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But, my goodness! That was not all. No, indeed!
This very man who was cutting my hairhad 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 fatherwas 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 KENNELSCHOWCHOWS, PEKINGESES, POMERANIANS, ALLCOLORSFROMPRICEWINNINGSTOCKMINIATURESPECIMENSATSTUD. PEKINGESE, WONDERFULSON OFWENTYOFHYDEGREE. FEEREASONABLE.ATSTUD. LORDCHOLMONDELEYIIISON OFCHAMPIONLORDCHOLMONDELEYII.TOYDOGSBOARDEDMME. HENRI GRECHEN
CHINK A TU KENNELSCHOWCHOWS, PEKINGESES, POMERANIANS, ALLCOLORSFROMPRICEWINNINGSTOCKMINIATURESPECIMENSATSTUD. PEKINGESE, WONDERFULSON OFWENTYOFHYDEGREE. FEEREASONABLE.ATSTUD. LORDCHOLMONDELEYIIISON OFCHAMPIONLORDCHOLMONDELEYII.TOYDOGSBOARDEDMME. 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.
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. Chestertonseveral 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 YorkTimes, or somebody like that.
This escapade of my visit to Overroads I suppose it was that put into the head of the editor ofThe Bookmanthe notion that I was a person with ready access to Mr. Chesterton. So I was served with a hurry-up assignment to see himand 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 dayset 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. Thepoint, 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 matterdidseem 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 inthe 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, gentlyrising 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 tofind 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 ashade 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 aface 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 thequestion 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 wayfor 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. Chestertonknows 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 ofthem "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.
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 seetheir 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 presencetended 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 thanever 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 evenmore 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 thecurb, 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 alongthose 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 thevery 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.
IDISCOVERED 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 femininedrapery "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, oneblock 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.
IHAVE 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 thoughthey 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 advancedphases 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 lugubriousmanner, 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 greaterpleasure. 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 pleasantlawn. 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 proceededthrough 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 magazineHouse 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 thesanctum 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.
IREMEMBER 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 inany kindof 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 facilityand 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; howone 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 tobeginwriting, 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 Tarkingtonwrites: 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 theirhair 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 freakishnessof writing, and to suggest to you how very different it may be withyou.
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. Usedto 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 waswhyit 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 goout 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: