Turns about Town
by Robert Cortes Holliday · English · Gutenberg #36085 · 417,700 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Turns about Town
Author: Robert Cortes Holliday
Release date: May 11, 2011 [eBook #36085]
Most recently updated: April 26, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNS ABOUT TOWN ***
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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 K. 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 ac
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