CHAPTER XXTHE CAPITAL OF THE FRA
Next morning it was raining, and to pass the time before breakfast I examined a large packet of photographs which Speed had left with me the night before—mementoes of that celebrated pioneer venture which had for its object the laying out of the new Lincoln Highway from New York to San Francisco. We had already en route heard so much of this trip that by now we were fairly familiar with it. It had been organized by a very wealthy manufacturer, and he and his very good looking young wife had been inclined to make a friend of Speed, so that he saw much that would not ordinarily have fallen under his vision. I was never tired of hearing of this particular female, whom I would like to have met. Speed described her as small, plump, rosy and very determined,—an iron-willed, spiteful, jealous little creature—in other words, a real woman, who had inherited more money than her husband had ever made. Whenever anything displeased her greatly she would sit in the car and weep, or even yell. She refused to stay at any hotel which did not just suit her and had once in a Chicago hotel diningroom slapped the face of her spouse because he dared to contradict her, and another time in some famous Kansas City hostelry she had thrown the bread at him. Both were always anxious to meet only the best people, only Mr. Manufacturer would insist upon including prize-fighters and auto-speed record men, greatly to her displeasure.
I wish you might have seen these pictures selected by Speed to illustrate his trip. Crossing a great country like America, from coast to coast, visiting new towns each day and going by a route hitherto not much followed,one might gather much interesting information and many pictures (if no more than postcards) of beautiful and striking things.
Do you imagine there were any in this collection which Speed left with me? Not one! The views, if you will believe me, were all of mired cars and rutty roads and great valleys which might have been attractive or impressive if they had been properly photographed. The car was always in the foreground, spoiling everything. He had selected dull scenes of cars in procession—the same cars always in the same procession, only in different order, and never before any radically different scene.
As a matter of fact, as I looked at these photographs I could tell exactly how Speed’s mind worked, and it was about the way the average mind would work under such circumstances. Here was a great automobile tour, including say forty or fifty cars or more. The cars contained important men and women, or were supposed to, because the owners had money. Ergo, the cars and their occupants were the great things about this trip, and wherever the cars were, there was the interest—never elsewhere. Hence, whenever the cars rolled into a town or along a great valley or near a great mountain, let the town be never so interesting, or the mountain, or the valley, the great thing to photograph was the cars in the procession. It never seemed to occur to the various photographers to do anything different. Cars, cars, cars,—here they were, and always in a row and always the same. I finally put the whole bunch aside wearily and gave them back to him, letting him think that they were very, very remarkable—which they were.
Setting off after breakfast we encountered not the striking mountain effects of the region about Delaware Water Gap and Stroudsburg, nor yet the fine valley views along the Susquehanna, but a spent hill country—the last receding heaves and waves of all that mountainous country east of us. As we climbed up and up out of Warsaw onto a ridge which seemed to command all the country about for miles, I thought of the words of that motorcyclistat Owego who said he had come through Warsaw and that you climbed five hills to get in, but only one to get out, going east. It was true. In our westward course the hills we were to climb were before us. You could see two or three of them—the road ascending straight like a ribbon, ending suddenly at the top of each one and jumping as a thin whitish line to the next hill crest beyond.
The rain in which we began our day was already ceasing, so that only a few miles out we could put down the top. Presently the sun began to break through fleecy, whitish clouds, giving the whole world an opalescent tinge, and then later, as we neared East Aurora, it became as brilliant as any sun lover could wish.
A Sabbath stillness was in the air. One could actually feel the early morning preparations for church. As we passed various farmyards, the crowing of roosters and the barking of dogs seemed especially loud. Seeing a hen cross the road and only escape being struck by the car by a hair’s breath, Franklin announced that he had solved the mystery of why hens invariably cross the road, or seem to, in front of any swift moving vehicle.
“You don’t mean to tell me that it’s because they want to get to the other side, do you?” I inquired, thereby frustrating the possibility of the regulation Joe Miller.
“Actually, yes, but I’m not trying to put that old one over on you. It’s because they always have the instinct, when any dangerous object approaches, to run toward their home—their coop, which is often just opposite where they are eating. Now you watch these chickens from now on. They’ll be picking peacefully on the side of the road opposite the farmyard. Our car will come along, and instead of moving a few feet farther away from their home, and so escaping altogether, they will wait until the car is near and then suddenly decide to run for home—the longest way out of danger. Lots of times they’ll start, as this last one did, and then find, when they’re nearly half way over, that they can’tmake it. Then they start to run ahead of the car and of course nearly always they’re overtaken and killed.”
“Well, that’s an ingenious explanation, anyhow,” I said.
“They lose their heads and then they lose their heads,” he added.
“Franklin!” I exclaimed reproachfully and then turning to Speed added: “Don’t let that make you nervous, Speed. Be calm. We must get him to East Aurora, even though he will do these trying things. Show that you are above such difficulties, Speed. Never let a mere attempt at humor, a beggarly jest, cause you to lose control of the car.”
Speed never even smiled.
Just here we stopped for gas and oil. We were unexpectedly entertained by a store clerk who seemed particularly anxious to air his beliefs and his artknowledgeknowledge. He was an interesting young man, very, with keen blue eyes, light hair, a sharp nose and chin—and decidedly intelligent and shrewd.
“How far is it to East Aurora from here?” inquired Franklin.
“Oh, about fifteen miles,” answered the youth. “You’re not from around here, eh?”
“No,” said Franklin, without volunteering anything further.
“Not bound for Elbert Hubbard’s place, are you?”
“We thought we’d take dinner there,” replied Franklin.
“I ask because usually a number of people go through here of a Sunday looking for his place, particularly now that he’s dead. He’s got quite an institution over there, I understand—or did have. They say his hotel is very good.”
“Haven’t you ever been there?” I inquired, interested.
“No, but I’ve heard a good deal about it. It’s a sort of new art place, as I understand it, heavy furniture and big beams and copper and brass things. He had quite a trade, too. He got into a bad way with some peopleover there on account of his divorcing his first wife and taking up with this second woman for awhile without being married to her. He was a pretty shrewd business man, I guess, even if he wore his hair long. I saw him once. He lectured around here—and everywhere else, I suppose. I think he was a little too radical for most people out this way.”
He looked as though he had vindicated his right to a seat among the intellectuals.
I stared at him curiously. America is so brisk and well informed. Here was a small, out of the way place, with no railroad and only two or three stores, but this youth was plainly well informed on all the current topics. The few other youths and maids whom we saw here seemed equally brisk. I was surprised to note the Broadway styles in suits and dresses—those little nuances of the ready made clothes manufacturers which make one feel as if there were no longer any country nor any city, but just smart, almost impudent life, everywhere. It was quite diverting.
Looking at this fine country, dotted with red barns and silos and ripe with grain, in which already the reapers were standing in various places ready for the morrow’s work, I could see how the mountains of the east were puffing out. This was a spent mountain country. All the real vigor of the hills was farther east. These were too rolling—too easy of ascent and descent—long and trying and difficult as some of them were. It seemed as if we just climbed and climbed and climbed only to descend, descend, descend, and then climb, climb, climb again. Speed put on the chains,—his favorite employment in hilly regions.
But presently, after a few more hills, which finally gave way to a level country, we entered East Aurora.
It is curious how any fame, even meretricious or vulgar, is likely to put one on thequi vive. I had never been greatly impressed with the intellect or the taste of Elbert Hubbard. He seemed too much the quack savior and patent nostrum vender strayed into the realm of art.His face as photographed suggested the strolling Thespian of country “opera house” fame. I could never look upon his pictures without involuntarily smiling.
Just the same, once here, I was anxious to see what he had achieved. Many people have I known who, after visiting East Aurora and the Roycroft (that name!) Shops, had commended its sacred precincts to my attention. I have known poets who lived there and writers to whom he allotted cottages within the classic precincts of his farm because of their transcendent merits in literature.Sic transit gloria mundi!I cannot even recall their names!
But here we were, rolling up the tree shaded streets of a handsome and obviously prosperous town of about twentyfive hundred which is now one of the residential suburbs of Buffalo. Our eyes were alert for any evidence of the whereabouts of the Roycroft Inn. Finally in the extreme western end of the city we found a Roycroft “sign” in front of a campus like yard containing a building which looked like a small college “addition” of some kind—one of those small halls specially devoted to chemistry or physics or literature. The whole place had the semi-academic socio-religious atmosphere which is associated by many with aspiration and intellectual supremacy and sweetness and light. Here on the sidewalk we encountered a youth who seemed to typify the happy acolyte or fanner of the sacred flame. His hair was a little long, his face and skin pale, quite waxen, and he wore a loose shirt with a blowy tie, his sleeves being rolled up and his negligee trousers belted at the waist. He had an open and amiable countenance and looked as though life had fortunately, but with rare discrimination, revealed much to him.
“What is this?” I inquired, waving my hand at the nearest building.
“Oh, one of the shops,” he replied pleasantly.
“Is it open?”
“Not on Sunday—not to the general public, no.”
He looked as though he thought we might gain specialpermission possibly, if we sought it. But instead we inquired the location of the Inn and he accompanied us thither on the running board of our machine. It turned out to be a low, almost rectangular affair done in pea green, with a fine line of veranda displaying swings, rockers, wicker chairs and deep benches where a number of passing visitors were already seated. It was a brisk, summery and rather conventional hotel scene.
Within, just off the large lobby was a great music or reception hall, finished as I had anticipated in the Albertian vein of taste—a cross between a farm home and the Petit Trianon. The furniture was of a solid, log-cabin foundation but hopelessly bastardized with oil, glaze, varnish and little metal gimcracks in imitation of wooden pegs. A parqueted floor as slippery as glass, great timbers to support the ceiling which was as meticulously finished as a lorgnette, and a six-panel frieze of Athens, Rome, Paris, London and New York—done in a semi-impressionistic vein, and without real distinction, somehow—completed the effect. There were a choice array of those peculiar bindings for which the Roycroft shop is noted—limp leather, silk linings and wrought-bronze corners and clasps, and a number of odd lamps, bookracks, candelabra and the like, which were far from suggesting that rude durability which is the fine art of poverty. One cannot take a leaf out of St. Francis of Assisi, another out of the Grand Louis and a third out of Davy Crockett and combine them into a new art. The thing was bizarre, overloaded, soufflé, a kind of tawdry botch. Through it all were tramping various American citizens of that hybrid, commercial-intellectual variety which always irritates me to the swearing stage. In the lobby, the library, and various halls was more of the same gimcrackery—Andrew Jackson attempting to masquerade as Lord Chesterfield, and not succeeding, of course. Franklin, a very tolerant and considerate person when it comes to human idiosyncrasies, was at first inclined to bestow a few mild words of praise. “After all, it didhelp some people, you know. It was an advance in its way.”
After a time, though, I noticed that his interest began to flag. We were scheduled to stay for dinner, which was still three quarters of an hour away, and had registered ourselves to that effect at the desk. In the meantime the place was filling up with new arrivals who suggested that last word of social investiture which the ownership of a factory may somehow imply. They would not qualify exactly as “high brow,” but they did make an ordinary working artist seem a littlede trop. As I watched them I kept thinking that here at last I had a very clear illustration in the flesh of a type that has always been excessively offensive to me. It is the type which everywhere having attained money by processes which at times are too contemptible or too dull to mention, are, by reason of the same astonishing dullness of mind or impulse, attempting to do the thing which they think they ought to do. Think of how many you personally know. They have some hazy idea of a social standard to which they are trying to attain or “up to” which they are trying to live. Visit for example those ghastly gaucheries, the Hotels Astor or Knickerbocker in New York or those profitable Bohemian places in Greenwich village (how speedily any decent rendezvous is spoiled once the rumor of it gets abroad!) or any other presumably smart or different place and you will see for yourself. A hotel like the Astor or the Knickerbocker may be trying to be conventionally smart as the mob understands that sort of thing, the Bohemian places just the reverse. In either place or case these visitors will be found trying to live up to something which they do not understand and do not really approve of but which, nevertheless, they feel that they must do.
In this East Aurora restaurant the dinner hour was one o’clock. That is the worst of these places outside the very large cities. They have a fixed time and a fixed way for nearly everything. I never could understand here or anywhere else why a crowd should be made towait and eat all at once. Where does that silly old mass rule come from anyhow? Why not let them enter and serve them as they come? The material is there as a rule to serve and waiting. But, no. They have a fixed dinner hour and neither love nor money will induce them to change it or open the doors one moment before the hour strikes. Then there is a rush, a pell-mell struggle! Think of the dullness, the reducing shame of it, really. The mere thought of it sickened me. I tried to talk to Franklin about it. He, too, was irritated by it. He said something about the average person loving a little authority and rejoicing in rules and following a custom and being unable to get an old idea or old ideas out their heads. It was abominable.
There was the female here with the golden-rimmed eye-glasses and the stern, accusing eye behind it. “Are you or are you not of the best, artistically and socially? Answer yes or avaunt.” There were tall, uncomfortable-looking gentlemen in cutaway coats, and the stiffest of stiff collars, led at chains' ends by stout, executive wives who glared and stared and pawed things over. The chains were not visible to the naked eye, but they were there. Then there were nervous, fussy, somewhat undersized gentlemen with white side whiskers and an air of delicate and uncertain inquiry, going timidly to and fro. There were old and young maids of a severe literary and artistic turn. I never saw better materials nor poorer taste than in their clothes. I remarked to Franklin that there was not one easy, natural, beautiful woman in the whole group, and after scrutinizing them all he agreed with me.
“Now, Franklin,” I said, “this shows you what the best circles of art and literature should really be like. Once you’re truly successful and have established a colony of your own—East Franklinia, let us say, or Booth-a-rootha—they will come and visit you in this fashion.”
“Not if I know it, they won’t,” he replied.
The crowd increased. Those who in some institutions might be known as waiters and waitresses, but who herewere art directors and directoresses at the very least, were bustling to and fro, armed with all authority and not at all overawed by the standing throng which had now gathered outside the diningroom door. I never saw a more glistening array of fancy glass, plates, cups, knives, forks, spoons, flowers. The small black mission tables—Elbert Hubbardized, of course—were stuffed with this sort of thing to the breaking point. The room fairly sparkled as though the landlord had said, “I’ll give these people their money’s worth if it takes all the plate in the place. They love show and must have it.” I began to feel a little sick and nervous. It was all so grand, and the people about us so plainly avid for it, that I said, “Oh, God, just for a simple, plain board, with an humble yellow plate in the middle. What should I be doing here, anyhow?”
“Well, Franklin,” I said, as gaily as I could, “this is going to be a very sumptuous affair—a very, very sumptuous affair.”
He looked at me wisely, at the crowd, at the long curio case diningroom, and hesitated, but something seemed to be stirring within him.
“What do you say to leaving?” he finally observed. “It seems to me”—then he stopped. His essential good nature and charity would not permit him to criticize. I heaved a sigh of relief, hungry as I was.
We hustled out. I was so happy I forgot all about dinner. There was dear old Speed, as human as anything, sitting comfortably in the front seat, no coat on, his feet amid the machinery for starting things, a cigarette in his mouth, the comic supplement of some Sunday paper spread out before him, as complacent and serene as anyone could be.
He swung the car around in a trice, and was off. Before us lay a long street, overhung with branches through which the sunlight was falling in lovely mottled effects. Overhead was the blue sky. Outward, to right and left, were open fields—the great, enduring, open fields.
“It was a bit too much, wasn’t it?” said Franklin.