and
her manner generally, I felt, made it not unreasonable to suppose that
she had in secret certain habits no longer widely approved by society.
The apple of her eye was an unkempt parrot which spent its days in
vainly attempting to ascend the embracing sides of a tin bathtub.
Landladies, beyond all other persons, have the esoteric power of
becoming for one the geniuses of places. It would, for instance, be
quite impossible for anyone to visualize my Mrs. Cheeseman torn from, as
you might say her context. If you were asked to describe Mrs. Cheeseman
you would naturally do it in this way: You would say, "Well, I wonder
what has become of the sweetest, quaintest, fairest old inn in all
England!" And into your mind would come a rapid cinematograph picture:
A highway winding out of Dorking, stretching its way between hills to
the sea. You round a turn and see before you long, low, glistening white
stables--the stables, evidently, of a coaching inn. And presently you
come into view of an ancient, white, stone building with a "Sussex
roof." From a tall post before the door swings the board of the "King's
Head." White ducks ride in a pond at the roadside there. Round this inn
which you are approaching is the greenest, handsomest hedge ever seen.
And along the road beyond you perceive the cottages of a wee village.
"We know that all things work together for good to them that love God."
The romance of destiny which in its inscrutable way has been leading you
all your long life long to the bosom, if I may so put it, of Mrs.
Cheeseman, reveals its beneficence now by carefully graduated steps. At
the other side of the main bulk of the "King's Head," which it was given
you first to see, you come upon a delicious little flagged yard leading
to another arm of the house, older still, very venerable, with a high
roof low descending, a roof which tucks under its projecting wing many
oddly placed little latticed windows gayly sporting innumerable tiny
panes. Like a miniature cathedral spire, a tall, quaint chimney stands
sentinel at one corner, and several chimney-pots peep over the roof's
dark crown.
Up this little yard, bounded on one side by a multicolored flower garden
whose fragrance bathes you in a softening vapor of perfume, you enter,
by a door which requires you to stoop, the wee taproom. Here: a
cavernous fireplace, settles are within against its sides, a gigantic
blackened crane swung across its middle, and a cubby-hole of a window at
its back. Above it is swung an ancient fowling-piece. The stone floor of
the room, like the ancient flags without, is worn into dips and hollows.
Along the window-sill of an oblong window measuring one wall is a bright
parade of potted plants.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that there is something psychic
about landladies. As you look about you at the environment in which you
find yourself, you experience a premonition that you are nearing an
affinity in the landlady world. It is strange, too, that there are
places where you have never been before (in the life which you
consciously remember) that give you at once completely the feeling of
your having arrived at the home familiar to your spirit. And there
presently occurs here an event in your career predetermined (I doubt
not) æons and æons ago. A buxom body with the most glorious complexion
(you ween) in all England--which is to say in the world--enters the
ancient room: a lass whose rosy, honest, pedestrian face and bursting
figure are to become forever more for you the connotation of the name
"Maggie." The daughter, this, (you later learn) of your Mrs. Cheeseman.
Soon it is all arranged, and you are having your tea--a "meat tea"--in
the sitting-room of the "King's Head," your sitting-room now. A bucolic
slavey--a person whose cheerful simpleness is like to that of the little
creatures of the field--attends you. In this commodious apartment of
yours is a great scintillation of chintz; flowers, in pots and vases,
everywhere caress the eye; and the fancy is kindled by the spectacle of
many stuffed birds in glass cases. On the heavily flowered wall hangs a
handsome specimen of the "glass" (invariably found in England) for
forecasting the weather; a "pianoforte," as piquantly old-fashioned as a
cocked hat, crosses one end wall; and venerable paintings (which time
has mellowed to the richness and the general color effect of an old plug
of tobacco), bright sporting prints, and antique oddities of furniture
to an extent that it would require a catalogue to name, all combine to
give an air of true sitting-room opulence to the chamber.
But of landladies, and the connotations of landladies, one could write a
book of several volumes; and it being a very fair day, and a Sunday, and
the first cool breath after a very hot summer, I do not think I shall
write those volumes this afternoon; I shall go out for a bit of air and
a look at the world.
CHAPTER XXIII
AN IDIOSYNCRASY
Then there's the matter of these dedications. Several weeks ago I
received a communication. I think it was sent by Miss Katherine Lord, or
maybe it was Hamlin Garland. Anyhow, it was an invitation. The upshot of
this invitation was that the annual exhibit of the "best books of the
year" held at the National Arts Club, New York City, under the auspices
of the Joint Committee of Literary Arts was now going--or was just about
to go. Further, it was conveyed that the opening evening of the exhibit
would be devoted to a reception for the authors of the books exhibited.
Also, that on this evening speeches would be made by a number of
distinguished persons acquainted with this matter on the subject of the
idiosyncrasies of authors and editors. Further than this, this
invitation made clear beyond all manner of reasonable doubt that the
pleasure of the evening would be generally felt to be sadly incomplete
without the presence there among the speakers of myself.
The reasons why I was (I am sorry to say) unable to rise to this
occasion were two. For one thing, I have known long and intimately a
considerable number of authors and editors. Also, I have had the honor
of having been several times to the National Arts Club. And (such is my
tact and delicacy) I could not feel that this was any fit place for me
to discuss the (as the term is) idiosyncrasies with which a decidedly
checkered career has acquainted me. Then, as to one of my own
idiosyncrasies: I am like George Moore in this which he says, that he is
"the only Irishman living or dead who cannot make a speech"--except that
I am not an Irishman.
All of this, however, is merely picking up the threads of my thought.
What I have in my eye is an idiosyncrasy of authors which doubtless I
could have discussed with some propriety. That is, if I were able to
discuss before an audience anything at all. Though with this subject, as
many of those present were authors (who had their toes along with them)
I should have had to exercise more than a little caution, and
considerable skill in maintaining a honeyed amiability. Maybe this
theme wouldn't have done at all either.
You see, it's this way: Many people, I believe, do not read the
introductions, prefaces, forewords (and whatever else such things are
called) to books. I always do. Perhaps this is a habit formed during a
number of years spent as a professional reviewer. If you read the
introduction, preface (or whatever it's called), to a book you can
generally pick up pretty much what the author thought he was about when
he wrote it, the points he intended to make in the work, the
circumstances in which he wrote it, and so on. This is a great time and
labor saving procedure. All you've got to do then is to read a bit in
the volume here and there to taste the style, pick up a few errors of
fact or grammar, glance at the "conclusion," where the author sums up,
to see whether or not he got anywhere--and so far as you are further put
out by having this book on your hands it might just as well never have
been written. But I am drifting. That's one reason I can't make a
speech. Never can recollect what it was I set out to say.
Oh, yes! About these dedications. Less people than read prefaces, I
fancy, read the dedications of books. I always read 'em. I read them
when I have no intention whatever of reading the volumes which
they--well, dedicate. They are fine--dedications. Better, far better,
than old tombstones. But never judge a book by its dedication.
I one time knew a man, of a most decidedly humorous cast of mind, who
was a great spendthrift, an A 1 wastrel. He ran through everything his
father left him (a very fair little fortune), and then when he had run
through, in advance of that gentleman's death, everything his wife was
to inherit from his father-in-law he had no means whatever. He had a
daughter. Without, it was clearly evident, the least suspicion of the
pleasant humor of this, he named her Hope. She was a small child.
And--it's absurd, I know; but 'tis so; there was not a particle of
conscious irony in it; this child's name was the one blind spot in her
father's sense of the ridiculous--her parents frequently referred to her
affectionately as "little Hope."
So, quite so, with dedications. Whenever, or perhaps we had better say
frequently, when a man writes a particularly worthless book he lays the
deed (in his dedication of it) onto his wife, "without whose constant
devotion," etc., etc., etc., "this work would never have come into
being." Amen! Or he says that it is inscribed "To--my gentlest
friend--and severest critic--my aged Grandmother." Or maybe he accuses
his little daughter, "whose tiny hands have led me." Again he may say
benignantly: "To--my faithful friend--Murray Hill--who made possible
this volume"; or "the illumination of whose personality has lighted my
way to truth."
Doubtless he means well, this author. And, in most cases, highly
probable it is that his magnanimous sentiments are O. K. all round. For
to the minds of what would probably be called "right-thinking" persons
is not having a book dedicated to you the equivalent, almost, of having
a career yourself? I know a very distinguished American novelist--well,
I'll tell you who he is: Booth Tarkington--who has told me this: Time
and again he has been relentlessly pursued by some person unknown to him
who, in the belief that did he once hear it he would surely use it as
material for his next book, wished to tell him the story of his life.
This life, according to the communications received by the novelist,
was in every case one of the most remarkable ever lived by man. It was,
in every case, most extraordinary in, among a variety of other singular
things, this: the abounding in it of the most amazing coincidences. And
so on, and so on, and so on. One of these romantic personages nailed the
novelist somewhere coming out of a doorway one day, and contrived to
compel him to sit down and listen to the life story. He was an old, old
man, this chap, and firmly convinced that the tale of his many days (as
simple, commonplace, dull and monotonous an existence as ever was
conceived) was unique. Now he did not want any pay for telling his
story; he had no design on any royalty to come from the great book to be
made out of it; no, not at all. All he asked--and that, he thought, was
fair enough--was that the book be dedicated to him. And so it was with
them all, all of those with the remarkable, obscure, romantic, humdrum
lives. So much for that.
Dedications run the whole gamut of the emotions. A type of author very
tonic to the spirit is that one whose soul embraces not merely an
individual but which enfolds in its heroic sweep a nation, a people, or
some mighty idea. What, for instance, could be more vast in the
grandeur of its sweep than this--which I came upon the other day in a
modest little volume? "To the Children of Destiny." The Great War, which
has wrought so much evil and inspired so much literature, is responsible
for a flood of noble, lofty dedications. The merest snooping through a
bunch of recent war books turns up, among a multitude more, the
following: "To the Mothers of America." "To--the Loyalty and
Patriotism--of the--American People." "To the Hour--When the Troops Turn
Home." "To All the Men at the Front."
I should not affirm, of course, that there is anything new under the
sun. And it is very probable that ever since this psychic literature
began (whenever it began) authors resident beyond the stars have,
naturally enough, dedicated their manuscripts submitted to earthly
publishers to folks back in the old home, so to say. But with the War,
which has so greatly stimulated literary activity on the other side of
life, the dedications of these (to put it so) expatriated authors have
perhaps become (in a manner of speaking) loftier in tone than ever
before. As a sample of the present state of exalted feeling of authors
of this sort I copy the following dedication from the recently published
book of a writer "gone West": "To the heroic women of the world, the
mothers, wives and sweethearts who bravely sent us forth to battle for a
great cause:--we who have crossed the Great Divide salute you."
I wish, I do wish, I had at hand a book which I saw a number of years
ago.... As examples of persons to whom books have been dedicated may be
specified The Deity, The Virgin Mary, Royalty and Dignitaries of Church
and State, "The Reader," and the author himself. Many of the pleasantest
dedications have been to children. Besides armies and navies, countries,
states, cities and their inhabitants, books have also been dedicated to
institutions and societies, to animals, to things spiritual, and to
things inanimate. An attractive example of a dedication to Deity is
furnished by one John Leycaeter, who, in 1649, dedicated his "Civill
Warres of England, Briefly Related from his Majesties First Setting Up
his Standard, 1641, to this Present Personall Hopefull Treaty"--"To the
Honour and Glory of the Infinite, Immense, and Incomprehensible Majesty
of Jehovah, the Fountaine of all Excellencies, the Lord of Hosts, the
Giver of all Victories, and the God of Peace." He continued in a poem,
"By J. O. Ley, a small crumme of mortality."
But about that book I saw some time ago. You, of course, remember that
prayer in "Tom Sawyer" (or somewhere else in Mark Twain) where the
great-hearted minister called upon the Lord to bless the President of
the United States, the President's Cabinet, the Senate of the United
States, the governors of each of the states, and their legislatures, the
mayors of all the cities, and all the towns, of the United States, and
the inhabitants--grandmothers and grandfathers, mothers and wives,
husbands and fathers, sons and daughters, bachelors and little
children--of every hamlet, town and city of the United States, also of
all the countryside thereof. Well, this book of which I am
speaking,--this minister in the august range and compass of his prayer
had nothing on its dedication. It was published, as I recollect, by the
author; printed on very woody wood-pulp paper by a job press, and had a
coarse screen frontispiece portrait of the author, whose name has long
since left me. What it was about I do not remember. That is a little
matter. It lives in my mind, and should live in the memory of the
world, by its dedication; which, I recall, in part was: "To the Sultan
of Turkey--the Emperor of Japan--the Czar of Russia--the Emperor of
Germany--the President of France--the King of England--the President of
the United States--and to God."
But it was in an elder day that they really knew how to write sonorous
dedications. If I should write a book (and the idea of having one to
dedicate tempts me greatly) I'd pick out some important personage, such
as Benjamin De Casseres, or Frank Crowinshield, or Charles Hanson Towne,
or somebody like that. Then I would take as the model for my dedication
that one, say, of Boswell's to Sir Joshua Reynolds. I am afraid you have
not read it lately. And so, for the joy the meeting of it again will
give you, I will copy it out. It goes as follows:
My Dear Sir,--Every liberal motive that can actuate an Authour in
the dedication of his labours, concurs in directing me to you, as
the person to whom the following Work should be inscribed.
If there be a pleasure in celebrating the distinguished merit of a
contemporary, mixed with a certain degree of vanity not altogether
inexcusable, in appearing fully sensible of it, where can I find
one, in complimenting whom I can with more general approbation
gratify those feelings? Your excellence not only in the Art over
which you have long presided with unrivalled fame, but also in
Philosophy and elegant Literature, is well known to the present,
and will continue to be the admiration of future ages. Your equal
and placid temper, your variety of conversation, your true
politeness, by which you are so amiable in private society, and
that enlarged hospitality which has long made your house a common
centre of union for the great and accomplished, the learned, and
the ingenious; all these qualities I can, in perfect confidence of
not being accused of flattery, ascribe to you.
If a man may indulge an honest pride, in having it known to the
world, that he has been thought worthy of particular attention by a
person of the first eminence in the age in which he lived, whose
company has been universally courted, I am justified in availing
myself of the usual privilege of a Dedication, when I mention that
there has been a long and uninterrupted friendship between us.
If gratitude should be acknowledged for favours received, I have
this opportunity, my dear Sir, most sincerely to thank you for the
many happy hours which I owe to your kindness,--for the cordiality
with which you have at all times been pleased to welcome me,--for
the number of valuable acquaintances to whom you have introduced
me,--for the _noctes cænæque Deûm_, which I have enjoyed under your
roof.
If a work should be inscribed to one who is master of the subject
of it, and whose approbation, therefore, must ensure it credit and
success, the Life of Dr. Johnson is, with the greatest propriety,
dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was the intimate and beloved
friend of that great man; the friend, whom he declared to be "the
most invulnerable man he knew; whom, if he should quarrel with him,
he should find the most difficulty how to abuse." You, my dear Sir,
studied him, and knew him well: you venerated and admired him. Yet,
luminous as he was upon the whole, you perceived all the shades
which mingled in the grand composition; all the peculiarities and
slight blemishes which marked the literary Colossus. Your very warm
commendation of the specimen which I gave in my "Journal of a Tour
to the Hebrides," of my being able to preserve his conversation in
an authentik and lively manner, which opinion the Publik has
confirmed, was the best encouragement for me to persevere in my
purpose of producing the whole of my stores....
I am, my dear Sir,
Your much obliged friend,
And faithful humble servant,
London, April 20, 1791.
JAMES BOSWELL.
* * * * *
In a more modern style of composition the epistolary form of dedication
is still employed. I wish I had not (one time when I was moving) lost
that copy I had, English edition, of George Moore's book "The Lake." I
have a feeling that the dedicatory letter there, in French, was an
admirable example of its kind of thing. If you happen to have a copy of
the book, why don't you look it up?
When poems are written as dedications an established convention is
followed. You affect at the beginning (in this formula) to be very
humble in spirit, deeply modest in your conception of your powers. You
speak, if your book is verse, of your "fragile rhyme," or (with Patmore)
you "drag a rumbling wain." Again perhaps you speak (in the words of
Burns) of your "wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble," or you call
Southwell to witness that:
He that high growth on cedars did bestow,
Gave also lowly mushrumps leave to grow.
And so on. At any rate, you always do this. Then you say that his (or
her) eyes for whom the book was written will change the dross to gold,
the "blind words" to "authentic song," the "mushrump" to a flower, or
some such thing. So, after all, you skillfully contrive to leave your
book to the reader on a rather high, confident note. Any other way of
writing a dedicatory poem to a book of verse (being out of the tradition
altogether) is, I take it, bad, very bad, literary etiquette.
Numerous dedications have considerable fame. There is that enigmatical
one to "Mr. W. H.," prefixed by Thomas Thorpe, bookseller of London, to
Shakespeare's Sonnets. And Dr. Johnson's scathing definition of a patron
when Lord Chesterfield fell short of Johnson's expectations in the
amount which he contributed to the publication of the famous dictionary
men will not willingly let die. Another celebrated dedication is that of
"The Gentle Art of Making Enemies"--"To the Rare Few, who, early in
life, have rid themselves of the Friendship of the Many." Laurence
Sterne's solemn "putting up fairly to public sale" to an imaginary lord
a dedication to "Tristram Shandy" is not without merit. John Burroughs
was felicitous in his dedication of "Bird and Bough"--"To the kinglet
that sang in my evergreens in October and made me think it was May." And
a very amiable dedication prefixed to "The Bashful Earthquake," by
Oliver Herford, illustrated by the author, is this: "To the Illustrator,
in grateful acknowledgment of his amiable condescension in lending his
exquisite and delicate art to the embellishment of these poor verses,
from his sincerest admirer, The Author." Mr. Herford's latest book (at
the time of this writing), "This Giddy Globe," is dedicated so: "To
President Wilson (With all his faults he quotes me still)."
A clever dedication, I think, is that of Christopher Morley's
"Shandygaff"--"To The Miehle Printing Press--More Sinned Against Than
Sinning." A dedication intended to be clever, and one frequently seen,
is, in effect, "To the Hesitating Purchaser." A certain appropriateness
is presented in a recent book on advertising, "Respectfully dedicated to
the men who invest millions of dollars a year in national advertising."
And some nimbleness of wit is attained in the inscription of the book
"Why Worry"--"To my long-suffering family and circle of friends, whose
patience has been tried by my efforts to eliminate worry, this book is
affectionately dedicated." As cheerful a dedication as I have come
across is that prefixed by Francis Hackett to his volume "The Invisible
Censor"; it is: "To My Wife--Signe Toksvig--whose lack of interest--in
this book has been my--constant desperation."
Miss Annie Carroll Moore, supervisor of work with children at the New
York Public Library, tells me that the other day a small boy inquired,
"Who was the first man to write a book to another man?" I'm sure I don't
know. Perhaps this is told somewhere. A number of books and articles
concerning dedications, I have heard, are to be found in studious
places. I have never read any of them. I remember, however, reviewing
for a newspaper a number of years ago (I think it was in 1913) a book,
then just published, called "Dedications: An Anthology of the Forms Used
from the Earliest Days of Bookmaking to the Present Time." It was
compiled by Mary Elizabeth Brown. The volume made handy to the general
reader a fairly representative collection of dedications.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SEXLESS CAMERA
There is no nicer point, perhaps, in the study of photography as the one
true, detached observer of mankind than here: It sees, what man has not
seen--as his own representations show, his paintings, his drawings, his
sculptures--the feminine underpinning with a quite passive, sexless eye.
In this interesting matter there are two human conceptions. There is the
chorus girl style of leg, the expression of piquancy, which does not
perhaps appeal to the noblest emotions, but the fascination of which has
always haunted man whenever he has delineated anything in a stocking.
Then there is the chaste, nude feminine limb of the painter and the
sculptor. Both photography shows to be idealization.
When the camera reproduces the chorus girl herself, suddenly strangely
plain and painted, there is to the observing and reflective instead of
sauciness the hollowness of sauciness. There can be few things more
awful than those silent photographs of some gay chorus, reproducing, as
they do, the spectacle with solemn critical aloofness from the spirit.
It is as though the dawn of Judgment Day had suddenly broken upon the
unspeakably wretched and tawdry scene. There is something, it would
seem, indescribably tender, affectionate, in the irony of the gods which
arranges that men should display in theatre lobbies, as an inducement to
buy tickets of admission within, these death's heads of frivolity. As if
the Comic Spirit itself were touched by the charm of the naiveté of man.
But, indeed, twinkling in the sympathetic light upon the Broadway stage,
the professional chorus girl leg, well selected no doubt to begin with,
and shaped with all the science of art, has beguiled even the
reflective. A light intoxicant, it swirls in the veins like champagne
for the careless moment it makes. It is pleasant because it is false.
The real leg, remarks the camera, is the amateur leg; it is depressing,
but terribly convincing. As it stands in the raw light of the cheap
photographer (and this too, too human document, the likeness of the
poor girl who has performed somewhere in curiously home-made looking
"tights," and been photographed thus afterward, is one of the stock
exhibits of that most realistic of historians, the cheap photographer)
the amateur leg decidedly lacks dash. The knee joint somehow seems to
work somewhat the wrong way. Sometimes, in circumference, this limb is
immense, sometimes the reverse. But the terribleness of it always is
that it is so human. That is, it is the leg of an animal. Subconsciously
it suggests surgery.
Conspicuous among the postures assumed for its iconoclastic purpose by
the genius of photography is that of "art." That fetish of the great
body of the unenlightened, the dim feeling that to the enlightened
bodily nakedness in pictorial representation is something very fine, is
played upon. The "art photograph" is an ironic tour de force. If
specimens of this have ever fallen in the way of your observation, then
you have reflected upon the strange discrepancy between the female nude
as presented in painting and sculpture and in photographs. (Oh, souls of
Fragonard, Boucher, Watteau, what romantic rogues you were!) You will
have perceived, with some grim humor, that until the invention of
photography, nobody, apparently, had ever seen a nude female figure.
Now there is Edgar Degas,--and it is a curious reflection that in
comparison with the work of this pessimist genius who has deliberately
brought cynicism to bear upon the female nude, photographs purporting
(over their sneer) to be reflections of beauty, give by far the most
distressing impression. In the painful realization that they have a kind
of truth beyond human art these abominable humbugs are a kind of art.
What (you exclaimed) was Schopenhauer's remark about the clouded
intellect of _man_ which could give the name of the "fair sex" to "that
under-sized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, knock-kneed race"?
It may be a long "drive," but it strikes you as a thoughtful observer
that there is some biological analogy between "art photographs" and the
photographs, to be seen in travel books, of native African women. What a
philosopher the camera is! The French savant was very probably
contemplating the photograph of some member of a savage tribe when he
wrote, in "The Garden of Epicurus" (addressing modern ladies): "But
never think too highly of yourselves, my sisters; you were not, at your
first appearance in the world, perfect and fully armed. Your
grandmothers in the days of the mammoth and the giant bear did not wield
the same dominion over the prehistoric hunters and cave-men which you
possess over us. You were useful then, and necessary, but you were not
invincible. To tell the truth, in those far-off ages, and for long
afterwards, you lacked charm. In those days you were like men, and men
were like brutes. To make of you the fearful and wonderful thing you are
today--veils: the Empire, crinoline, décolleté, tube, pannier." And, the
sexless camera explains, the poetry of man.
CHAPTER XXV
I KNOW AN EDITOR
I know a young woman--a very handsome young woman she is, too. (I have a
decided penchant for handsome young women.) But that is beside the
point. As I was about to say (when a pleasant but an extraneous idea
interrupted me): this young woman the other day took her young husband
by the hand and conducted him to the offices of a publisher. Here she
mounted him upon a chair (very much, I fancy, as though the child were
about to have his hair cut), and she said to the barber--I mean she said
to the editor, with whom she had some acquaintance--she said: "This is
my husband. He is just out of the army. I have brought him in to have
his head shingled"---- No, no! that isn't what she said; I am getting my
wires crossed. She said, "I have brought him in to get him a position
here."
Said the editor, "What would your son, I mean your husband, like to
do?"
"I want him," replied the young woman, "to be an editor."
"Has he ever been an editor?" inquired the editor kindly, as he admired
the shape of the young woman's nose.
"No," she answered, stroking his hand (the hand, that is, of her
husband), "why, no."
"What has been his experience?" asked the editor, as the thought of all
the hard work he had to do in the next hour and a half wrestled in his
mind with his pleasure in the young woman's voice.
"Why," she said, "before he went into the army I don't know that he had
any particular experience. He was just out of college, you see."
"Oh!" said the editor, "I see. And why," he asked musingly, "do you want
him to be an editor?"
"Well, I don't know exactly," answered the young woman, "I just thought
it would be rather nice to have him be an editor."
Even so. Day after day, come into publishing houses young persons, and
indeed people of all ages, who have a hunch (and apparently nothing more
to go by) that they would like to be "an editor." Also, in every other
mail, come letters from aspirants in distant parts setting forth (what
they deem) their qualifications.
Now and then someone makes such an application who has been an editor
before. It (editing) is probably the only business he knows, and perhaps
it is too late (or his spirit is too broken) for him to take up another.
So, disillusioned but not misguided, for him there is charity of
thought. But the fledglings are in the great majority. Their
qualifications (is it necessary to say?) usually are: a university
degree, perhaps some association with a college paper, maybe the credit
of an article (or a poem) or two published in a minor magazine issued
for the Intelligentzia, a very sincere attachment to books of superior
worth, a disdain for empyreal literature, openness to a modest salary
(to begin), and an abysmal lack of any comprehension of the business of
publishing books or magazines. Every little bit turns up one who (it
develops) wants a job on the side, as it were, merely to sustain the
real business of life, which (maybe) is taking a graduate course at
Columbia, or some such thing. And in many cases (it is obvious) the real
business of life is writing poetry, or fiction, though to this end a
job must be endured--doubtless temporarily.
Now why anyone should want to be an editor beats me. No, I retract. 'Tis
quite plain. Ignorance, ma'am, sheer ignorance of the calamity. I know
an editor; in fact, I know six. One, indeed, is a brother of mine,
another is a cousin, a third an uncle. Before they became editors they
used to read books and magazines--for pleasure, sometimes; or again for
profit to their souls. Now they do neither. They read only
professionally. They can't read anything unless they have to, in the way
of business. Before they became editors they led intellectual lives;
spiritually they grew continually. They used to be perfectly delighted,
excited (as people should be), by hearing of books, of authors, new to
them. They were fascinated by the journey of their minds. They might
have gone on thus through their years, interested in themselves,
interesting to others, pillars of society. They might even, for all
their thoughts (then) were inspirations, have written delightful things
themselves. In fact, two of them did. But they became editors.
Now they, subconsciously, count the words of manuscripts. They cut
articles, like cloth, to fit. They gauge the "rate" to be paid for
this, for that. They cannot take an interest in this because something
like it has just appeared somewhere else. They can't take an interest in
that because it is not like something that has just made a hit somewhere
else. Now when they have something to read they say (like Plim, Bimm,
whatever his name was, the veteran hack novelist in the early Barrie
story), "I'll begin the damn thing at eight o'clock."
Worst of all, they have lost, totally lost, that shield against
adversity, that great joy in days of prosperity, that deep satisfaction
of life. I mean, of course, the relish of _buying_ books. Everyone knows
that to revel in the possession of a book one must covet it before one
feels one should buy it. Everyone knows that to love a book jealously
one must have made some sacrifice to obtain it. That a library which
supplies unending strength to the spirit means in all its parts, a
little here, a little there, some self-denial of other things.
But editors, poor fish, are impotent in this high and lasting pleasure;
they have lost the power to spend their money for books. They expect
books to be given to them free by the publishers. Their money goes for
Kelley pool and cigars.
CHAPTER XXVI
A DIP INTO THE UNDERWORLD
"When I go back home," he said, "and tell them about this they won't
believe it."
It was a pleasant April Sunday afternoon. We were sitting very
comfortably in a saloon over Third Avenue way about the middle of
Manhattan Island. Throngs of customers came and went through the front
door, whose wicket gate was seldom still. Whiskey glasses twinkled and
tinkled all along the long bar. Only here and there in the closely
packed line of patrons stood one with a tall "schooner" of beer before
him. Harry and Ed, in very soiled white jackets, led an active life.
You see, since theoretically intoxicants were not being sold, there was
no occasion for the pretence of being closed on Sunday and confining
business to the side door and the back room. On the table between us lay
a newspaper. Its headlines proclaimed yesterday's "liquor raids,"
thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of "rum" confiscated by the
city police in the progress of the campaign resulting from the recent
passage of the New York State "dry" law.
At the bottom of the page was a little story of the conviction of a
delicatessen dealer somewhere on the outskirts of Brooklyn on whose
premises had been discovered by the authorities a small amount of wine
containing more than one-half of one per cent alcohol.
Pete came in hurriedly. Harry and Ed glanced at him questioningly. He
nodded to them as though to say "yes," and dropped into the chair before
us. "They're comin'," he remarked. "About half a block off." Every
whiskey glass had suddenly disappeared from the bar.
Pete, a little grey man now of about fifty who arises for the day at
about noon, has had an interesting career. Once upon a time he was a
"bell-hop" in Albany. He is a devoted patron of the silent drama and a
man of intellectual interests--making a hobby of clipping from
newspapers poems and editorials which impress him and reading them
several months later to chance acquaintances who are too drowsy to
oppose him. His connection with this establishment is light and
picturesque. His duties are chiefly social. That is, he sees home one
after another customers who require that friendly attention. He is
perpetually agreeable to the suggestion of gratuitous refreshment. He is
very cheerful and gentlemanly in the matter of accommodating his tastes
to any liquid from ten-cent beer to ninety-cent Scotch which the
purchaser is disposed to pay for.
Here they were! The two police officers strolled in slowly, smiling. In
their blue and their gold buttons they looked very respendent against
the somewhat shabby scene. Ranged along before the bar were a number of
young men in the uniform of private soldiers. There were several
sailors. Here was a postman cheering himself on his rounds. There was a
huge fellow the nickel plate on whose cap announced that he was a piano
mover. The centre of a group, there was a very large man who looked as
though he had something darkly to do with ward politics. At one place in
the line was a very dapper little Japanese, who produced his money from
a wallet carried in his breast pocket. But mostly the motley company was
of the riff-raff order of humanity. That is another one of the curious
developments of "prohibition." Here, in all places of this character,
you may find an endless number of the sort of men who used to be
accustomed to paying as little as ten cents for a drink of very fiery
and inferior whiskey, now standing before the bar by the hour and paying
from fifty to seventy-five cents for whiskey (if you can call it that)
considerably worse. How on earth can they do it? I do not know.
The two policemen moved the length of the room, and came to a halt at
the open end of the bar. Here they stood for a couple of moments,
observing (I felt with some amusement) Harry and Ed serving their
beakers of beer. Then, as though suddenly having a bright idea, one of
them made his way along back of the bar to the cigar case at the front
end. He stooped, opened the sliding panel at the bottom of this and
poked around inside with his club. As he came along behind the bar back
to the open end he stooped several times to peer at the shelf below. He
joined his comrade, the two of them thrust their heads into the back
room, and then moved out through the side door.
"Well, we're safe for another hour," said Pete. "Why couldn't they find
the stuff?" I asked him. "I'll bet you couldn't find it if you'd go
behind the bar yourself," he answered. Harry and Ed had found it within
two seconds after the shadow of the law had lifted. And the room was
humming with the sound of renewed, and somewhat hectic, conviviality.
"We'll get caught pretty soon though, I guess," observed Johnnie, the
Italian "chef," who on week-days served the economical lunch of roast
beef sandwiches and "hot dogs." Harry and Ed laughed in a rather
uncomfortable way. But for the present, at least, business was too brisk
for their thoughts to be distracted more than a second or two from the
job.
"The old man," remarked Pete, referring to the proprietor, "is on a toot
again. Been under the weather for about a week now. He always gets that
way whenever one of the new law scares comes along. Gets worried or sore
or something and that upsets him."
Pete hadn't been very well himself for several days. Sick in bed, he
said, yesterday. He never used to be sick at all, "in the old days," he
declared, no matter how much he had taken the day before. Never had a
headache, or bad stomach, or anything like that. A little nervous,
perhaps, yes. "But it's the kind of stuff we get nowadays," he thought.
"There hasn't been time since prohibition started for the system to get
trained to react to this TNT stuff, like it was to regular liquor. Maybe
in ten years or in the next generation people's systems will have got
adjusted to this kind of poison and it'll be all right with 'em." It's
an interesting idea, I think.
A customer was requesting Ed to "fix him up" a pint flask. No, it
couldn't be done just now, as the supply was running too low for it to
be passed out that much at a time. The disappointed customer tried to
content himself with endeavoring to absorb as much of a pint as he could
obtain through a rapidly consumed series of single drinks. And pretty
soon it was officially announced from the bar that there would be "no
more until nine o'clock in the morning." I gathered that the reserve
stock was upstairs or downstairs and that the "old man" had gone away
with the key.
We went forth to take a walk, Pete accompanying us as a sort of
cicerone, and discoursing with much erudition of bar-rooms as we went.
"These places are getting scarce," he observed. "There don't seem to be
any, or there seems to be hardly any of the old places uptown," I
remarked. "Oh! no; not in residential neighborhoods," he replied; and I
inferred that the law was, in deference to the innocent spirit of
domesticity, keener-eyed there. "And there ain't but very few below the
dead-line downtown," Pete said.
They have, the bars, very largely disappeared from Broadway. Have been
gone from that thoroughfare for some time. And in this thought we come
upon one of the great mockeries of the situation which has existed since
the Eighteenth Amendment went (more or less) into effect. What I mean is
this: A great many people who had no ferocious opposition to the idea of
a cocktail being drunk before a meal, or wine with it, or even a liqueur
after it, did detest the saloon. It was the institution of the common,
corner saloon, I fancy, at which the bulk of American temperance
sentiment was directed.
The perverse operation of prohibition then was this: It ceased to be
possible (openly) to obtain any alcoholic beverage in anything like
wholesome surroundings, in a first-class restaurant or hotel or in a
gentleman's club. But in New York City, as is known to everybody who
knows anything at all about the matter, the saloons, and particularly
the lower class of saloons, have flourished as never before.
As we crossed Broadway Pete pointed out one place which had been going
until a short time ago, an odious looking place (as I remember it)
within. It was but a short way from a club of distinguished membership.
So much had this doggery become frequented by these gentlemen that it
became jocularly known among them as the "club annex."
Continuing on over into the West Side, here was a place, now a shop
dealing in raincoats, but formerly a "gin-mill" where throughout this
last winter there had been an extraordinary infusion of Bacardi rum,
drunk neat, as their favorite drink, by its multitudinous customers. And
there was a place, a baby carriage exhibited for sale in its window now,
which as a saloon had burned out one night not long ago; when its
proprietor accepted the catastrophe with striking cheerfulness, withdrew
his business activities to his nearby apartment and took up calling upon
old customers by appointment. Innumerable the places over which Pete
breathed a sigh, which had lately turned into tobacco stores or candy
shops.
We turned in at a door on Sixth Avenue. A little more caution seemed to
be observed here than at the place we had just left. But Pete, of
course, would pass any scrutiny. The liquor bottle, you noted, stood
within the safe at the inner end of the bar, its door hanging ready at
any moment to be kicked to. The barman covered with his hand the little
glasses he set out until you took them, and admonished, "Get away with
it!" The drinks were eighty cents a throw, but they had the feel of
genuine good-grade rye.
Night had fallen. We passed into the back room, where a pathetic object
was banging dismal tunes on a rattle-trap of a piano. A party of four
entered. The young women were very young and decidedly attractive. The
two couples began to circle about in a dance. Next moment came a
terrific thundering on the front of the building. "Cop wants less
noise," said the waiter to the dancers; "you'll have to quit." "Throw
that into you," he said to the seated customer he was serving, and
directly whisked away the glasses.
"When I go back home," said my friend from the Middle West, "and tell
them about this they won't believe it."
CHAPTER XXVII
NOSING 'ROUND WASHINGTON
I
I came very near to being shot in the White House grounds the other day.
Yep! You see, my friend is a bit on the order of what the modistes call
"stylish stout." Rather more than a bit, indeed. Looks something like a
slightly youthfuller Irvin Cobb. Also wouldn't consider it decent of him
out of doors not to "wear" his stag-handled cane. Altogether, not
unlikely to be taken for a real somebody. He was fishing round in his
breast pocket for the letter his senator from "back home" had given him
to the President's secretary. Drew out what may have seemed an important
looking document.
As we came along the path toward the executive offices there was an
up-stage looking bunch thronging about the little steps--rollicking
gamins, smartly turned out flappers, a sprinkling of rather rakish
looking young males, and (in their best black silk) a populous
representation of those highly honorable and very ample figures who have
generously mothered the young sons and daughters of the American
prairies.
Suddenly from the side lines they popped out--a whole battery of them,
with their bug-like machines on tall stilts. The motion picture camera
men were taking no chances that anything important would escape their
fire. Evidently they couldn't quite place us, however, so we got through
the door without further incident.
When we had entered the grounds through the gate at the far side of the
lawn my thoughtful friend had thrown away his lighted cigar, feeling
that promiscuous smoking here would be taboo from danger of fire to so
precious a national jewel as the White House. Within the anteroom to the
executive offices the scene very decidedly suggested one of those jovial
masculine gatherings termed a "smoker." The seething and motley company
of (obviously) newspaper men put one in mind of the recent arrival at a
military training camp of a nondescript batch of drafted men not yet got
into uniform. General air about the room of loafing in a corner cigar
store.
Then, suddenly, a rising murmur and a pell-mell push toward the door. My
friend and I were swayed out upon the step, and saw at the gate directly
at the street corner of the building the movie camera men very
vigorously clearing for action. They had halted close before them a
tall, striking and very distinguished figure. You instantly recognized
him by the insignia which he wore on the slope toward his chin of his
under lip--a wisp of whisker (light straw color) such as decorated the
illustrious countenance, too, of the late James Abbott McNeil Whistler.
He was, this gentleman, looking very sheepish, continually bowing in a
rather strained manner to the camera men and lifting his black derby hat
to them. They were scrambling about the legs of their engines and
cranking away with a rattle. "Over this way a little, Mr. Paderewski!"
yelled one. "Hold on, Mr. Paderewski, there you are!" bawled another.
Boisterous mirth about the doorway.... "That's good!" "Sure, he's only a
premier."
Then, a deferential scattering to make way for him as he approached.
Held him up again, the camera guerrillas, on the steps. He was bowing
with an effect of increasing strain and the intensity of his
sheepishness becoming painful to contemplate. His hair a white bush
thrusting out behind. Ghostly white bow tie. His black clothes
beautifully sleek and pressed. At close up, his features blunter, less
sensitive in chiselling than appears in his photographs. The flesh of
his face striking in the degree of the pinkness and fairness of
complexion of the races of Northern Europe.
My friend and I had not yet seen Mr. Christian. Had that morning called
upon Mr. Tumulty on a matter of business. Found he had set up shop in a
business structure called the Southern Building. Transom Legend: Law
Offices ... Joseph P. Tumulty. On entrance door: Joseph P. Tumulty,
Charles H. Baker. Outstanding feature of ante-chamber a life-size cream
plaster bust, on tall polished wood pedestal, of Woodrow Wilson. Mr.
Tumulty, stocky of stature, driving in manner, bustled forth from his
private office. Exhaled atmosphere of ruddiness.
My friend at times (I fear) speaks with some circumlocution. Our real
business here settled, he was ambling on toward the expression of his
hope that we might possibly be able sometime, just for a moment, to see,
just get a glimpse of....
"The President," Mr. Tumulty cut in, with an anticipating nod. My friend
looked a bit confused as (I could see) the words "the ex-President" were
about to come from him. But, undoubtedly, both of them meant the same
gentleman.
In the executive offices we trailed along with the newspaper men for
their daily afternoon interview with Mr. Christian, my friend bathing
himself in tobacco smoke as complacently as anyone of the party. Entered
a sort of council chamber. Long table down the middle. Conspicuous
ornament of the apartment, on a mantel, a plaster cast of a humorous
Uncle Sam in a dress coat, holding aloft an American flag, and flanked
by a turkeyfied looking eagle.
Congregation pressed close about the table, behind which in a swivel
chair sat in a relaxed and rather pensive attitude an angular figure,
swinging leisurely looking legs which terminated in very white sox and
low-cut shoes. A rather thick thatch of greying hair, large aquiline
features, a rather melancholy cast of expression, eyes cast downward at
the table, clothes not recently pressed and which no one would be
inclined to call dapper, Mr. Christian in general effect suggested a
good deal one's impression of a somewhat dusty "reference librarian" at
the information desk of the New York Public Library being besieged by an
unusually large number of questioners.
"Well, gentlemen," he uttered very quietly and slowly, "what have you
got on your mind?"
"George," asked a figure with pad and pencil in hand, "what about this?"
Mr. Christian appeared to ponder the matter a good while, and the upshot
of his cogitation appeared to be that there wasn't much of anything
about it. "And what is there to that?" inquired another. Well at length
there didn't seem to be much to that either. A few items of information
were given. And the audience briefly closed.
When we had filed out with the company from the room my friend and I
took seats in the corridor. He had given his letter to the doorman. A
couple of soldiers in uniform, a group of very spruce, robust and
cheery-looking Catholic priests, an elderly individual of very dejected
pose, and a miscellaneous assortment of humanity also were waiting. The
doorman was being continually accosted. "Just want to shake hands with
him, that's all," and "Just want to say 'How de do'," were solicitations
frequently overheard.
The doorman beckoned to us and told us to go into an apartment which he
indicated and "take a seat." Probably my friend didn't hear that
instruction, as he marched straight up to Mr. Christian directly upon
entering the room flooded with afternoon light pouring through an
imposing row of tall and beautiful windows. Mr. Christian slowly arose
from his desk, coming gradually to his full height, and yielded a
cautious hand to my friend. He looked at the bright and somewhat
flustered countenance of my friend rather sadly, as it seemed. Though at
some sally of my friend's about the pronunciation of his name he smiled
with considerable natural human warmth. Then very gravely he stated that
with so many appointments at present to be made, and with the
multitudinous labors now upon him, and so forth and so on, it was hardly
possible that he could just now arrange for my friend to have a word
with, as he said, ... "the Senator."
My friend was, obviously, a bit taken aback by the term, as his mind
had been careering along with visions of his seeing no less a person
than the President. But there was no doubt that both he and Mr.
Christian were referring to the same gentleman.
I should add that my friend's self-imposed mission of shaking hands with
Mr. Harding and writing an article about his impressions of him before
the President had yet given an audience to the accredited
representatives of the press was more or less audacious. And I should
add still further that Mr. Christian seemed genuinely reluctant to
dismiss my friend without a ray of hope, and suggested that he call
again after a few days. Suggestion was at Mr. Christian's own volition.
As we turned to leave the room we saw that the bevy of Catholic Fathers
and several other persons had also been admitted, and were all beaming
with bland cheerful confidence.
We strolled along the driveway leading by the front entrance to the
White House. The baggy looking policeman lazily sunning himself beside
the portico recalled to my mind with amusing contrast the snappy
Redcoats who briskly pace back and forth before Buckingham Palace.
They are superbly haughty and disdainful beings. A charmingly democratic
character, this policeman. "'At a fierce cloud over there," he observed
to us as we paused nearby.
A splendid looking army officer together with a caped naval commander
emerged with springy step from the White House door, both carrying an
air of high elation. A sumptuous car rolled up and halted beneath the
portico roof extending over the driveway. From it a lady leaned out
extending a card. Out pranced a gleaming negro flunky to receive it with
bows of elaborate courtliness. As he turned to re-enter the White House
it struck me that I did not believe I had ever seen a happier looking
human being. Also, in his beautiful dark blue tail coat with bright
silver buttons, and delicately striped light waistcoat, he brought to my
mind (incongruously enough) the waiters at Keen's Chop House. The lady
rolled on.
A bumptious looking character mounted to the entrance, and sent in a
card. It was evident in his bearing that he expected within a moment to
stride through the doorway. A figure in a skirt coat emerged. Bumptious
being springs upon him and begins to pump his hand up and down with
extraordinary verve, straining the while toward the doorway. Skirt coat
(his hand continuing to be pumped) deferentially edges bumptious
character outward toward descending steps.
It had been an exceedingly hot day for early spring. Traffic policemen
had stood on their little platforms at the centre of the street
crossings under those mammoth parasols they have to shield them from the
rigors of the Washington sun. As we proceeded toward our exit from the
grounds, approaching to the White House came a diminutive and decrepit
figure muffled in an overcoat extending to his heels, bowed under a tall
top hat, a pair of mighty ear-muffs clamped over his ears.
We had that morning visited the Capitol. My friend had been much more
interested in the guide-conducted touring parties than in the atrocious
painting of the Battle of Lake Erie, and so on, expatiated on to them.
Parties which, he said, made him feel that he was back again at the
Indiana State Fair. We had sat, in the visitors' gallery of the Senate,
in the midst of a delegation of some sort of religious sect, whose
beards had most decidedly the effect of false whiskers very insecurely
attached. Had been much struck by the extreme politeness of a new
Senator who bowed deeply to each one in turn of a row of pages he passed
before. Had responded within a few minutes to the command of "All out!"
because of executive meeting, and sympathised with the sentiments of
fellow citizens likewise ejected who went forth murmuring that they
hadn't "got much."
We had wandered through the noble and immaculate Senate Office building,
and been much impressed by the scarcity of spittoons there, an abundance
of which articles of furniture we had since boyhood associated with all
public buildings. We had sat in the outer office of our state's senator,
and listened to one lady after another explain to his secretary in this
wise: "I just made up my mind ... I just decided to go right after it
... I just determined ... I just thought ... Otherwise, of course, I
shouldn't presume to ask it."
In the Library of Congress we had been much interested to hear an
European gentleman of vast erudition connected with the Library declare
that "there was more intellectual life in Washington than in any other
city in America--that it was an European city, in the best sense." We
had been accosted on the street by a very portly and loud-voiced man who
introduced himself by inquiring where we were from; who confided that
his business in Washington had to do with an alcohol permit; and who
asked to be directed to Corcoran Gallery. We had run into an old actor
friend who was here playing, he said, "nut stuff"; and who observed that
Washington was "more of a boob town than ever." We had been assured by a
newspaper friend that Washington was so full of inventors and blue law
fans that if you "dropped a match anywhere a nut would step on it."
We had been charmed by the vast number of elderly couples apparently on
a final mellow honeymoon before the fall of the curtain. At lunch had
overheard an inland matron inquire of a waitress if scollops were
"nice." Had enjoyed hot corn bread with every meal. Had been unable to
account for the appearance on the streets of so many wounded soldiers.
Had made the mistake of getting up so early that in the deep Washington
stillness of half past seven we were scared to run the water for our
baths for fear of rousing the sleeping hotel to angry tumult. Had noted
that nowhere except in London is the fashion of freshly polished shoes
so much an institution. Had speculated as to why the standard model of
the American statesman's hat should be a blend of an expression of the
personalities of W. J. Bryan, Buffalo Bill and Colonel Watterson.
And, finally, listening in the evening to the orchestra in the corridor
of the New Willard, we discussed the large opportunities for a serious
literary work dealing with the varieties and idiosyncrasies of the
Washington hair cut. There is the Bryan type, with the hair turned
outward in a thick roll above the back of the neck, and forming a neat
hat rest. There is the roach back from a noble dome. There is the grey
curly bushy all around. There is the heavy grey wave mounting high over
one side. And--well, there seem to be an almost endless number of
styles, all more or less peculiar to the spirit of Washington, and all
of distinct distinction.
II
"Who's the old bird gettin' so many pictures took?" inquired a loitering
passerby.
A hum of much good nature was coming from the motley throng about the
steps before the executive office of the White House. "Beer and light
wine," called out someone, apparently in echo to something just said by
the queer looking character being photographed by the battery of camera
men, and a rattle of laughter went around through the group.
"That's old Coxey," replied someone. "He's down here to get Debs out,"
he added. The amiable and celebrated "General" who a number of years ago
had led his "army" on to Washington was smiling like a very wrinkled and
animated potato into the lenses of the cameras which had been moved to
within a couple of feet or so of his nose.
My friend and I crossed the street to the State, Army and Navy building.
We had been there the other day to see a young man in the State
Department to whom he had a card. Had been much struck by his beauty.
And had wondered if handsomeness was a requisite for a statesman in this
Administration.
Now we sought the press room. Presented our credentials to a press
association man there. Cordial chap. Said, "Stick around." Others
floated in. Pretty soon press association man heartily calls out to my
friend (whose name is Augustus), "George. Come on!" And we trail along
with about fifty others into the ante-chamber of the new Secretary of
the Navy, who at half past ten is to give his first interview to the
newspaper men.
Funny looking corridors, by the way, in this building. Swing doors all
about, constructed of horizontal slats, and in general effect bearing a
picturesque resemblance to the doors of the old-time saloon.
I noticed that as we went along my friend punched in one side of the
crown of his soft hat and raked it somewhat to one side of his head. He
felt, I suspected, uncomfortably neat for the society of this bonhomie
crowd of bona fide newspaper men, and did not wish to appear aloof by
being too correct in attire.
The company passed along the corridor and into the anteroom under a
heavy head of tobacco smoke. There the press association man presented
each of the flock in turn to a chubby little fellow behind a railing,
whom I took to be secretary to the Secretary; and presently the
delegation was admitted to the inner office, a spacious apartment where
one passed first an enormous globe, then a large model of the _Old
Kearsarge_ in a glass case; and at length we ranged ourselves closely
before a mountain of a man in a somewhat saggy suit. Clean shaven,
massive features, very bald dome, widely smiling, Secretary Denby looks
just a bit (I thought) like Mr. Punch. His voice comes in a deep rumble
and he has entirely ample ears. Trousers too long.
No; he had not seen the story in that morning's paper which was handed
to him by one of the reporters. He would not confirm this; he would not
deny that. After all, he had been "only a week in the job." And one
might so very easily be "injudicious." "Wily old boy," was one comment
as the party trailed out and made for the press telephones, discussing
among themselves "how would you interpret" this and that?
Next, at eleven o'clock, the Secretary of State was down on the
newspaper men's schedule. We went into a kind of waiting room across the
corridor from the real offices of the Secretary. Most conspicuous
decoration a huge painting of a Bey of Tunis, the presentation of which
(the inscription said) had something to do with condolences from France
on the death of Lincoln. Also on one wall a portrait of Daniel Webster.
Mr. Fletcher, Under Secretary of State, appeared before us. Very dapper
gentleman. Athletic in build. Fashionable clothes. Grey hair but
youthful in effect. Handsome, smooth-shaven face. Suggested an actor, or
perhaps a very gentlemanly retired pugilist. Held beautiful shell
spectacles in hand before him. Stood very straight. Had another fellow
alongside of him to supply information when himself in doubt. When asked
concerning someone who was in jail, inquired "Where is the old boy?"
Smiling cordially, seeking continually for an opportunity for some joke
or pleasantry, trying bravely to keep up a strong front, but obviously
becoming more and more uneasy under the ordeal of rapid-fire questions
about Russia, Germany, Japan and so on and so on. On being asked
concerning diplomatic appointments under consideration, bowed briskly,
replied "A great many," and escaped--almost, it might be said, fled.
Secretary of War next on the list. Full length portraits in his offices
of Generals Pershing, Bliss and Petain. Many flags, historic ones
(presumably) in glass cases. Heavy build, Secretary Weeks, very wide
across the middle. Straggling moustache, drooping. Very direct and
business-like in manner. Entered room saying, "Well, there are a number
of things I have to tell you gentlemen." Frank and positive in his
statements and denials. Stood twisting a key-ring as he talked. Wore
neat pin in tie. When told that the War Department was supposed to have
such and such a thing under consideration, he replied, tapping himself
on the breast, "Not this part of the War Department." One questioner
sought to obtain from him a more direct reply to a question that had
been put to the Secretary of the Navy. He answered, "I know nothing
about the navy." When there was apparently nothing more that he had to
say, he concluded the audience very deftly.
"He's a different guy, ain't he?" was one correspondent's observation as
we passed out of the room. "One of the biggest men in the government,"
he added. "Gives the impression of knowing as much about that job now as
Baker did when he left."
To the National Press Club we went for lunch. It is pleasant to see in
what esteem this club holds those two eminent journalists, Eugene Field
and Napoleon Bonaparte, whose portraits hang framed side beside on one
of its walls. Napoleon, however, is held in such very great regard as a
newspaper man that another and larger picture of him hangs in another
room.
The newspaper army had shifted to the business office of the White
House. As we entered Secretary Weeks was departing. He pressed through
the throng of reporters clustered about him. "Nothing to say," was
apparently what he was saying. "We are referred to Warren," said one of
the men. "Looks like we really were going to see him," said another. The
President had not yet given an interview to the press men. So we took
seats among the rows of figures ranged around the walls.
While waiting we were given an audience, so to say, by Laddie, the White
House Airedale. Curly haired breed. "How old is he?" we asked the small
colored boy whose office includes charge of him. "A year," he said. The
dog stands well, and holds his stump of a tail straight aloft, correctly
enough. But there is altogether too much black on him, we observed;
covers his breast and flanks, instead of being merely a "saddle" on his
back. "Yes, everybody says it," answered the boy.
Secretary Hughes was seen coming down the corridor on his way out. The
newspaper men pressed forward forming a narrow line through which he
walked, very erect, smiling broadly, bowing to right and left, and
continually moving his black derby hat up and down before him. "Gets a
great reception, don't he?" said one reporter, glowing with a sort of
jovial pride at Mr. Hughes.
"You'll have to see the boss," Mr. Hughes repeated a number of times as
he came along, and turning slightly made one last very good-natured bow
as he moved out through the door.
"Are they all here?" called out Mr. Christian, then marshalled us
through his office and into the large, circular and very handsome office
of the President.
While we awaited him he could be seen, through a doorway, talking, on a
porch-like structure opening out along the back of the building. He was
very leisurely in manner. I think my first outstanding impression of my
glimpse of him was that he was a very handsome man, most beautifully
dressed in a dark blue serge sack suit, very sharply pressed.
He came in, moving slowly, stood close behind his desk, and said,
"Well, gentlemen, what is there that I can tell you?" He spoke very
quietly and deliberately. The Cabinet he said had discussed problems
relating to the "hang-over" (as he put it) of the War, in particular the
trade situation of the world. He mentioned that he did not desire to be
quoted directly. He had not been "annoyed" but he had been "distressed,"
he said, by having been so quoted not long ago. The top button of his
coat was buttoned. His cuffs were stiffly starched. He inclined his head
a good part of the time to one side. Sometimes half closed his eyelids.
Then would open them very wide, and make an outward gesture with his
hands, accompanied by something like a shrug of the shoulders. Close up
I was struck by the bushiness of his eyebrows. He wore a single ring,
mounting a rather large light stone. No pin to his tie. He swung
backward and forward on his feet. Put on shell-rimmed nose glasses to
read. Sometimes pursed his lips slowly. As he talked absently rolled a
small piece of paper he had picked up from his desk into the shape of a
cigarette. His talk had a slightly oratorical roll. He was exceedingly
patient and exceedingly courteous. His general atmosphere was one of
deep kindness. In conclusion he said, "Glad to see you again."
"That's pretty nice," was the comment of one of the newspaper men as we
emerged from his presence.
As we moved away through the grounds my friend dilated on a somewhat
whimsical idea of his. This was to this effect. In motion picture plays
(my friend insisted) kings were always much more kingly in appearance
and manner than any modern king would be likely to be. But (he declared)
it would be very difficult for a motion picture concern to get hold of
any actor to play the part who would look so much like an American
President as President Harding.
We stopped in to look at the east room, now again open. A character who
had evidently not been born in any of the capitols of Europe was
admiring the place vastly. He looked with especial approval at the
enormous chandeliers, those great showers, or regular storms, of glass.
"Pretty hard to beat," was his patriotic comment.
III
It's a big old building, dark inside, the Washington Post Office. He
looked like some sort of a guard about the premises who was too tired
to stand up and so did his guarding sitting in a chair. My friend had
got so accustomed to inquiring our way to the office of Secretary
Hughes, and of Secretary Weeks, and so on, that he asked where we would
find Secretary Hays.
The man looked at us very contemptuously. "The Postmaster General?" at
length he boomed. Well, he was on the fifth floor. As we stepped from
the car my friend remarked on the practice universal in Washington of
men removing their hats when in the presence of women in elevators.
Our appointment was for ten o'clock. We had got quite used, however, to
waiting an hour or so for the gentlemen we sought to see. Several other
callers were ahead of us here, and we sat down in the outer office when
we had presented our cards to a very kind and attentive young man who
appeared to be in charge.
Within a very few minutes, however, we were ushered round into a
secluded inner office. "The General," the young man said, "will be in in
a moment. He sees them in two different rooms at the same time." This
large room was entirely bare of painting or other decorations.
Speaking of decorations reminds me of the striking handsomeness of the
Cabinet officers we had so far been seeing. Beginning with the President
himself (prize winner of the lot in this respect) the spectacle of this
Administration had up to this moment been a regular beauty show.
The physiognomy of Mr. Hays, of course, strikes a somewhat different
note in the picture. Though he is not, I should say, as funny looking as
some of his pictures suggest.
He fairly leaped into the room. Spidery figure. Calls you by your last
name without the prefix of Mister. Very, very earnest in effect. No
questions necessary to get him started. He began at once to talk. Poured
forth a steady stream of rapid utterance. Denounced the idea of labor as
a "commodity." Said: "We have a big job here. Three hundred thousand
employees. Millions of customers. I think we can do it all right,
though. But our people in the department all over the country everywhere
must be made to feel that a human spirit is behind them. It's in the
heart that the battle's won. It's because of the spirit behind them
whether our men throw a letter on the floor before a door or put it
through the door." Made a gesture with his hands illustrating putting a
letter through a door. Looked very hard at the very clean top of his
desk much of the time as he talked. Now and then looked very straight
indeed at us. Gave us a generous amount of his time. At length arose
very briskly.
Routed us out around through some side way. Had a private elevator
concealed somewhere in a dark corner. Turned us over to the colored man
in charge of it with the request, "Won't you please take my friends
down?"
As we were crossing the street we ran into our old friend from New York
who edits a very flourishing women's magazine. Down here, he said, to
get an article from Mrs. Harding. Had found her altogether willing to
supply him with an article, but in so much of a flutter with her new
activities that she didn't see her way to finding time soon to write it.
What, we asked, was the article to be about? Well, Mrs. Harding's idea
was to revive all the old traditions of the White House. And what were
those traditions? Mrs. Harding hadn't said beyond the custom of Easter
egg-rolling.
We were on our way over to see Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Roosevelt. He is not in the State, Army and Navy building where Mr.
Denby is, but some ten minutes' walk away, in the long, rather fragile
looking Navy Department building constructed during the War.
Here numerous gold-braided officers continually come and go. The
building is filled with very beautiful models of fighting ships. At one
side of Roosevelt's door is a model of the _San Diego_, at the other
side a "sample U. S. Navy Patrol Boat."
As we gave him our cards a young man asked us if we knew "the Colonel."
An old Washington newspaper man had told us that morning, "He will go
far under his own hat." Several very large men, also waiting, were
smoking very large cigars while we waited. While all male visitors to
public offices in Washington appear to smoke continually, those in
government positions apparently do not smoke during office hours. And
government business hours there seem to be queer. The Senate goes into
session at just about lunch time. The President seems to be around in
his business office throughout the whole of the middle of the day. And
the office of the Secretary of State telephones you at six o'clock
Saturday night.
The young man showed us in. Mr. Roosevelt arose from his desk, shook
hands very cordially, said "How do you do?" sat down again and at the
moment said nothing further. It was up to us to swing the conversation.
So my friend launched out: We had nothing to do with affairs of state,
had no design to interview him as to naval matters, simply were curious
to see if we should find him eating an apple and wearing white sox, or
what. With hearty good nature, Mr. Roosevelt replied that he was not
eating an apple because he did not have one to eat, and that he had only
once worn white sox, woolen ones, when a boy at school.
He was very neatly dressed in a suit of quiet dark material, wore rich
dark red tie, with a stick pin to it. Curiously weather beaten looking
complexion. As he has just published a book we asked him if he intended
to carry on more or less of a literary career together with his public
life. He said, well, perhaps more or less. But he wouldn't have time for
much such work. He "practised" writing on Saturdays and Sundays, but
mainly for the purpose of attaining to clearness in expressing himself.
He insisted that the great bulk of his father's writing had been done
_before_ the full course of his political activities and _after_ he had
retired from them.
After we had arisen to go he walked up and down the room with us, with a
somewhat arm-in-arm effect. Declared we should know a friend of his up
in Boston, because we'd "like him." Said to look in on him again any
time when in Washington. Very affable young man.
We went out on S Street to see Wilson's new house. Handsome enough
structure, but, undetached from the building next door and fronting
directly on the sidewalk, we decided that it looked somewhat more like a
club than like a private residence. Were told later that the part of
that house to look at is the back of it, as there are wonderful gardens
there.
One cannot fail to note in the numerous art shops where pictures of
Harding, Roosevelt, Washington, Lincoln and Cleveland are displayed in
abundance the relative absence of pictures of Wilson.
Why do august statesmen in the lobby of the New Willard cross their legs
so that we can see that their shoes need to be half-soled? Why do so
many distinguished looking gentlemen in Washington wear their overcoats
as though they were sleeveless capes? What on earth do so many Oklahoma
looking characters do in Washington? Why is it that there the masses do
not, as in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles, stroll about at night?
We stopped in again at the executive office of the White House.
Remarkable number of doormen there got up somewhat like policemen, so
that you repeatedly have to explain yourself all over again. Man new to
us on today. Suspiciously asked our names. Then (though what just our
names could have meant to him I cannot see) shook hands with immense
friendliness, and told us his name.
Quite a throng waiting. Busy hum all about. Different crowd from usual.
Hardly any reporters. Old gentlemen. Stout red-faced fellows with large
black slouch hats. Several youngish women with very generous bosom
displays. Some sort of a delegation, apparently. We did not make out
just what. But the scene somewhat suggested a meeting of the Los Angeles
branch of the Ohio Society. At length the company lines up. We trail in
through with the rest.
The President, looming in the centre of his office, shakes hands with
each caller in turn, in a manner of paternal affection. Holds your hand
very gently within his for a considerable while. Rather odd position he
takes when shaking hands. Right shoulder lifted. Looks (though I felt
that he was unconscious of this effect) somewhat like a pose that a
painter might put his model into when about to paint him shaking hands.
He bent over us in a very fatherly fashion. Said, yes, yes, he had got
our letters while in the South. Which was quite a mistake, as we hadn't
written him any letters. But his kindly intention was quite
unmistakable.
IV
Senator New's secretary, in his room on the second floor of the Senate
Office building, was opening a wooden box that had come by mail. No; he
wasn't exactly opening this box, either. He was looking at it
suspiciously and cautiously tipping it from side to side. "Feels like it
was a snake," he said fearsomely. "Soft, live-like weight in there. I
don't believe I'll open it. You see," indicating the stamps, "it's from
India, too."
"But why would anybody be sending Senator New a snake?" inquired my
friend.
"Goodness gracious! We get lots of things just as queer as snakes,"
replied Mr. Winter. "I guess the Senator must be coming in pretty soon,"
he remarked, glancing about. "So many people coming in," he added, and
continued: "It's a remarkable thing. Visitors seem to have some sort of
psychic knowledge of when the Senator will be in. Same way out in
Indianapolis, we could always tell when Tom Taggart was likely to be
back soon from French Lick--so many people (who couldn't have heard from
him) looking for him at the Denizen House."
"Everybody," someone observed, "always comes to Washington at least once
a year." All United-Statesians, at any rate, one would say looking about
the city, probably do. And among visiting United-Statesians not
habitually seen in such profusion elsewhere one would certainly include,
Indians, Mormons, Porto-Ricans, Civil War veterans, pedagogues,
octogenarians, vegetarians, Virginians, Creoles, pastors, suffragettes,
honeymooners, aunts, portly ladies of peculiar outline, people of a very
simple past, and a remarkable number of gentlemen who still cling to
white "lawn" ties, hard boiled shirts and "Congress shoes."
Also, of course, that vast congregation of people who "want" something
in Washington. "What are you looking for around here?" a remark commonly
overheard in the hotel lobbies.
But there are other American cities to which "everybody" goes, too, now
or then, though the visitors are not perhaps so recognizable. Coming out
of the Capitol, passing through the grounds of the White House, what do
you frequently overhear? Frequently some such remark as this: "Haven't
you ever been in the subway? To the Bronx? When you go back you
certainly must go in it."
And out in Los Angeles they boastfully tell you that one way in which
Los Angeles "is like New York" is this: That whereas a man may or may
not happen to go to Richmond or to Detroit, sooner or later you are
bound to see him on the streets of Los Angeles. That, as I say, is what
they tell you out there.
But what are those aspects of Washington which are peculiar to that
city, and make it so unlike any other city in the United States? And
which in some cases make it an influence for the bad to many of its
visitors? And which in some cases it is so strange should be the aspect
of such a city?
For one thing, the first thing which must strike any stranger to the
city is the enormous extent of the souvenir business there. It is
perhaps natural enough that this should be so, and that souvenir shops
should range themselves in an almost unbroken stretch for miles. What is
not altogether so easy to answer is why nearly all of the souvenirs
should be the kind of souvenirs they are.
Printed portraits of the present President and of former Presidents, and
plaster busts of these personages, of course. That many of the articles
for "remembrance" should be touched with a patriotic design, of course,
too. But why today should so many millions of the "souvenir spoons"
(with the Capitol in relief on the bowl), the "hand painted" plates
(presenting a comic valentine likeness of George Washington), the
paper-weights (with a delirious lithograph of the Library of Congress
showing through), the "napkin rings," butter knives, and so on and so
on--why should such millions of these things be precisely in the style
of such articles proudly displayed in the home of my grandmother when I
was a boy in the Middle West?
Outside of Washington, as far as I know in the world, any considerable
exhibition of wares so reminiscent of the taste of the past can only be
found along the water fronts of a city where men of ships shop. And
there, along water fronts, you always find that same idea of ornament.
Another thing. Where in Washington are shops where real art is
sold--paintings of reputable character and rare specimens of antique
furniture? They may be there; I do not swear that they are not, but they
are remarkably difficult to find.
Painting reminds me. The Corcoran Gallery is, of course, a justly famous
museum of art. But a minor museum, containing no Old Masters, but an
excellent collection of American painting, particularly excellent in its
representation of the period immediately preceding the present, the
period of the men called our impressionist painters. Its best canvas, I
should say, is the painting by John H. Twachtman, called (I believe)
"The Waterfall." My point is, that visitors there certainly are seeing
what they are supposed to be seeing there--art.
What I am coming to (and I do not know why someone does not come to it
oftener) is this: That hordes of people who come to Washington will look
at with wonder as something fine anything which is shown to them. The
numerous beautiful works of architecture--to which is now added the very
noble Lincoln Memorial--they see, and probably derive something from.
But the cultural benefits of their visits to their Mecca of patriotic
interest must be weirdly distorted when they are led gaping through the
Capitol and are charged twenty-five cents apiece to be told by a guard
who knows as much about paintings as an ashman a quantity of imbecile
facts about prodigious canvases atrociously bad almost beyond belief.
The Embarkation of the Pilgrims and Washington Resigning his Commission,
and so forth, indisputably are historic moments for the American breast
to recall with solemn emotion. And the iniquity of these paintings here
to minds uninstructed in works of art is that by reason of their appeal
to sentiments of love of country these nightmares of ugliness are put
over on the visitor as standards of beauty.
Still speaking (after a fashion) of "art," another aspect of Washington
hits the eye. And that is the extremely moral note here. In Los Angeles
(that other nation's playground of holiday makers) perhaps even more
picture cards are displayed for sale. A very merry lot of pictures,
those out there--all of "California bathing girls" and very lightly
veiled figures, limbs rythmically flashing in "Greek dances." Such
picture cards of gaiety of course may be found in windows here and there
on some streets in New York and other cities. But after much window
gazing I fancy that anybody bent upon buying such things in Washington
would have to get them from a bootlegger or someone like that.
And whereas, as I recall, in other centres of urban life, and especially
on the Pacific Coast, the photographers' exhibits run very largely to
feminine beauty and fashion, in photographers' windows in Washington,
you will note, masculine greatness dominates the scene.
Speaking of photographers and such-like suggests another thing. Let us
come at the matter in this way. A good many women of culture and means,
I understand, choose to live in Washington; probably in large measure
because the city is beautifully laid out, because it is a pleasant size,
because there are no factories and subways there, and so on. We know
that numerous retired statesmen prefer to remain there. There is society
of the embassies. In consideration of all this, and in consideration
further of the comparatively large leisure there for an American city,
you would suppose that, behind the transient population, in Washington,
a highly civilized life went on. Very well.
True, they have the third greatest reference library in the world and
the numerous scholars associated with it. But where do the people _buy_
their books? One bookstore of fair size. Another good but quite small. A
third dealing mainly in second-hand volumes. Not one shop devoted to
sets in fine bindings, first editions, rare items and such things.
Though in Philadelphia, for instance, there is one of the finest (if not
the finest) bookshops dealing in rare books anywhere in the world. In
San Francisco numerous bookstores. Larger cities? Yes (as to that part
of it), of course.
But it does seem queer that not a single newspaper in Washington runs
book reviews or prints any degree at all of literary comment.
Alluding to San Francisco, that happy dale of the _bon-vivant_, how does
he who likes good living make out in Washington, unless he lives in a
club, an embassy, or at the White House? A grand public market, two
first-class hotel dining-rooms, and many fine homes. But an earnest
seeker after eating as a fine art could find tucked away none of those
chop-houses and restaurants to dine in which enlarge the soul of man.
But, of course, perhaps you can't have everything at once. From the
visitors' gallery the spectacle of the Senate in active session is a
game more national than baseball. "There he goes!" cries one ardent
spectator, pointing to a "home player," so to say, moving down the
aisle. "That's him! Gettin' along pretty good, ain't he?"
CHAPTER XXVIII
FAME: A STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
$10,000!
IN PRIZES FOR SHORT STORIES!
_You_ have a story. We want to read it. Every human life has one
great story in it. Every man, every woman, has at least one story
to tell.
THIS MEANS YOU!
From your experience, from your own heart history, you can draw a
tale. You may not know that you can write. But you never know what
you can do until you try. We believe there are thousands of
unwritten little masterpieces, waiting only for the right
encouragement to be produced. Here is our offer----
BENJAMIN KEYESER drew a long breath. "This means you"--there was no
doubt about that. These printed words had read his heart. He felt that
deep was answering unto deep.
A brief résumé of his life passed through Keyes's mind. And he was
touched, as never before, by the romance of destiny. He had not
contrived to be called up to public charges or employments of dignity or
power in the world. When Ol' Necessity had tapped him on the shoulder he
had cut his scholastic pursuits short of college, and a family friend,
Dr. Nevens, had got him a fifth-rate job in a third-rate business
concern. Here it seemed extremely probable that he would spend a good
many of his days. By the continued exercise of steadiness of character,
diligence, and application, he might hope, as Dr. Nevens by way of
encouragement occasionally pointed out, to advance at the rate of a
couple of dollars or so every couple of years. Clerkdom hedged him about
as divinity doth a king.
The city directory rated him, "B. C. Keyes, Clerk." Should he be killed
in a railway accident, chosen as a juror, or arrested for homicide, the
newspapers would report that B. C. Keyes, a clerk, of 1120 Meredith
Street,--etc. There was, he felt when he looked at it fairly, no way
out. In the "Americans of Today" magazine articles, men rise from
bootblacks to multi-millionaires, but these legends, Keyes felt numbly,
had about as much relation to his own life as the hero tales of ancient
Greece. His lot was cast in the bottom of a well.
And yet,--Keyes had been considered a bright youngster at school; he
regarded himself as a rather bright young man now; and sometimes even
yet, in wayward, impractical moments, he saw in his mind a picture of
himself breaking away from the field (so to say) and coming rounding
into the home stretch to bear down on a grandstand wild with applause.
He bore about within him a subconscious premonition, as it were, which
apparently would not die, that something remarkable was to happen to him
sooner or later. An unpleasant circumstance was that it was getting
later now all the time. Still the estimate of his worth returned to him
by life did not rid him of the belief that he had been originally
intended by his Maker for higher things than he had found.
When, occasionally, the gloomy contrast of his life as it was with his
career as he conceived it had been meant to be depressed him too
untowardly, a young lady whom Keyes called Louise would administer
spiritual stimulants.
Louise was a very clever person, and she knew a superior young man when
she saw one. She did not care for your common men at all. She was
intellectual. She read everything, her friends said. She often told
Keyes that he ought to write. She knew, she declared, that he could
write better than most of the people who did write.
This idea of writing had, now and then, occurred to Keyes himself. He
was rather fond, in his odd hours, of reading periodical fiction, which
he liked to discuss with serious people like Louise. Sometimes with the
exhilaration occasioned by the reading of a particularly good story, a
romantic impulse to express himself welled up in him, and then
evaporated. Generally in these instances he wanted to write a kind of
story he had just read. He felt the glamour of the life of adventurous
tales. He thrilled in response to the note struck in that sort of
romance best exemplified, perhaps, in one of his favorites, "The Man Who
Would Be King." Or he longed to be like O. Henry, wise with the wisdom
of the Town. But there was one sort of story which always ignited in his
mind the thought that he really did know a story of his own. This he
sometimes positively yearned to tell. This the advertisement had put its
finger upon. "Every human life has one great story in it." It was even
so. "From your own heart history ..."--Benjamin Keyes felt that emotion
which is the conception of a work of art.
* * * * *
He was pregnant with his idea. He rose from his bed betimes. He breathed
a strangely fragrant air. He looked at the beautiful world. He wrote. He
mentioned his little employment to no one: he felt rather ashamed of it,
in fact; but it infatuated him. He encountered some awful tough spots,
and at times he almost despaired--but he could not give up. Something
within him, which he himself was conscious he did not understand,
tortured him to go on. All day long, while at his business, his meals,
his shaving, his story turned and twisted and talked in the back of his
head. Despair alternated with exultation. At hours there came a gusto to
his work; words that he had heard or read, forgotten and never used,
came back to him from heaven knows where, and sprang to his pen at the
felicitous instance. He felt that his mind was more alert than he
remembered it to have ever been; he felt that his eyes were brighter;
his hands, his whole right arm, felt strong. He knew as he worked that
this was character, and this was sentiment, and this was humor. He was
shaken by the respiration of a heady drama. He felt that this--was
almost genius! And he was aghast that he had lived such a dull life
hitherto when this capacity had been in him.
He possessed little theoretic knowledge of writing; his story grew
naturally, like a tree: he was intelligent, and he had a story to tell
which must be told. In the matter of technical construction he followed
in a general way, intuitively, unconsciously for the most part, without
elaborate examination, the form of a short story as he was acquainted
with it through his reading of stories. He wandered alone at night,
oblivious of anything else, thinking, thinking his story over; and he
felt good in his brain and in his heart and in his stomach. He felt
virile, elated, full of power, and strangely happy. The joy of creating
a thing of art was upon him. Thrills ran down his spine and into his
legs; he would grin to himself in the dark streets; and sometimes he
laughed aloud. Everything else he neglected. He could not even read the
newspapers; he stayed at home two days from business; he worked early
and late, and walked up and down, throbbing, meantimes.
The story was almost finished. The story _was finished_. What would
Louise say? Would she think that he ought not to have written, ought not
to make public, so intimate a history? Then in the story he had carried
things further than they were in fact: the artistic instinct had
formally plighted the lovers' troth. He thought of submitting his
manuscript without showing it to Louise. Would it not be fine for her to
discover the story in print! But Keyes had to read that story to someone
or blow up.
* * * * *
His evening with Louise began awkwardly. The pleasant interchange of
being did not, as usually so happily it did with Louise, flow naturally
along. Keyes was accustomed to feel that with Louise he talked better
than before anyone else. He now and then wished that certain other
people, upon whom he felt he had not made so favorable an impression as
he deserved, could overhear him sometime with Louise. Now, curiously,
with her he felt as he had with them: he could not somehow get his real
machinery started. Three or four times he determined to embark upon the
subject in his mind, and as many times the rising fulness in his chest
and the sudden quivering of his heart daunted him. As he looked now at
Louise, sitting there before him, the dignity of her as a young woman
struck him, and it occurred to him as extraordinary that he could have
been so intimate with her. He about concluded to put off his story until
another time, at which immediately he felt much relieved.
His gaze wandered about among the familiar objects of the little
parlor--the ordinary articles of the family furniture, the photographs
on the mantel, the hand-painted plate on the wall,--then rested upon the
framed Maxfield Parrish, which Keyes knew, with a glow of pride, to
express the superior refinement of Louise's own taste. Keyes shared
Louise's interest in art; he knew, and very much admired, the work of
Dulac, James Montgomery Flagg, N. C. Wyeth, Arthur Keller, and many
others; this was one of the fascinating bonds which united them, in
division from a frivolous, material, and unsympathetic world. He glanced
again now at the sumptuous Rackham book on the table, which it had been
such a delight to him to give her at Christmas; and the revived
discussion of æsthetics led him fairly comfortably into the subject of
his own entrance into work in that field. His manuscript came out of
his pocket; and, straightening up on the edge of his chair, a little
nervous again in the still pause that ensued, he cleared his throat,
and, in a rather diffident voice, began to read. As he proceeded and
knew that his effort found favor, his want of confidence left him. He
fell into the swing and color of his work; and the heart of it he tasted
like fine wine as he read. In the more moving passages his voice shook a
trifle, and tears very nearly came into his eyes; it was all, he felt,
so beautiful. When he had concluded there was in Louise's eyes--as he
looked up, and saw her sitting, leaning forward with her chin on the
back of her hand, her elbow on her knee,--a strange light. It occurred
to Keyes that he did not remember ever to have seen a woman's face look
exactly that way before. Probably not. This was a light some men never
find on land or sea. It does not shine for any man more than once or
twice. They sat awhile, these two in the little parlor, and happiness
roared through their veins. Louise told Keyes that she had always known
that he "had it in him."
Then they arose, and they were near to each other, and their hearts
were filled, and beneath the chandelier he moved his arms about her. His
lips clasped hers. It was thus as it was in the story.
Keyes emerged from the brightly lighted doorway with Louise beaming
tenderly after him. In his blissful abstraction of mind he neglected, on
the dark porchway, to turn the corner of the house to the steps; but
walked instead, straight ahead, until the world gave way beneath him,
and he collapsed with a crash among the young vines.
The next week Louise, who held a position in the "Nickel's Weekly"
Circulation Branch office in the Middle West, neatly typed the
manuscript on one of the firm's machines. One evening they went together
to post the story.... The ancient, imperturbable moon observed this
momentous deed.
* * * * *
When Keyes put that manuscript into the mail box, he _knew_ that it
would be accepted. He felt this in his bones. He felt it in the soles of
his feet and in the hair on his head.
For several days succeeding, a sensuous complacency pervaded young
Keyes. In a rich haze he saw himself acclaimed, famous, adored. His
nature was ardent, and he had always craved the warmth of approbation;
but he had not had it, except from Louise. Now there were moments when,
in a picture in his mind, he saw an attractive figure, which he
recognized as himself somewhat altered, come jauntily along, amiably
smiling, swinging a cane. He had always secretly desired very much to
carry a cane, but he had felt uncomfortably that the humbleness of his
position in life would make this ridiculous. In his moments of ambition
he had hoped, sometimes, that walking-sticks would not go out (to put it
so) before he came in. In the background of his mental picture Keyes
recognized among the doting multitude the faces of about all of his
acquaintances, some brought for the occasion from rather remote places.
Keyes felt a slight wrench of conscience in winking at this poetic
liberty taken with realistic probability. When a name occurred to him
the physiognomy of whose person was absent, Keyes's sense of probity was
smothered, with a slight twinge of pain, by the ardor of his
imagination; and place in the press was found for this person, very
kindly well up in front, where a good view could be had by him of the
celebrity--at this point the celebrity in the delectable vision was
observed gaily to light a cigarette. Discernible in the throng, too,
were some few whose mean and envious natures writhed, the psychologist
in Keyes perceived, at this handsome recognition of the worth of a young
man it had once been their wont to snub.
In this balmy temper of mind Keyes got down to business one morning a
little late. The humdrum of a business life had begun to be somewhat
more irksome than hitherto to Keyes's swelling spirit. He ruminated this
morning, as he stood before his tall stool at his ledger, on the curious
ill-adjustment of a universe so arranged that one of his capacity for
finer things could remain so unsuspected of the world about him, and the
rich value of his life to some unmeaning task-work be allowed to give. A
sudden electric buzzing beneath his high desk signalled him that his
presence was desired by his chief. "What now?" he thought, a little
tremulously and a little irritably, as he went: he had been caught up on
several slips lately. He paused respectfully in the private office
doorway. Mr. Winder, from his swivel-chair, flashed up his white
moustache very straight at Keyes. "Sit down," he directed. The suavity
which was his habit was quite absent. Keyes felt the presence in the air
of a good deal of masculine firmness.
"This," said Mr. Winder, his eye steadily on Keyes, "is a place of
business. It is not a gentleman's club. Now, I want you to take a brace.
That will do."
As Keyes took up his pen again and began to write, "By merchandise," his
breast was full with resentment: a sense of the real integrity of his
nature welled up in him. His mind rapidly generated the divers manly
replies he wished, with an intensity amounting to pain, he had thought
of a moment before. He saw himself, now exasperatingly too late, saying
with frank honesty to Mr. Winder:
"I realize that I have of late been a little delinquent. But (with some
eloquence) it has always been my intention to be, and I believe in the
main I have been, a faithful and conscientious employee. I shall not be
found wanting again."
But here he was a rebuked culprit. He felt the degradation of servitude.
He experienced sharply that violent yearning so familiar to all that
are employed everywhere, to be able to go in and tell Mr. Winder to go
to the devil. And though he felt at bottom the legitimacy, in the
business ethic, of Mr. Winder's attitude, he also felt forlornly the
coldness of the business relation, the brutal authority of worldly
power, and its conception of his insignificance. And he was stung at the
moral criminality, as he felt it to be, of a situation which placed such
a man as Mr. Winder over such a nature as his own; Mr. Winder he did not
suppose had read a book within the last ten years.
As, at that hour which sets the weary toiler free, in the gathering dusk
Keyes stood on the curb amid the hurrying throng homeward bound,--oh!
how he longed for that establishment in the eyes of men which the
success of his story would bring him. Oh, when would he hear! As he
bowled along in the crowded trolley the thought stole through him, until
it amounted almost to a conviction, that the great letter awaited him at
home now. He could hardly bear the tedium of the short journey.
Restlessly he turned his evening paper.
In him had developed of late a great interest in authors; he peered
between the pages, a little sheepishly, at the column, "Books and Their
Makers." He read that Mr. So and So, the author of "This and That," was
a young man thirty years of age. Instantly he reflected that he himself
was but twenty-seven. This was encouraging! He had formed a habit
recently of contrasting at once any writer's age with his own. If he
learned that Mr. Galsworthy, whose books were much advertised but which
he had not read, was forty-something, he wanted to know how old he had
been when he wrote his first book. Then he counted up the number of
books between that time--comparing his age at that time with his
own--and now. He was absorbed in the literary gossip of the day. That
Myra Kelly had been a schoolteacher, that Gertrude Atherton lived in
California, that Mr. Bennett had turned thirty before he published his
first book, that such a writer was in Rome, or that some other one was
engaged on a new work said to be about the Russian Jews,--he found very
interesting. He read in his newspaper the publishers' declaration that
Maurice Hewlett's new creation recalled Don Quixote, Cyrano, d'Artagnan,
Falstaff, Bombastes Furioso, Tartarin, Gil Blas. His notions concerning
the characters of this company were somewhat vague; but he was stirred
with an ambition to create some such character, too.
On leaving the car whom should he see but Dr. Nevens. They walked along
together. Dr. Nevens inquired about the business. A bad year, he
surmised, for trade. Trade! Keyes felt his heart thumping with the
temptation to confide the adventures of his literary life; which,
indeed, he had found exceedingly difficult to keep so much to himself.
But his position gave him clairvoyance: he divined that no sort of
ambition receives from people in general so little respect, by some
curious idiosyncrasy of the human mind, as literary aspiration. With
what coarse and withering scorn had an intimation--which had escaped
him--that he had sought to give some artistic articulation to his ideas
been met by Pimpkins the other day at the office!
The personality of Dr. Nevens, however, suggested a more sympathetic
attitude, by reason of the dentist's cultivation. Dr. Nevens was spoken
of as a "booklover." He had a "library"--it was, he implied, his
bachelor foible--the cornerstone of which was a set of the Thistle
edition of Stevenson that he had bought by subscription from an agent.
(Keyes had thought it odd one day that Dr. Nevens had not cut the
leaves.) And "the doctor" was fond of speaking familiarly of Dickens,
and gained much admiration by his often saying that he should like--had
he time--to read through "Esmond" once every year. Here, Keyes felt,
would be spiritual succor.
But Keyes quickly learned that he was quite in a different case from the
author of "Esmond." Dr. Nevens was kind, but pitying.
"Only one out of hundreds, thousands," he said, "ever comes to
anything."
It did not occur to him, Keyes thought, as within the range of remotest
possibility that he, Keyes, _might_ be one of these. Then came the
doctor's reason.
"You do not know anything," he said paternally, "anything at all."
Keyes realized, with some bitterness, that this world is not an
institution existing for the purpose of detecting and rewarding inner
worth. He had known enough to write his story, he guessed. With some
flare of rage, he felt that simply unsupported merit is rather frowned
upon, as tending by comparison to cast others possibly not possessing so
much of it somewhat into the shade. He had a savage thought that when
he was Dr. Nevens's age he would not be a country dentist. He saw the
intense egoism of mankind.
Dr. Nevens was determined to show a young man who had betrayed a
consciousness of superiority of grain, his place--economically and
socially. The selfish jealousy of the world!
* * * * *
His letter had not come. There was only a package from Louise--a copy of
"Book Talk," containing a marked article on "Representative American
Story Tellers"; from this, after dinner, Keyes imbibed most of the
purported facts about Booth Tarkington. Then he went to bed to sleep
through the hours until the return of the postman.
The next evening still there was no letter. Keyes's spirit was troubled.
He sought the solace of solitude in the quiet, shadowed streets. A
reaction was succeeding his rosy complacency! Doubts pierced his
dissolving confidence. Was his story so good, after all? Somehow, as he
looked back at it now, it seemed much less strong than it had before. He
felt a sort of sinking in his stomach. A sickening suspicion came to
him that, perhaps, it was absurd. Maybe it was very silly. In a
disconnected way certain remarks and passages in it came back to him now
as quite questionable. Yes, they sounded pretty maudlin. He squirmed
within with mortification as a recollection of these passages passed
through his mind. He hoped his story would never get into print. A fear
that it might nauseated him. Then he was suffused with a sensation of
how little he amounted to. He felt, with a sense of great weakness, the
precariousness of his job. A horror came over him that he might lose it.
He wished he did not know Louise, who expected things of him. He felt
how awkward it was so to fail her. In the position he had got himself
into with her, how he had laid himself open to humiliating exposure! Oh,
why had he ever sought her? He wished he did not know anybody well. He
was an ass and he would never come to anything. He felt the futility of
his life. Why could he not slink away somewhere and live out his feeble
existence unobserved? As he got into bed he felt that very easily he
could cry.
* * * * *
The August
FAVORITE MAGAZINE
This number contains
The Great Prize Story
by
BENJAMIN CECIL KEYES
GET IT!!
* * * * *
... Keyes stood before a downtown news-stand. Hurrying pedestrians
bumped into him. An irascible character or two, thus impeded, glared
back at him--what was the matter with the fellow! Did he think there was
nobody but himself in the world?
B. C. Keyes walked home to the sound of a great orchestra reverberating
through him. He could not tolerate the thought of subduing himself to
the confinement of a car. He needed movement and air.
It had come, his great letter, a few weeks before. At his sitting down
to dinner his mother had given him the envelope. _The Favorite
Magazine_--these words had seemed to him to be printed in the upper
left-hand corner; it had struck him that perhaps the strain on his
nerves of late had so deranged his mind that he now saw, as in a
mirage, what was not. "Benjamin C. Keyes, Esq."--so ran the address.
Keyes in his dizziness noted this point: people had not customarily
addressed him as _esquire_. Then, for the first time in his life, he
held in his hand a substantial check payable to his own name--wealth!
Courteous and laudatory typewritten words danced before his burning
eyes.
He felt, though in a degree an hundred times intensified, as though he
had smoked so much tobacco, and drunk so much coffee, he could not
compose himself to eat, or read a paper, or go to bed, or stay where he
was; but must rush off somewhere else and talk hysterically. He got
through his meal blindly. He could not explain--just yet--to his mother:
he felt he could not control the patience necessary to begin at the
beginning and construct a coherent narrative.... He must go to Louise
who already understood the preliminary situation.
It had occurred to Keyes on his hurried, stumbling way thither that the
whole thing was unbelievable, and that he must be quite insane. After he
had pushed the bell, an interminable time seemed to elapse before his
ring was answered. As he stood there on the porch he felt his flesh
palpitating. A terrible fear came over him that Louise might not be at
home.... Louise said, when her frenzy had somewhat abated, that she had
always known that he "had it in him." She told him there was now "a
future" before him.... Keyes had determined to go on about his business
as though nothing unusual had occurred; then when the story appeared, to
accept congratulations with retiring modesty. Before noon the next day
he had told three people; by night, seven.
So, going over it all again, Keyes arrived at home, to learn that--"What
do you think?" His mother said "a reporter" had been at the house; an
occurrence--quite unprecedented in Mrs. Keyes's experience--which had
thrown her into considerable agitation. This public official she had
associated in her confusion with a policeman. He had, however, treated
her as a personage of great interest. He told her "there was nothing to
be ashamed of." He drew from her trembling lips some account of her
son's life, and requested a photograph.
Next day the dean of local newspapers, vigilant in patriotism, printed
an extended article on the "state's new writer." And in an editorial
entitled "The Modern Athens" (which referred to Keyes only by
implication) the paper affirmed again that Andiena was "by general
consent the present chief centre of letters in America." It
recapitulated the names of those of her sons and daughters whose works
were on the counters of every department store in the land. It concluded
by saying: "The hope of a people is in its writers, its chosen ones of
lofty thought, its poets and prophets, who shall dream and sing for it,
who shall gather up its tendencies and formulate its ideals and voice
its spirit, proclaiming its duties and awakening its enthusiasm." Keyes
read this, as he took it to be, moving and eloquent tribute to his prize
story with feelings akin to those experienced, very probably, by Isaiah.
Keyes received an ovation at "the office." The humility of Pimpkins's
admiration was abject. Keyes perceived the commanding quality of
ambition--when successful. Miss Wimble, the hollow-breasted cashieress,
regarded him with sheep's-eyes. Even Mr. Winder, in passing,
congratulated him upon his "stroke of luck."
Wonders once begun, it seemed, poured. Two letters awaited him that
evening. One from the editor of _The Monocle Magazine_. _The Monocle
Magazine_, as Louis said, "think of it!" The editor of this
distinguished institution spoke of his "pleasure" in reading Mr. Keyes's
"compelling" story; he begged to request the favor of the "offer" of
some of Keyes's "other work." By way of a fraternal insinuation he
mentioned that he was a native of Andiena, himself. "Most of us are,"
was his sportive comment. The "Consolidated Sunday Magazines, Inc.,"
wrote with much business directness to solicit "manuscript," at
"immediate payment on acceptance at your regular rates for fiction of
the first class."
* * * * *
The extraordinary turn of events in Keyes's life brought him visitors as
well as letters. Dr. Nevens called, benignly smiling appreciation. His
impression appeared to be that he had not been mistaken in giving Keyes
his support. Of more constructive importance, however, was the turning
up of Mr. Tate, who had been Keyes's instructor in "English" at the
Longridge High School. A slender, pale, young man, with a bald, domed
forehead "rising in its white mass like a tower of mind," Mr. Tate was
understood to nourish a deep respect for literature. He had contributed
one or two very serious and painstaking "papers" on the English of
Chaucer (not very well understood by Keyes at the time), to "Poet-Lore";
and had edited, with notes, several "texts"--one of "The Lady of the
Lake," with an "introduction," for school use. He reverenced, he now
made evident, the "creative gift," as he designated it; which, he
realized, had been denied him. He had come to pay homage to a vessel of
this gift, his former pupil, now illustrious.
With the hand of destiny Mr. Tate touched a vital chord. Self-assertion;
to be no longer an unregarded atom in the mass of those born only to
labor for others; to find play for the mind and the passion which, by no
choice of his own, distinguished him from the time slave: this was now
Keyes's smouldering thought. Mr. Tate, from his conversancy with the
literary situation, reported that there never was in the history of the
world such a demand for fiction as now, and that "the publishers"
declared there was not an overproduction of good fiction. Editors, Mr.
Tate said, were eager to welcome new talent. He strongly encouraged
Keyes to adopt what he spoke of as the "literary life." In fact, he
seemed to consider that there was no alternative. And, indeed, already
in Keyes's own idea of his future he saw himself eventually settled
somewhere amid the Irvin-Cobbs, the Julian-Streets, the
Joseph-Hergesheimers, and other clever people whose society would be
congenial to him.
For the present he cultivated his ego, as became a literary light; and
now, with Mr. Tate's assistance, he began to devote the time at his
command to preparation for his life's work, to study. Mr. Tate was
ardent to be of service; he felt that he had here connected himself with
literary history in the making. The great need for Keyes, he felt, was
education. The creative genius, Mr. Tate said, could not be implanted;
but he felt that this other he could supply. He recommended the patient
study of men and books. He thought that what Keyes needed in especial
was "technical" knowledge; so he went at that strong. Maupassant, Mr.
Tate said, was the great master of the short story. Keyes began his
evening studies in English translations of Maupassant.
The galling yoke of his business life was becoming well-nigh unbearable.
His soul was in ferment. If only he did not have to get up to hurry
every morning down to that penitentiary, there to waste his days, he
could get something done. That sapped his vitals. And he was tortured by
a flame--to do, to read, study, create, grow, accomplish! He was
expanding against the walls of his environment. God! could he but burst
them asunder, and leap out!
Mr. Tate had a high idea of a thing which he spoke of as "style." In
elucidation of this theme he suggested perusal of essays and treatises
by DeQuincey, Walter Pater, and Professor Raleigh, He felt also that the
"art of fiction" should be mastered by his protégé. So Keyes pitched
into examinations of this recondite subject by Sir Walter Besant, Marion
Crawford, R. L. Stevenson, and Anthony Trollope. Keyes realized that he
had _not_ realized before what a lot there was _to_ writing. Mr. Tate
purchased out of his slender means as a present, "Success in
Literature," by G. H. Lewes. He unearthed a rich collection in titles of
books the consumption of which literature would be invaluable to one in
training for the literary profession. An admirable bibliography, this
list, of the genre which was Keyes's specialty:--"The Art of Short
Story Writing," "Practical Short Story Writing," "The Art of the Short
Story," "The Short Story," "Book of the Short Story," "How to Write a
Short Story," "Writing of the Short Story," "Short Story Writing,"
"Philosophy of the Short Story," "The Story-Teller's Art," "The Short
Story in English," "Selections from the World's Greatest Short Stories,"
"American Short Stories," "Great English Short-Story Writers." In the
reading room of the public library Keyes followed a series of articles
in "Book Talk" on the "Craftsmanship of Writing." He advanced in
literary culture, under Mr. Tate's zealous lead, to consideration of
"the novel," its history and development. And, too, to the drama, its
law and technique. His head was filled with the theory of dénouements,
"moments," rising actions, climaxes, suspended actions, and
catastrophes. At times he had an uneasy feeling that all these things
did not much help him to think up any new stories of his own. But Mr.
Tate said "that" would "come."
* * * * *
And wealth and fame were even now at hand. The promoters of the great
prize contest advertising dodge had not been at fault in business
acumen; the winning story returned ample evidence of its popular appeal.
It was akin to the minds of the "peepul." _The Favorite Magazine_ was
sold during August by enterprising newsboys _on trolley cars_. That
great public whose literature is exclusively contemporaneous,--whose
world of letters is the current _Saturday Mail-Coach_, the _All-people's
Magazine_, the _Purple Book_, the _Nothing-But-Stories_, the _Modiste,
The Swift Set, Jones's--the Magazine that Entertains, Brisk Stories,
Popularity_, and the _Tip-Top_,--discussed the big features on front
porches. Keyes's story even attracted the interest of those _who seldom
read anything_. A number of letters from persons of that impulsive class
which communicates its inward feelings to authors personally unknown
were forwarded to Keyes from his publishers. A young lady resident in
St. Joe, Michigan, wrote to say that she thought the scene where the
boat upsets was the "_grandest thing_ ever written."
Imagine a man like Keyes sitting his days away on an office stool. His
mother, however, could not "see" his resigning his position. His
"father had always" ... and so forth. Keyes foamed within. What a
thing--woman's maddening narrowness! At the office Keyes's situation
grew, in subtle ways, more and more oppressive. His position appeared to
become equivocal. Mr. Winder seemed to make a point of increasing
exactness. Keyes felt a disposition in authority to put down any
subordinate uppishness of feeling possibly occasioned by doings outside
the line of business. And he became conscious, too, of a curious
estrangement from his associates there. They, on their side, Pimpkins in
especial, seemed to feel that he felt he was too good for them. And, in
truth, he did. The mundane aims of those around him got on his nerves.
Their commonplace thoughts irritated him. They were _common_ natures.
But, with fierce secret joy, Keyes knew that an event was approaching
which promised, would command, deliverance from it all.
Fall came. And the Favorite Publishing Company bound up the prize story
as a "gift book" for the holiday trade. Claud Clarence Chamberlain, the
well-known illustrator and creator of the famous "Picture-Hat Girl," was
commissioned to make the decorations. These were done with much dash in
highly colored crayon and popular sentiment. One was printed on the
paper jacket of the book, with the title in embossed letters. The
advertisement pronounced the work altogether "an exquisite piece of
book-making." It declared the production the "daintiest gift of the
season," and reminded "people of culture and refinement" that there was
"no present like a book."
Indeed a hero is not without fame in his own country. The
Stanton-Merritt bookstore on Capital Street arranged a window display of
about a ton of "Will Rockwell Makes Good," with one of Mr. Chamberlain's
original illustrations, framed, in the centre. A monster advertising
banner was flung across the front of the store above the entrance and
windows. Just inside, a pyramid breast-high was built of the books,
beneath an artistic piece of work--a hanging board upon which was burned
in old English letters: "'A good book is the precious life blood of a
Master Spirit'--Milton." A lady who informed the salesman that she
thought "books" were "just fine," bought twenty copies for holiday
distribution. She inquired if there was not a discount on that number
purchased.
Drugged with triumph, they returned together Saturday night from the
exhibition "down town"; and, in the now historic little parlor again,
Louise wept upon the shoulder of her affianced. Yes; they were formally
engaged. Keyes was not without a sensation that the situation was rather
chaotic. But destiny seemed to close in on him and bear him on.
The reviewers got on the job. And they were there with the goods.
Statements from a few typical press notices follow. "An absorbing
story," said the Topeka _Progressive_, "throbbing with optimism." "Mr.
Keyes strikes a new note in this unusual production; vivid,
dramatic,"--San Francisco _Lookout_. "A story of vivid and compelling
interest," one critic declared. "A delightful story, rich in heart
throbs," was one good one. One reviewer said, "Here we have a real love
story, a tale of love, tender and true, delightfully narrated. There are
so many fine, tender passages in the episode of these two, who live just
for each other, that reading the little book is like breathing strong,
refreshing air." "The creator of 'Will Rockwell," said one paper, "has
here written a new idyl of America." "An inspiring picture," said
another. One very fine critique said: "Once in awhile, possibly once in
a lifetime, there arises before us a writer of fiction whose genius is
undeniable the instant it greets us." When Keyes read this, quoted in
his publisher's latest newspaper advertisement, he knew that he had
found his work in the world. And reasoning from his experience, he saw
before him a calling that would be ever a noble intoxication of the
soul, a kind that would know naught of headaches or remorse.
But perhaps the best of all the critical dicta was this: "Written," it
declared, "with blood and tears and fire." Very impressive was the
number of times that were used such adjectives as "big," "vital,"
"absorbing," "compelling," "remarkable," "insistent," and "virile."
"Optimism," it developed too, was the supreme merit of fiction. One of
the arresting terms employed was "economy of means."
There were, it is true, a few dissenting voices from the chorus of
unrestrained praise, chiefly from certain notoriously dull,
conservative, killjoy journals. The New York _Evening Postman_ said:
"This somewhat amateurish little essay in fiction seems to be the
product of an untutored sincerity. In this, its sincerity, it is not
without a degree of vigor. We doubt, however, whether the author can
repeat the performance." And that irrepressibly ribald organ, the New
York _Beam_, could not forbear its customary jocular sport. Its smart
review of this little classic (as one bookseller already pronounced it)
began: "Hooray for 'Will'! Hooray also for 'Mabel'! They are the real
simegoozlia."
* * * * *
"Don't you think you could write something now, dear?" inquired Mrs.
Keyes, who did not see how scholarship pure and simple was, so to say,
to move the boat.
This idea of writing something now had indeed occurred to Keyes; but
somehow he had not been able to think of anything in particular to
write. So he went on with his studies, at the same time keeping an eye
open for available material, characters, and plots.
"Surely you can write something, Ben, that we could get some money for,"
said Louise. A wife, after all, is only a woman, with a mind fitted to
petty things, such as groceries, family washings, clothing, and divers
household bills. It is irritating to a man of lofty mind who night and
day is racking his brain for an idea, to be prodded on in this fashion.
Keyes ground his teeth and bore it; he reflected that an author's life
is frequently a battle with mediocrity. Perhaps he was mistaken as to
where lay the mediocrity with which he battled.
He fretted and worried and at length sat himself down to write without
an inspiration. He bethought himself of Trollope's example to literary
aspirants, and tried to grind out two hundred and fifty words every
fifteen minutes for three hours a day. He couldn't write twenty. He kept
doggedly on. He could not make his characters act or talk--the talk was
the most hopeless thing of all. He couldn't, as once he had done, cry
over them. Sometimes, in the stillness of the night with his clock
ticking before him, he almost thought that he had regained for a moment
a tithe of the power he once had; but in the morning when he reviewed
his work he admitted that he had been sadly mistaken. Now doubts haunted
his soul; even as he wrote another consciousness within not thus
employed whispered of his impotency. Fact is, Keyes had not at all the
creative gift.
He struggled through a number of stories, some better and some worse.
When he mailed these it was with a faltering, doubting heart. Something
with a weak action away in his interior told him that they would not be
accepted.
Keyes got thinner in flesh, more distressed in spirit, and poorer in
this world's goods as time went on. Sometimes he felt like an imposter
and was ashamed to face his wife; then he reread his press notices and a
fever to do something shook him. But a man cannot support himself and
his wife on a fever to do something. Benjamin Cecil Keyes could not
understand the thing: if he had literary genius why couldn't he write?
If he had not, how then had he written? To sit in full view of one's
wife day after day pretending to be interested in a book when the
bill-collector calls; and to be tormented all the time by a desire to do
something and not to be able to do it, or know when, if ever, one will
be able; and to be ashamed and afraid to tell one's wife this; but to be
compelled to be there, or to run away, or to hang one's self--this is a
situation more than uncomfortable.
A thousand times Keyes decided to roll up his sleeves and do something
else--engage in any profitable employment; and a thousand times he
decided not to--just yet. A man often exists in this way until he gets
quite to the end of the string where the wolf is.
"That was an accident, Louise," said Keyes sadly one day. "I find I
can't write."
Keyes was mistaken again. No fine thing ever was made by accident. Keyes
managed to write that story because its theme was the most interesting
incident in his life; because it appealed to him more strongly than
anything else had in his whole experience; because he was thoroughly
familiar with the life and the people he featured in his story; because
he was absolutely sincere in his sympathies, appreciation, and emotions
here; he had no ideals set way beyond his power, no aping tendencies
after an effective style, no attention distracted by an ill-digested
knowledge of mechanical construction. The structure, and the style
simply came, probably because--and finally he managed to write that
story because--he was keyed up to it.
A domestic woman often has a wretchedly unworshipful view of art and
fame. Keyes's confession did not kill Louise. I suppose he expected her
to go back to her parents in high dudgeon as one who had been grossly
swindled.
"Do you care if you can't write?" she said, after a moment's silence.
"Just think how nice you are--how much nicer you were before you tried
to write! And how it has worried you!"
Keyes got a job as a collector for a mercantile house. "My health
demands outdoor employment," he told his acquaintances.
* * * * *
Sometimes, alone with his lamp after the day's confounded drudgery,
Keyes got out the old magazine and reread his forgotten story.
THE END.
The following typographical errors have been corrected:
(note of etext transcriber)
seene=>scene
bibiographer=>bibliographer
Bandelaire=>Baudelaire
as you might saw her context=>as you might say her context
inquired aonther=>inquired another
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Turns about Town" ***
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