CHAPTER XVIIIMR. HUBBARD AND AN AUTOMOBILE FLIRTATION
Avoca, just beyond here, was a pleasant little town, with a white church steeple drowsing in the afternoon sun. We tried to get something to eat and couldn’t—or rather could only obtain sandwiches, curse them!—and ham sandwiches at that. My God, how I do hate ham sandwiches when I am hungry enough to want a decent meal! And a place called Arkport was not better, though we did get some bananas there—eight—and I believe I ate them all. I forget, but I think I did. Franklin confined himself almost exclusively to popcorn and candy!
At Avoca we learned of two things which altered our course considerably.
First, in leisurely dressing after our bath, Franklin began browsing over a map to see where we were and what the name of this stream was, when suddenly his eye lighted on the magic name of East Aurora. (Imagine a town namedEastAurora!) Here had lived until recently (when theLusitaniawent down he and his wife were drowned) a certain Elbert Hubbard, author, publisher, lecturer, editor, manufacturer of “art” furniture and articles of virtu, whose personal characteristics and views seemed to have aroused more feverish interest in the minds of a certain type of American than almost any other man’s, unless, perchance, it might have been William Jennings Bryan’s, or Billy Sunday’s.
In my youth, when he was first writing his interesting “Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great” (think of that for a title!), I thought him wonderful too. I never heard of his stirring those hard, sophisticated, unregerenate sanctums and halls of thegreat cities where lurk the shrewd, the sharp and evil, to say nothing of the dullest of the dull; but when it came to the rural places, there he shone. In the realms of the vast and far flung Chautauqua, with its halls and shrines of homage, he wasau fait, a real prophet. Here he was looked up to, admired, adored. These people bought his furniture and read his books, and in the entertainment halls of public schools, clubs, societies, circles for the promotion of this, that, or the other, they quoted his thoughts. Personally, I early outgrew Mr. Hubbard. He appealed to me for about four months, in my twentyfourth or twentyfifth year, and then he was gone again. Later on his Roycroft furniture, book bindings, lamps and the like came to have a savage distaste to me. They seemed impossible, the height of the inane; but he went on opening salesrooms in New York, Chicago and elsewhere, and increasing his fame. He came to be little more than a shabby charlatan, like so many of those other itinerant evangelists that infest America.
This great man had established himself years before, in this place called East Aurora, near Buffalo, and there had erected what I always imagined were extensive factories or studios, or mere rooms for the manufacture and storage and sale of all the many products of art on which he put the stamp of his approval. Here were printed all those rare and wonderful books in limp leather and handstitched silk linings and a host of artistic blank flyleaves, which always sickened me a little when I looked at them. Here were sawed and planed and hand polished, no doubt, all the perfect woods that went into his Roycroft furniture. Here were hammered and polished and carefully shaped the various metals that went into his objects of art. I always felt that really it must be a remarkable institution, though I cared no whit for the books or furniture or objects of art. They were too fixy.
In all his writings he was the preacher of the severe, the simple, the durable—that stern beauty that has its birth in necessity, its continuance in use. With all suchproducts, as he himself was forever indicating, art was a by-product,—a natural outcome of the perfection impulse of the life principle. Somewhere in all nature was something which wanted and sought beauty, the clear, strong, natural beauty of strength and necessity. Who shaped the tiger? Who gave perfection to the lion? Behold the tree. See the hill. Were they not beautiful, and did they not conform to the laws of necessity and conditional use? Verily, verily.
Whenever I looked at any of his books or objects of art or furniture, while they had that massiveness or durability or solidity which should be in anything built for wear and severe use, they had something else which did not seem to suggest these needs at all. There was a luxuriousness of polish and ornamentation and inutile excrescence about them which irritated me greatly. “Here is a struggle,” I said to myself, “to mix together two things which can never mix—oil and water,—luxury and extreme, rugged durability.” It was as if one took Abraham Lincoln and dressed him in the drawingroom clothes of a fop, curling his hair, perfuming his beard, encasing his feet in patent leather shoes, and then said, “Gentlemen, behold the perfect man.”
Well, behold him!
And so it was with this furniture and these art objects. They were log cabin necessities decked out in all the gimcrackery of the Petit Trianon. They weren’t log-cabin necessities any more, and they certainly bore no close relationship to the perfection of a Heppelwhite or a Sheraton, or the convincing charms of the great periods. They were just a combination of country and city, as their inventor understood them, without having the real merit of either, and to me they seemed to groan of their unhappy union. It was as if a man had taken all the worst and best in American life and fastened them together without really fusing them. It was a false idea. The author of them was an artistic clown.
But when it came to the possibility of seeing his place I was interested enough. Only a few weeks before thecountry had been ringing with the news of his death and the tragedy of it. Long, appreciative editorials had appeared in all our American papers (on what subjects will not the American papers write long, appreciative editorials!). So I was interested, as was Franklin. He suggested going to EastAuroraAurora, and I was pleased to note that if we went there we would have to go through Warsaw, New York. That settled it. I agreed at once.
Another thing that we discussed at Avoca was that if we took the best road from there and followed it to Portageville, we would be in the immediate vicinity of the Falls of the Geneseo, “and they’re as fine as anything I ever see in America,” was the way one countryman put it. “I’ve seen Niagara and them falls down there on the Big Kanawha in West Virginia, but I never expect to see anything finer than these.” It was the village blacksmith and garage owner of Avoca who was talking. And Portageville was right on the road to Warsaw and East Aurora.
We were off in a trice—ham sandwiches in hand.
It was while we were speeding out of Arkport and on our way to Canaseraga and the Falls of the Geneseo that I had my first taste of what might be called an automobile flirtation. It was just after leaving Arkport and while we were headed for a town called Canaseraga that we caught up with and passed three maids in a machine somewhat larger than our own, who were being piloted at a very swift pace by a young chauffeur. It is a rule of the road and a state law in most states that unless a machine wishes to keep the lead by driving at the permitted speed it must turn to the right to permit any machine approaching from the rear and signaling to pass.
Most chauffeurs and all passengers I am sure resent doing this. It is a cruel thing to have to admit that any machine can go faster than yours or that you are in the mood to take the dust of anyone. Still if a machine is trailing you and making a great row for you to give way, what can you do, unless you seek open conflict and possibly disaster—a wreck—for chauffeurs and owners areoccasionally choleric souls and like to pay out stubborn, greedy “road hogs,” even if in paying them out you come to grief yourself. Franklin had just finished a legal argument of this kind some few weeks before, he told us, in which some man who would not give the road and had been “sideswiped” by his car (Franklin being absent and his chauffeur who was out riding choleric) had been threatening to bring suit for physical as well as material injury. It was this threat to sue for physical injuries which brought about a compromise in Franklin’s favor, for it is against the law to threaten anyone, particularly by mail, as in this instance; and so Franklin, by threatening in return, was able to escape.
Be that as it may, these three maids, or their chauffeur, when we first came up refused to give the road, although they did increase their speed in an effort to keep it. One of them, a gay creature in a pink hat, looked back and half smiled at our discomfiture. I took no more interest in her than did any of the others apparently, at the time, for in a situation of this kind how is one to tell which is the favored one?
As an able chauffeur, the master of a good machine, and the ex-leader of the Lincoln Highway procession for a certain distance, how was a man like Speed to take a rebuff like this? Why, as all good and true chauffeurs should, by increasing his own speed and trailing them so close and making such a row that they would have to give way. This he did and so for a distance of three or four miles we were traveling in a cloud of dirt and emitting a perfect uproar of squawks. In consequence we finally were permitted to pass, not without certain unkind and even contemptuous looks flung in our direction, as who should say: “You think yourselves very smart, don’t you?”—although in the case of the maiden in the pink hat it did not seem to me that her rage was very great. She was too amused and cheerful. I sat serene and calm, viewing the surrounding landscape, only I could not help noting that the young ladies were quite attractive and that the one in the pink hat was interestedin someone in our car—Speed or Franklin, I decided—preferably Franklin, since he looked so very smart in his carefully cut clothes. I did not think it could be myself. As for Speed, mustachios up and a cigarette between his teeth, he looked far too handsome to condescend to flirt with a mere country—heiress, say. These chauffeurs—you know! But a little later, as we were careening along, having attained a good lead as we thought and taking our ease, what should come trailing up behind us but this same car, making a great clatter, and because of a peculiar wide width of road and our loitering mood, passing us before we could say “Jack Robinson.” Again the maid in the pink hat smiled—it seemed to me—but at whom? And again Speed bustled to the task of overtaking them. I began to sit up and take notice.
What a chase! There was a big, frail iron bridge over a rocky, shallow stream somewhere, which carried a sign reading: “Bridge weak, walk your horses. Speed limit four miles an hour.” I think we crossed it in one bound. There was a hollow where the road turned sharply under a picturesque cliff and a house in a green field seemed to possess especial beauty because of a grove of pines. At another time I would have liked to linger here. A sign read: “Danger ahead. Sharp Curve. Go Slow.” We went about it as if we were being pursued by the devil himself. Then came a rough place of stone somewhere, where ordinarily Speed would have slowed down and announced that he would “like to have a picture of this road.” Do you think we slowed down this time? Not much. We went over it as if it were as smooth as glass. I was nearly jounced out of the car.
Still we did not catch up, quite. The ladies or the chauffeur or all were agreed apparently to best us, but we trailed them close and they kept looking back and laughing at us. The pink-hatted one was all dimples.
“There you are, Mr. Dreiser,” called Speed. “She’s decided which one she wants. She doesn’t seem to see any of the rest of us.”
Speed could be horribly flattering at times.
“No,” I said, “without a mustache or a cigarette or a long Napoleonic lock over my brow, never. It’s Franklin here.”
Franklin smiled—as Julius Cæsar might have smiled.
“Which one is it you’re talking about?” he inquired innocently.
“Which one?—you sharp!” I scoffed. “Don’t come the innocent, guileless soul on me. You know whom she’s looking at. The rest of us haven’t a chance.”
Inwardly I was wondering whether by any chance freak of fancy she could have taken a tentative interest in me. While there is life—you know!
Alas, they beat us and for awhile actually disappeared because of a too rough stretch at one point and then, as I had given up all hope of seeing them any more, there they were, just a little ahead of us, in the midst of a most beatific landscape; and they were loitering—yes, they were!—people can loiter, even in motors.
My mind was full of all the possibilities of a gay, cheerful flirtation. Whose wouldn’t be, on a summery evening like this, with a car full of girls and one bolder and prettier than the others, smiling back at you. The whole atmosphere was one of romance. It was after four now, with that rather restful holiday feeling that comes into the air of a Saturday afternoon when every laborer and rich man is deciding to knock off for the day and “call it a day,” as they express it, and you are wondering why there is any need to hurry over anything. The sky was so blue, the sun so warm. If you had been there you would have voted to sit on the grass of one of these lovely slopes and talk things over. I am sure you would.
Alas, for some distance now we had been encountering signs indicating that a place called Hornell was near and not on our route. It was off to the left or south and we were headed north, Canaseraga-ward. If our car turned north at the critical juncture of the dividing roads, would they miss us if we did not follow themand turn back, or was it not our duty to get the lead and show them which way we were going, or failing that, follow them into Hornell for a bit of food or something? I began to puzzle.
“How about Hornell, for dinner?” I suggested mildly. “I see that these signs indicate a place of about ten thousand.”
“What’s got into you?” exclaimed my host. “Didn’t you just eat eight bananas?”
“Oh, I know; but bananas, in this air——”
“But it isn’t any more than four thirty. It would only be five by the time we got there. I thought you wanted to see the falls yet tonight—and Warsaw?”
“I did—only—you know how beautiful falls are likely to be in the morning——”
“Oh, of course, I see—only—but, seriously, do you think we’d better? It might turn out all right, but again, there are three of them, and two of them are not very good looking and we’re only two actually.”
“Right! Right!” I sighed. “Well, if it must be——”
I sank heavily against the cushion.
And then they did let us pass them, not far from the fatal juncture. Just as we neared it they decided to pass us and turned off toward Hornell.
“Oh, heaven! heaven! Oh, woe! woe!” I sighed. “And she’s looking back. How can such things be?”
Speed saw the point as quickly as anyone. Our better judgment would naturally have asserted itself anyhow, I presume.
“We turn to the right here, don’t we?” he called chipperly, as we neared the signpost.
“Of course, of course,” I called gaily. “Don’t we, Franklin?”
“Yes, that’s the way,” he smiled, and off we went, northwest, while they were going southwest.
I began to wonder then whether they would have sense enough to turn back and follow us, but they didn’t.
“And it is such a lovely afternoon,” I said to myself. “I’d like to see Hornell.”
“That was a good little car they had,” called back Speed consolingly. “That girl in the pink hat certainly had a fancy for someone here.”
“Not me,” said Franklin. “I know that.”
“Not me,” I replied. “She never looked at me.”
“Well, I know damn well she never looked at me,” added Speed. “She must have liked the car.”
We both laughed.
I wonder what sort of place Hornell is, anyhow?