My Dear Sir,—Every liberal motive that can actuate an Authour in the dedication of his labours, concurs in directing me to you, as the person to whom the following Work should be inscribed.If there be a pleasure in celebrating the distinguished merit of a contemporary, mixed with a certain degree of vanity not altogether inexcusable, in appearing fully sensible of it, where can I find one, in complimenting whom I can with more general approbation gratify those feelings? Your excellence not only in the Art over which you have long presided with unrivalled fame, but also in Philosophyand elegant Literature, is well known to the present, and will continue to be the admiration of future ages. Your equal and placid temper, your variety of conversation, your true politeness, by which you are so amiable in private society, and that enlarged hospitality which has long made your house a common centre of union for the great and accomplished, the learned, and the ingenious; all these qualities I can, in perfect confidence of not being accused of flattery, ascribe to you.If a man may indulge an honest pride, in having it known to the world, that he has been thought worthy of particular attention by a person of the first eminence in the age in which he lived, whose company has been universally courted, I am justified in availing myself of the usual privilege of a Dedication, when I mention that there has been a long and uninterrupted friendship between us.If gratitude should be acknowledged for favours received, I have this opportunity, my dear Sir, most sincerely to thank you for the many happy hours which I owe to your kindness,—for the cordiality with which you have at all times been pleased to welcome me,—for the number of valuable acquaintances to whom you have introduced me,—for thenoctes cænæque Deûm, which I have enjoyed under your roof.If a work should be inscribed to one who is master of the subject of it, and whose approbation, therefore, must ensure it credit and success, the Life of Dr. Johnson is, with the greatest propriety, dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was the intimate and beloved friend of that great man; the friend, whom he declared to be "the most invulnerable man he knew; whom, if he should quarrel with him, he should find the most difficulty how to abuse." You, my dear Sir, studied him, and knew him well: you venerated and admired him. Yet, luminous as he was upon the whole, you perceived all the shades which mingled in the grand composition; all the peculiarities and slight blemishes which marked the literary Colossus. Your very warm commendation of the specimen which I gave in my "Journal of aTour to the Hebrides," of my being able to preserve his conversation in an authentik and lively manner, which opinion the Publik has confirmed, was the best encouragement for me to persevere in my purpose of producing the whole of my stores....I am, my dear Sir,Your much obliged friend,And faithful humble servant,London, April 20, 1791.James Boswell.
My Dear Sir,—Every liberal motive that can actuate an Authour in the dedication of his labours, concurs in directing me to you, as the person to whom the following Work should be inscribed.
If there be a pleasure in celebrating the distinguished merit of a contemporary, mixed with a certain degree of vanity not altogether inexcusable, in appearing fully sensible of it, where can I find one, in complimenting whom I can with more general approbation gratify those feelings? Your excellence not only in the Art over which you have long presided with unrivalled fame, but also in Philosophyand elegant Literature, is well known to the present, and will continue to be the admiration of future ages. Your equal and placid temper, your variety of conversation, your true politeness, by which you are so amiable in private society, and that enlarged hospitality which has long made your house a common centre of union for the great and accomplished, the learned, and the ingenious; all these qualities I can, in perfect confidence of not being accused of flattery, ascribe to you.
If a man may indulge an honest pride, in having it known to the world, that he has been thought worthy of particular attention by a person of the first eminence in the age in which he lived, whose company has been universally courted, I am justified in availing myself of the usual privilege of a Dedication, when I mention that there has been a long and uninterrupted friendship between us.
If gratitude should be acknowledged for favours received, I have this opportunity, my dear Sir, most sincerely to thank you for the many happy hours which I owe to your kindness,—for the cordiality with which you have at all times been pleased to welcome me,—for the number of valuable acquaintances to whom you have introduced me,—for thenoctes cænæque Deûm, which I have enjoyed under your roof.
If a work should be inscribed to one who is master of the subject of it, and whose approbation, therefore, must ensure it credit and success, the Life of Dr. Johnson is, with the greatest propriety, dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was the intimate and beloved friend of that great man; the friend, whom he declared to be "the most invulnerable man he knew; whom, if he should quarrel with him, he should find the most difficulty how to abuse." You, my dear Sir, studied him, and knew him well: you venerated and admired him. Yet, luminous as he was upon the whole, you perceived all the shades which mingled in the grand composition; all the peculiarities and slight blemishes which marked the literary Colossus. Your very warm commendation of the specimen which I gave in my "Journal of aTour to the Hebrides," of my being able to preserve his conversation in an authentik and lively manner, which opinion the Publik has confirmed, was the best encouragement for me to persevere in my purpose of producing the whole of my stores....
I am, my dear Sir,Your much obliged friend,And faithful humble servant,London, April 20, 1791.James Boswell.
In a more modern style of composition the epistolary form of dedication is still employed. I wish I had not (one time when I was moving) lost that copy I had, English edition, of George Moore's book "The Lake." I have a feeling that the dedicatory letter there, in French, was an admirable example of its kind of thing. If you happen to have a copy of the book, why don't you look it up?
When poems are written as dedications an established convention is followed. You affect at the beginning (in this formula) to be very humble in spirit, deeply modest in your conception of your powers. You speak, if your book is verse, of your "fragile rhyme," or (with Patmore) you "drag a rumbling wain." Again perhaps you speak (in the words of Burns) of your "wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble," or you call Southwell to witness that:
And so on. At any rate, you always do this. Then you say that his (or her) eyes for whom the book was written will change the dross to gold, the "blind words" to "authentic song," the "mushrump" to a flower, or some such thing. So, after all, you skillfully contrive to leave your book to the reader on a rather high, confident note. Any other way of writing a dedicatory poem to a book of verse (being out of the tradition altogether) is, I take it, bad, very bad, literary etiquette.
Numerous dedications have considerable fame. There is that enigmatical one to "Mr. W. H.," prefixed by Thomas Thorpe, bookseller of London, to Shakespeare's Sonnets. And Dr. Johnson's scathing definition of a patron when Lord Chesterfield fell short of Johnson's expectations in the amount which he contributed to the publication of the famous dictionary men will not willingly let die. Another celebrated dedication is that of "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies"—"To the Rare Few, who, early in life, have rid themselves of the Friendship of the Many." Laurence Sterne's solemn "putting up fairly topublic sale" to an imaginary lord a dedication to "Tristram Shandy" is not without merit. John Burroughs was felicitous in his dedication of "Bird and Bough"—"To the kinglet that sang in my evergreens in October and made me think it was May." And a very amiable dedication prefixed to "The Bashful Earthquake," by Oliver Herford, illustrated by the author, is this: "To the Illustrator, in grateful acknowledgment of his amiable condescension in lending his exquisite and delicate art to the embellishment of these poor verses, from his sincerest admirer, The Author." Mr. Herford's latest book (at the time of this writing), "This Giddy Globe," is dedicated so: "To President Wilson (With all his faults he quotes me still)."
A clever dedication, I think, is that of Christopher Morley's "Shandygaff"—"To The Miehle Printing Press—More Sinned Against Than Sinning." A dedication intended to be clever, and one frequently seen, is, in effect, "To the Hesitating Purchaser." A certain appropriateness is presented in a recent book on advertising, "Respectfully dedicated to the men who invest millions of dollars a year in national advertising." And some nimbleness of wit is attained inthe inscription of the book "Why Worry"—"To my long-suffering family and circle of friends, whose patience has been tried by my efforts to eliminate worry, this book is affectionately dedicated." As cheerful a dedication as I have come across is that prefixed by Francis Hackett to his volume "The Invisible Censor"; it is: "To My Wife—Signe Toksvig—whose lack of interest—in this book has been my—constant desperation."
Miss Annie Carroll Moore, supervisor of work with children at the New York Public Library, tells me that the other day a small boy inquired, "Who was the first man to write a book to another man?" I'm sure I don't know. Perhaps this is told somewhere. A number of books and articles concerning dedications, I have heard, are to be found in studious places. I have never read any of them. I remember, however, reviewing for a newspaper a number of years ago (I think it was in 1913) a book, then just published, called "Dedications: An Anthology of the Forms Used from the Earliest Days of Bookmaking to the Present Time." It was compiled by Mary Elizabeth Brown. The volume made handy to the general reader a fairly representative collection of dedications.
THERE is no nicer point, perhaps, in the study of photography as the one true, detached observer of mankind than here: It sees, what man has not seen—as his own representations show, his paintings, his drawings, his sculptures—the feminine underpinning with a quite passive, sexless eye.
In this interesting matter there are two human conceptions. There is the chorus girl style of leg, the expression of piquancy, which does not perhaps appeal to the noblest emotions, but the fascination of which has always haunted man whenever he has delineated anything in a stocking. Then there is the chaste, nude feminine limb of the painter and the sculptor. Both photography shows to be idealization.
When the camera reproduces the chorus girl herself, suddenly strangely plain and painted, there is to the observing and reflective instead ofsauciness the hollowness of sauciness. There can be few things more awful than those silent photographs of some gay chorus, reproducing, as they do, the spectacle with solemn critical aloofness from the spirit. It is as though the dawn of Judgment Day had suddenly broken upon the unspeakably wretched and tawdry scene. There is something, it would seem, indescribably tender, affectionate, in the irony of the gods which arranges that men should display in theatre lobbies, as an inducement to buy tickets of admission within, these death's heads of frivolity. As if the Comic Spirit itself were touched by the charm of the naiveté of man.
But, indeed, twinkling in the sympathetic light upon the Broadway stage, the professional chorus girl leg, well selected no doubt to begin with, and shaped with all the science of art, has beguiled even the reflective. A light intoxicant, it swirls in the veins like champagne for the careless moment it makes. It is pleasant because it is false.
The real leg, remarks the camera, is the amateur leg; it is depressing, but terribly convincing. As it stands in the raw light of the cheap photographer (and this too, too human document,the likeness of the poor girl who has performed somewhere in curiously home-made looking "tights," and been photographed thus afterward, is one of the stock exhibits of that most realistic of historians, the cheap photographer) the amateur leg decidedly lacks dash. The knee joint somehow seems to work somewhat the wrong way. Sometimes, in circumference, this limb is immense, sometimes the reverse. But the terribleness of it always is that it is so human. That is, it is the leg of an animal. Subconsciously it suggests surgery.
Conspicuous among the postures assumed for its iconoclastic purpose by the genius of photography is that of "art." That fetish of the great body of the unenlightened, the dim feeling that to the enlightened bodily nakedness in pictorial representation is something very fine, is played upon. The "art photograph" is an ironic tour de force. If specimens of this have ever fallen in the way of your observation, then you have reflected upon the strange discrepancy between the female nude as presented in painting and sculpture and in photographs. (Oh, souls of Fragonard, Boucher, Watteau, what romantic rogues you were!) You will have perceived,with some grim humor, that until the invention of photography, nobody, apparently, had ever seen a nude female figure.
Now there is Edgar Degas,—and it is a curious reflection that in comparison with the work of this pessimist genius who has deliberately brought cynicism to bear upon the female nude, photographs purporting (over their sneer) to be reflections of beauty, give by far the most distressing impression. In the painful realization that they have a kind of truth beyond human art these abominable humbugs are a kind of art. What (you exclaimed) was Schopenhauer's remark about the clouded intellect ofmanwhich could give the name of the "fair sex" to "that under-sized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, knock-kneed race"?
It may be a long "drive," but it strikes you as a thoughtful observer that there is some biological analogy between "art photographs" and the photographs, to be seen in travel books, of native African women. What a philosopher the camera is! The French savant was very probably contemplating the photograph of some member of a savage tribe when he wrote, in "The Garden of Epicurus" (addressing modern ladies): "Butnever think too highly of yourselves, my sisters; you were not, at your first appearance in the world, perfect and fully armed. Your grandmothers in the days of the mammoth and the giant bear did not wield the same dominion over the prehistoric hunters and cave-men which you possess over us. You were useful then, and necessary, but you were not invincible. To tell the truth, in those far-off ages, and for long afterwards, you lacked charm. In those days you were like men, and men were like brutes. To make of you the fearful and wonderful thing you are today—veils: the Empire, crinoline, décolleté, tube, pannier." And, the sexless camera explains, the poetry of man.
IKNOW a young woman—a very handsome young woman she is, too. (I have a decided penchant for handsome young women.) But that is beside the point. As I was about to say (when a pleasant but an extraneous idea interrupted me): this young woman the other day took her young husband by the hand and conducted him to the offices of a publisher. Here she mounted him upon a chair (very much, I fancy, as though the child were about to have his hair cut), and she said to the barber—I mean she said to the editor, with whom she had some acquaintance—she said: "This is my husband. He is just out of the army. I have brought him in to have his head shingled"—— No, no! that isn't what she said; I am getting my wires crossed. She said, "I have brought him in to get him a position here."
Said the editor, "What would your son, I mean your husband, like to do?"
"I want him," replied the young woman, "to be an editor."
"Has he ever been an editor?" inquired the editor kindly, as he admired the shape of the young woman's nose.
"No," she answered, stroking his hand (the hand, that is, of her husband), "why, no."
"What has been his experience?" asked the editor, as the thought of all the hard work he had to do in the next hour and a half wrestled in his mind with his pleasure in the young woman's voice.
"Why," she said, "before he went into the army I don't know that he had any particular experience. He was just out of college, you see."
"Oh!" said the editor, "I see. And why," he asked musingly, "do you want him to be an editor?"
"Well, I don't know exactly," answered the young woman, "I just thought it would be rather nice to have him be an editor."
Even so. Day after day, come into publishing houses young persons, and indeed people of all ages, who have a hunch (and apparently nothing more to go by) that they would like to be "an editor." Also, in every other mail, come lettersfrom aspirants in distant parts setting forth (what they deem) their qualifications.
Now and then someone makes such an application who has been an editor before. It (editing) is probably the only business he knows, and perhaps it is too late (or his spirit is too broken) for him to take up another. So, disillusioned but not misguided, for him there is charity of thought. But the fledglings are in the great majority. Their qualifications (is it necessary to say?) usually are: a university degree, perhaps some association with a college paper, maybe the credit of an article (or a poem) or two published in a minor magazine issued for the Intelligentzia, a very sincere attachment to books of superior worth, a disdain for empyreal literature, openness to a modest salary (to begin), and an abysmal lack of any comprehension of the business of publishing books or magazines. Every little bit turns up one who (it develops) wants a job on the side, as it were, merely to sustain the real business of life, which (maybe) is taking a graduate course at Columbia, or some such thing. And in many cases (it is obvious) the real business of life is writing poetry, or fiction,though to this end a job must be endured—doubtless temporarily.
Now why anyone should want to be an editor beats me. No, I retract. 'Tis quite plain. Ignorance, ma'am, sheer ignorance of the calamity. I know an editor; in fact, I know six. One, indeed, is a brother of mine, another is a cousin, a third an uncle. Before they became editors they used to read books and magazines—for pleasure, sometimes; or again for profit to their souls. Now they do neither. They read only professionally. They can't read anything unless they have to, in the way of business. Before they became editors they led intellectual lives; spiritually they grew continually. They used to be perfectly delighted, excited (as people should be), by hearing of books, of authors, new to them. They were fascinated by the journey of their minds. They might have gone on thus through their years, interested in themselves, interesting to others, pillars of society. They might even, for all their thoughts (then) were inspirations, have written delightful things themselves. In fact, two of them did. But they became editors.
Now they, subconsciously, count the words of manuscripts. They cut articles, like cloth, to fit.They gauge the "rate" to be paid for this, for that. They cannot take an interest in this because something like it has just appeared somewhere else. They can't take an interest in that because it is not like something that has just made a hit somewhere else. Now when they have something to read they say (like Plim, Bimm, whatever his name was, the veteran hack novelist in the early Barrie story), "I'll begin the damn thing at eight o'clock."
Worst of all, they have lost, totally lost, that shield against adversity, that great joy in days of prosperity, that deep satisfaction of life. I mean, of course, the relish ofbuyingbooks. Everyone knows that to revel in the possession of a book one must covet it before one feels one should buy it. Everyone knows that to love a book jealously one must have made some sacrifice to obtain it. That a library which supplies unending strength to the spirit means in all its parts, a little here, a little there, some self-denial of other things.
But editors, poor fish, are impotent in this high and lasting pleasure; they have lost the power to spend their money for books. They expect books to be given to them free by the publishers. Their money goes for Kelley pool and cigars.
"WHEN I go back home," he said, "and tell them about this they won't believe it."
It was a pleasant April Sunday afternoon. We were sitting very comfortably in a saloon over Third Avenue way about the middle of Manhattan Island. Throngs of customers came and went through the front door, whose wicket gate was seldom still. Whiskey glasses twinkled and tinkled all along the long bar. Only here and there in the closely packed line of patrons stood one with a tall "schooner" of beer before him. Harry and Ed, in very soiled white jackets, led an active life.
You see, since theoretically intoxicants were not being sold, there was no occasion for the pretence of being closed on Sunday and confining business to the side door and the back room. On the table between us lay a newspaper. Its headlines proclaimed yesterday's "liquor raids," thousandsupon thousands of dollars worth of "rum" confiscated by the city police in the progress of the campaign resulting from the recent passage of the New York State "dry" law.
At the bottom of the page was a little story of the conviction of a delicatessen dealer somewhere on the outskirts of Brooklyn on whose premises had been discovered by the authorities a small amount of wine containing more than one-half of one per cent alcohol.
Pete came in hurriedly. Harry and Ed glanced at him questioningly. He nodded to them as though to say "yes," and dropped into the chair before us. "They're comin'," he remarked. "About half a block off." Every whiskey glass had suddenly disappeared from the bar.
Pete, a little grey man now of about fifty who arises for the day at about noon, has had an interesting career. Once upon a time he was a "bell-hop" in Albany. He is a devoted patron of the silent drama and a man of intellectual interests—making a hobby of clipping from newspapers poems and editorials which impress him and reading them several months later to chance acquaintances who are too drowsy to oppose him. Hisconnection with this establishment is light and picturesque. His duties are chiefly social. That is, he sees home one after another customers who require that friendly attention. He is perpetually agreeable to the suggestion of gratuitous refreshment. He is very cheerful and gentlemanly in the matter of accommodating his tastes to any liquid from ten-cent beer to ninety-cent Scotch which the purchaser is disposed to pay for.
Here they were! The two police officers strolled in slowly, smiling. In their blue and their gold buttons they looked very respendent against the somewhat shabby scene. Ranged along before the bar were a number of young men in the uniform of private soldiers. There were several sailors. Here was a postman cheering himself on his rounds. There was a huge fellow the nickel plate on whose cap announced that he was a piano mover. The centre of a group, there was a very large man who looked as though he had something darkly to do with ward politics. At one place in the line was a very dapper little Japanese, who produced his money from a wallet carried in his breast pocket. But mostly the motley company was of the riff-rafforder of humanity. That is another one of the curious developments of "prohibition." Here, in all places of this character, you may find an endless number of the sort of men who used to be accustomed to paying as little as ten cents for a drink of very fiery and inferior whiskey, now standing before the bar by the hour and paying from fifty to seventy-five cents for whiskey (if you can call it that) considerably worse. How on earth can they do it? I do not know.
The two policemen moved the length of the room, and came to a halt at the open end of the bar. Here they stood for a couple of moments, observing (I felt with some amusement) Harry and Ed serving their beakers of beer. Then, as though suddenly having a bright idea, one of them made his way along back of the bar to the cigar case at the front end. He stooped, opened the sliding panel at the bottom of this and poked around inside with his club. As he came along behind the bar back to the open end he stooped several times to peer at the shelf below. He joined his comrade, the two of them thrust their heads into the back room, and then moved out through the side door.
"Well, we're safe for another hour," said Pete. "Why couldn't they find the stuff?" Iasked him. "I'll bet you couldn't find it if you'd go behind the bar yourself," he answered. Harry and Ed had found it within two seconds after the shadow of the law had lifted. And the room was humming with the sound of renewed, and somewhat hectic, conviviality. "We'll get caught pretty soon though, I guess," observed Johnnie, the Italian "chef," who on week-days served the economical lunch of roast beef sandwiches and "hot dogs." Harry and Ed laughed in a rather uncomfortable way. But for the present, at least, business was too brisk for their thoughts to be distracted more than a second or two from the job.
"The old man," remarked Pete, referring to the proprietor, "is on a toot again. Been under the weather for about a week now. He always gets that way whenever one of the new law scares comes along. Gets worried or sore or something and that upsets him."
Pete hadn't been very well himself for several days. Sick in bed, he said, yesterday. He never used to be sick at all, "in the old days," he declared, no matter how much he had taken the day before. Never had a headache, or bad stomach, or anything like that. A little nervous,perhaps, yes. "But it's the kind of stuff we get nowadays," he thought. "There hasn't been time since prohibition started for the system to get trained to react to this TNT stuff, like it was to regular liquor. Maybe in ten years or in the next generation people's systems will have got adjusted to this kind of poison and it'll be all right with 'em." It's an interesting idea, I think.
A customer was requesting Ed to "fix him up" a pint flask. No, it couldn't be done just now, as the supply was running too low for it to be passed out that much at a time. The disappointed customer tried to content himself with endeavoring to absorb as much of a pint as he could obtain through a rapidly consumed series of single drinks. And pretty soon it was officially announced from the bar that there would be "no more until nine o'clock in the morning." I gathered that the reserve stock was upstairs or downstairs and that the "old man" had gone away with the key.
We went forth to take a walk, Pete accompanying us as a sort of cicerone, and discoursing with much erudition of bar-rooms as we went. "These places are getting scarce," he observed. "There don't seem to be any, or there seems tobe hardly any of the old places uptown," I remarked. "Oh! no; not in residential neighborhoods," he replied; and I inferred that the law was, in deference to the innocent spirit of domesticity, keener-eyed there. "And there ain't but very few below the dead-line downtown," Pete said.
They have, the bars, very largely disappeared from Broadway. Have been gone from that thoroughfare for some time. And in this thought we come upon one of the great mockeries of the situation which has existed since the Eighteenth Amendment went (more or less) into effect. What I mean is this: A great many people who had no ferocious opposition to the idea of a cocktail being drunk before a meal, or wine with it, or even a liqueur after it, did detest the saloon. It was the institution of the common, corner saloon, I fancy, at which the bulk of American temperance sentiment was directed.
The perverse operation of prohibition then was this: It ceased to be possible (openly) to obtain any alcoholic beverage in anything like wholesome surroundings, in a first-class restaurant or hotel or in a gentleman's club. But in New York City, as is known to everybody who knows anythingat all about the matter, the saloons, and particularly the lower class of saloons, have flourished as never before.
As we crossed Broadway Pete pointed out one place which had been going until a short time ago, an odious looking place (as I remember it) within. It was but a short way from a club of distinguished membership. So much had this doggery become frequented by these gentlemen that it became jocularly known among them as the "club annex."
Continuing on over into the West Side, here was a place, now a shop dealing in raincoats, but formerly a "gin-mill" where throughout this last winter there had been an extraordinary infusion of Bacardi rum, drunk neat, as their favorite drink, by its multitudinous customers. And there was a place, a baby carriage exhibited for sale in its window now, which as a saloon had burned out one night not long ago; when its proprietor accepted the catastrophe with striking cheerfulness, withdrew his business activities to his nearby apartment and took up calling upon old customers by appointment. Innumerable the places over which Pete breathed a sigh, which had lately turned into tobacco stores or candy shops.
We turned in at a door on Sixth Avenue. A little more caution seemed to be observed here than at the place we had just left. But Pete, of course, would pass any scrutiny. The liquor bottle, you noted, stood within the safe at the inner end of the bar, its door hanging ready at any moment to be kicked to. The barman covered with his hand the little glasses he set out until you took them, and admonished, "Get away with it!" The drinks were eighty cents a throw, but they had the feel of genuine good-grade rye.
Night had fallen. We passed into the back room, where a pathetic object was banging dismal tunes on a rattle-trap of a piano. A party of four entered. The young women were very young and decidedly attractive. The two couples began to circle about in a dance. Next moment came a terrific thundering on the front of the building. "Cop wants less noise," said the waiter to the dancers; "you'll have to quit." "Throw that into you," he said to the seated customer he was serving, and directly whisked away the glasses.
"When I go back home," said my friend from the Middle West, "and tell them about this they won't believe it."
ICAME very near to being shot in the White House grounds the other day. Yep! You see, my friend is a bit on the order of what the modistes call "stylish stout." Rather more than a bit, indeed. Looks something like a slightly youthfuller Irvin Cobb. Also wouldn't consider it decent of him out of doors not to "wear" his stag-handled cane. Altogether, not unlikely to be taken for a real somebody. He was fishing round in his breast pocket for the letter his senator from "back home" had given him to the President's secretary. Drew out what may have seemed an important looking document.
As we came along the path toward the executive offices there was an up-stage looking bunch thronging about the little steps—rollicking gamins, smartly turned out flappers, a sprinkling of rather rakish looking young males, and (intheir best black silk) a populous representation of those highly honorable and very ample figures who have generously mothered the young sons and daughters of the American prairies.
Suddenly from the side lines they popped out—a whole battery of them, with their bug-like machines on tall stilts. The motion picture camera men were taking no chances that anything important would escape their fire. Evidently they couldn't quite place us, however, so we got through the door without further incident.
When we had entered the grounds through the gate at the far side of the lawn my thoughtful friend had thrown away his lighted cigar, feeling that promiscuous smoking here would be taboo from danger of fire to so precious a national jewel as the White House. Within the anteroom to the executive offices the scene very decidedly suggested one of those jovial masculine gatherings termed a "smoker." The seething and motley company of (obviously) newspaper men put one in mind of the recent arrival at a military training camp of a nondescript batch of drafted men not yet got into uniform. General air about the room of loafing in a corner cigar store.
Then, suddenly, a rising murmur and a pell-mell push toward the door. My friend and I were swayed out upon the step, and saw at the gate directly at the street corner of the building the movie camera men very vigorously clearing for action. They had halted close before them a tall, striking and very distinguished figure. You instantly recognized him by the insignia which he wore on the slope toward his chin of his under lip—a wisp of whisker (light straw color) such as decorated the illustrious countenance, too, of the late James Abbott McNeil Whistler.
He was, this gentleman, looking very sheepish, continually bowing in a rather strained manner to the camera men and lifting his black derby hat to them. They were scrambling about the legs of their engines and cranking away with a rattle. "Over this way a little, Mr. Paderewski!" yelled one. "Hold on, Mr. Paderewski, there you are!" bawled another. Boisterous mirth about the doorway.... "That's good!" "Sure, he's only a premier."
Then, a deferential scattering to make way for him as he approached. Held him up again, thecamera guerrillas, on the steps. He was bowing with an effect of increasing strain and the intensity of his sheepishness becoming painful to contemplate. His hair a white bush thrusting out behind. Ghostly white bow tie. His black clothes beautifully sleek and pressed. At close up, his features blunter, less sensitive in chiselling than appears in his photographs. The flesh of his face striking in the degree of the pinkness and fairness of complexion of the races of Northern Europe.
My friend and I had not yet seen Mr. Christian. Had that morning called upon Mr. Tumulty on a matter of business. Found he had set up shop in a business structure called the Southern Building. Transom Legend: Law Offices ... Joseph P. Tumulty. On entrance door: Joseph P. Tumulty, Charles H. Baker. Outstanding feature of ante-chamber a life-size cream plaster bust, on tall polished wood pedestal, of Woodrow Wilson. Mr. Tumulty, stocky of stature, driving in manner, bustled forth from his private office. Exhaled atmosphere of ruddiness.
My friend at times (I fear) speaks with some circumlocution. Our real business here settled, he was ambling on toward the expression of hishope that we might possibly be able sometime, just for a moment, to see, just get a glimpse of....
"The President," Mr. Tumulty cut in, with an anticipating nod. My friend looked a bit confused as (I could see) the words "the ex-President" were about to come from him. But, undoubtedly, both of them meant the same gentleman.
In the executive offices we trailed along with the newspaper men for their daily afternoon interview with Mr. Christian, my friend bathing himself in tobacco smoke as complacently as anyone of the party. Entered a sort of council chamber. Long table down the middle. Conspicuous ornament of the apartment, on a mantel, a plaster cast of a humorous Uncle Sam in a dress coat, holding aloft an American flag, and flanked by a turkeyfied looking eagle.
Congregation pressed close about the table, behind which in a swivel chair sat in a relaxed and rather pensive attitude an angular figure, swinging leisurely looking legs which terminated in very white sox and low-cut shoes. A rather thick thatch of greying hair, large aquiline features, a rather melancholy cast of expression,eyes cast downward at the table, clothes not recently pressed and which no one would be inclined to call dapper, Mr. Christian in general effect suggested a good deal one's impression of a somewhat dusty "reference librarian" at the information desk of the New York Public Library being besieged by an unusually large number of questioners.
"Well, gentlemen," he uttered very quietly and slowly, "what have you got on your mind?"
"George," asked a figure with pad and pencil in hand, "what about this?" Mr. Christian appeared to ponder the matter a good while, and the upshot of his cogitation appeared to be that there wasn't much of anything about it. "And what is there to that?" inquired another. Well at length there didn't seem to be much to that either. A few items of information were given. And the audience briefly closed.
When we had filed out with the company from the room my friend and I took seats in the corridor. He had given his letter to the doorman. A couple of soldiers in uniform, a group of very spruce, robust and cheery-looking Catholic priests, an elderly individual of very dejected pose, and a miscellaneous assortment of humanityalso were waiting. The doorman was being continually accosted. "Just want to shake hands with him, that's all," and "Just want to say 'How de do'," were solicitations frequently overheard.
The doorman beckoned to us and told us to go into an apartment which he indicated and "take a seat." Probably my friend didn't hear that instruction, as he marched straight up to Mr. Christian directly upon entering the room flooded with afternoon light pouring through an imposing row of tall and beautiful windows. Mr. Christian slowly arose from his desk, coming gradually to his full height, and yielded a cautious hand to my friend. He looked at the bright and somewhat flustered countenance of my friend rather sadly, as it seemed. Though at some sally of my friend's about the pronunciation of his name he smiled with considerable natural human warmth. Then very gravely he stated that with so many appointments at present to be made, and with the multitudinous labors now upon him, and so forth and so on, it was hardly possible that he could just now arrange for my friend to have a word with, as he said, ... "the Senator."
My friend was, obviously, a bit taken abackby the term, as his mind had been careering along with visions of his seeing no less a person than the President. But there was no doubt that both he and Mr. Christian were referring to the same gentleman.
I should add that my friend's self-imposed mission of shaking hands with Mr. Harding and writing an article about his impressions of him before the President had yet given an audience to the accredited representatives of the press was more or less audacious. And I should add still further that Mr. Christian seemed genuinely reluctant to dismiss my friend without a ray of hope, and suggested that he call again after a few days. Suggestion was at Mr. Christian's own volition.
As we turned to leave the room we saw that the bevy of Catholic Fathers and several other persons had also been admitted, and were all beaming with bland cheerful confidence.
We strolled along the driveway leading by the front entrance to the White House. The baggy looking policeman lazily sunning himself beside the portico recalled to my mind with amusing contrast the snappy Redcoats who briskly pace back and forth before Buckingham Palace.
They are superbly haughty and disdainful beings. A charmingly democratic character, this policeman. "'At a fierce cloud over there," he observed to us as we paused nearby.
A splendid looking army officer together with a caped naval commander emerged with springy step from the White House door, both carrying an air of high elation. A sumptuous car rolled up and halted beneath the portico roof extending over the driveway. From it a lady leaned out extending a card. Out pranced a gleaming negro flunky to receive it with bows of elaborate courtliness. As he turned to re-enter the White House it struck me that I did not believe I had ever seen a happier looking human being. Also, in his beautiful dark blue tail coat with bright silver buttons, and delicately striped light waistcoat, he brought to my mind (incongruously enough) the waiters at Keen's Chop House. The lady rolled on.
A bumptious looking character mounted to the entrance, and sent in a card. It was evident in his bearing that he expected within a moment to stride through the doorway. A figure in a skirt coat emerged. Bumptious being springs upon him and begins to pump his hand up anddown with extraordinary verve, straining the while toward the doorway. Skirt coat (his hand continuing to be pumped) deferentially edges bumptious character outward toward descending steps.
It had been an exceedingly hot day for early spring. Traffic policemen had stood on their little platforms at the centre of the street crossings under those mammoth parasols they have to shield them from the rigors of the Washington sun. As we proceeded toward our exit from the grounds, approaching to the White House came a diminutive and decrepit figure muffled in an overcoat extending to his heels, bowed under a tall top hat, a pair of mighty ear-muffs clamped over his ears.
We had that morning visited the Capitol. My friend had been much more interested in the guide-conducted touring parties than in the atrocious painting of the Battle of Lake Erie, and so on, expatiated on to them. Parties which, he said, made him feel that he was back again at the Indiana State Fair. We had sat, in the visitors' gallery of the Senate, in the midst of a delegation of some sort of religious sect, whose beards had most decidedly the effect of falsewhiskers very insecurely attached. Had been much struck by the extreme politeness of a new Senator who bowed deeply to each one in turn of a row of pages he passed before. Had responded within a few minutes to the command of "All out!" because of executive meeting, and sympathised with the sentiments of fellow citizens likewise ejected who went forth murmuring that they hadn't "got much."
We had wandered through the noble and immaculate Senate Office building, and been much impressed by the scarcity of spittoons there, an abundance of which articles of furniture we had since boyhood associated with all public buildings. We had sat in the outer office of our state's senator, and listened to one lady after another explain to his secretary in this wise: "I just made up my mind ... I just decided to go right after it ... I just determined ... I just thought ... Otherwise, of course, I shouldn't presume to ask it."
In the Library of Congress we had been much interested to hear an European gentleman of vast erudition connected with the Library declare that "there was more intellectual life in Washington than in any other city in America—thatit was an European city, in the best sense." We had been accosted on the street by a very portly and loud-voiced man who introduced himself by inquiring where we were from; who confided that his business in Washington had to do with an alcohol permit; and who asked to be directed to Corcoran Gallery. We had run into an old actor friend who was here playing, he said, "nut stuff"; and who observed that Washington was "more of a boob town than ever." We had been assured by a newspaper friend that Washington was so full of inventors and blue law fans that if you "dropped a match anywhere a nut would step on it."
We had been charmed by the vast number of elderly couples apparently on a final mellow honeymoon before the fall of the curtain. At lunch had overheard an inland matron inquire of a waitress if scollops were "nice." Had enjoyed hot corn bread with every meal. Had been unable to account for the appearance on the streets of so many wounded soldiers. Had made the mistake of getting up so early that in the deep Washington stillness of half past seven we were scared to run the water for our baths for fear of rousing the sleeping hotel to angrytumult. Had noted that nowhere except in London is the fashion of freshly polished shoes so much an institution. Had speculated as to why the standard model of the American statesman's hat should be a blend of an expression of the personalities of W. J. Bryan, Buffalo Bill and Colonel Watterson.
And, finally, listening in the evening to the orchestra in the corridor of the New Willard, we discussed the large opportunities for a serious literary work dealing with the varieties and idiosyncrasies of the Washington hair cut. There is the Bryan type, with the hair turned outward in a thick roll above the back of the neck, and forming a neat hat rest. There is the roach back from a noble dome. There is the grey curly bushy all around. There is the heavy grey wave mounting high over one side. And—well, there seem to be an almost endless number of styles, all more or less peculiar to the spirit of Washington, and all of distinct distinction.
"Who's the old bird gettin' so many pictures took?" inquired a loitering passerby.
A hum of much good nature was coming fromthe motley throng about the steps before the executive office of the White House. "Beer and light wine," called out someone, apparently in echo to something just said by the queer looking character being photographed by the battery of camera men, and a rattle of laughter went around through the group.
"That's old Coxey," replied someone. "He's down here to get Debs out," he added. The amiable and celebrated "General" who a number of years ago had led his "army" on to Washington was smiling like a very wrinkled and animated potato into the lenses of the cameras which had been moved to within a couple of feet or so of his nose.
My friend and I crossed the street to the State, Army and Navy building. We had been there the other day to see a young man in the State Department to whom he had a card. Had been much struck by his beauty. And had wondered if handsomeness was a requisite for a statesman in this Administration.
Now we sought the press room. Presented our credentials to a press association man there. Cordial chap. Said, "Stick around." Others floated in. Pretty soon press association manheartily calls out to my friend (whose name is Augustus), "George. Come on!" And we trail along with about fifty others into the ante-chamber of the new Secretary of the Navy, who at half past ten is to give his first interview to the newspaper men.
Funny looking corridors, by the way, in this building. Swing doors all about, constructed of horizontal slats, and in general effect bearing a picturesque resemblance to the doors of the old-time saloon.
I noticed that as we went along my friend punched in one side of the crown of his soft hat and raked it somewhat to one side of his head. He felt, I suspected, uncomfortably neat for the society of this bonhomie crowd of bona fide newspaper men, and did not wish to appear aloof by being too correct in attire.
The company passed along the corridor and into the anteroom under a heavy head of tobacco smoke. There the press association man presented each of the flock in turn to a chubby little fellow behind a railing, whom I took to be secretary to the Secretary; and presently the delegation was admitted to the inner office, a spacious apartment where one passed first an enormousglobe, then a large model of theOld Kearsargein a glass case; and at length we ranged ourselves closely before a mountain of a man in a somewhat saggy suit. Clean shaven, massive features, very bald dome, widely smiling, Secretary Denby looks just a bit (I thought) like Mr. Punch. His voice comes in a deep rumble and he has entirely ample ears. Trousers too long.
No; he had not seen the story in that morning's paper which was handed to him by one of the reporters. He would not confirm this; he would not deny that. After all, he had been "only a week in the job." And one might so very easily be "injudicious." "Wily old boy," was one comment as the party trailed out and made for the press telephones, discussing among themselves "how would you interpret" this and that?
Next, at eleven o'clock, the Secretary of State was down on the newspaper men's schedule. We went into a kind of waiting room across the corridor from the real offices of the Secretary. Most conspicuous decoration a huge painting of a Bey of Tunis, the presentation of which (the inscription said) had something to do with condolences from France on the death of Lincoln.Also on one wall a portrait of Daniel Webster.
Mr. Fletcher, Under Secretary of State, appeared before us. Very dapper gentleman. Athletic in build. Fashionable clothes. Grey hair but youthful in effect. Handsome, smooth-shaven face. Suggested an actor, or perhaps a very gentlemanly retired pugilist. Held beautiful shell spectacles in hand before him. Stood very straight. Had another fellow alongside of him to supply information when himself in doubt. When asked concerning someone who was in jail, inquired "Where is the old boy?" Smiling cordially, seeking continually for an opportunity for some joke or pleasantry, trying bravely to keep up a strong front, but obviously becoming more and more uneasy under the ordeal of rapid-fire questions about Russia, Germany, Japan and so on and so on. On being asked concerning diplomatic appointments under consideration, bowed briskly, replied "A great many," and escaped—almost, it might be said, fled.
Secretary of War next on the list. Full length portraits in his offices of Generals Pershing, Bliss and Petain. Many flags, historic ones (presumably) in glass cases. Heavy build, Secretary Weeks, very wide across the middle.Straggling moustache, drooping. Very direct and business-like in manner. Entered room saying, "Well, there are a number of things I have to tell you gentlemen." Frank and positive in his statements and denials. Stood twisting a key-ring as he talked. Wore neat pin in tie. When told that the War Department was supposed to have such and such a thing under consideration, he replied, tapping himself on the breast, "Not this part of the War Department." One questioner sought to obtain from him a more direct reply to a question that had been put to the Secretary of the Navy. He answered, "I know nothing about the navy." When there was apparently nothing more that he had to say, he concluded the audience very deftly.
"He's a different guy, ain't he?" was one correspondent's observation as we passed out of the room. "One of the biggest men in the government," he added. "Gives the impression of knowing as much about that job now as Baker did when he left."
To the National Press Club we went for lunch. It is pleasant to see in what esteem this club holds those two eminent journalists, Eugene Field and Napoleon Bonaparte, whose portraits hangframed side beside on one of its walls. Napoleon, however, is held in such very great regard as a newspaper man that another and larger picture of him hangs in another room.
The newspaper army had shifted to the business office of the White House. As we entered Secretary Weeks was departing. He pressed through the throng of reporters clustered about him. "Nothing to say," was apparently what he was saying. "We are referred to Warren," said one of the men. "Looks like we really were going to see him," said another. The President had not yet given an interview to the press men. So we took seats among the rows of figures ranged around the walls.
While waiting we were given an audience, so to say, by Laddie, the White House Airedale. Curly haired breed. "How old is he?" we asked the small colored boy whose office includes charge of him. "A year," he said. The dog stands well, and holds his stump of a tail straight aloft, correctly enough. But there is altogether too much black on him, we observed; covers his breast and flanks, instead of being merely a "saddle" on his back. "Yes, everybody says it," answered the boy.
Secretary Hughes was seen coming down the corridor on his way out. The newspaper men pressed forward forming a narrow line through which he walked, very erect, smiling broadly, bowing to right and left, and continually moving his black derby hat up and down before him. "Gets a great reception, don't he?" said one reporter, glowing with a sort of jovial pride at Mr. Hughes.
"You'll have to see the boss," Mr. Hughes repeated a number of times as he came along, and turning slightly made one last very good-natured bow as he moved out through the door.
"Are they all here?" called out Mr. Christian, then marshalled us through his office and into the large, circular and very handsome office of the President.
While we awaited him he could be seen, through a doorway, talking, on a porch-like structure opening out along the back of the building. He was very leisurely in manner. I think my first outstanding impression of my glimpse of him was that he was a very handsome man, most beautifully dressed in a dark blue serge sack suit, very sharply pressed.
He came in, moving slowly, stood close behindhis desk, and said, "Well, gentlemen, what is there that I can tell you?" He spoke very quietly and deliberately. The Cabinet he said had discussed problems relating to the "hang-over" (as he put it) of the War, in particular the trade situation of the world. He mentioned that he did not desire to be quoted directly. He had not been "annoyed" but he had been "distressed," he said, by having been so quoted not long ago. The top button of his coat was buttoned. His cuffs were stiffly starched. He inclined his head a good part of the time to one side. Sometimes half closed his eyelids. Then would open them very wide, and make an outward gesture with his hands, accompanied by something like a shrug of the shoulders. Close up I was struck by the bushiness of his eyebrows. He wore a single ring, mounting a rather large light stone. No pin to his tie. He swung backward and forward on his feet. Put on shell-rimmed nose glasses to read. Sometimes pursed his lips slowly. As he talked absently rolled a small piece of paper he had picked up from his desk into the shape of a cigarette. His talk had a slightly oratorical roll. He was exceedingly patient and exceedingly courteous. His generalatmosphere was one of deep kindness. In conclusion he said, "Glad to see you again."
"That's pretty nice," was the comment of one of the newspaper men as we emerged from his presence.
As we moved away through the grounds my friend dilated on a somewhat whimsical idea of his. This was to this effect. In motion picture plays (my friend insisted) kings were always much more kingly in appearance and manner than any modern king would be likely to be. But (he declared) it would be very difficult for a motion picture concern to get hold of any actor to play the part who would look so much like an American President as President Harding.
We stopped in to look at the east room, now again open. A character who had evidently not been born in any of the capitols of Europe was admiring the place vastly. He looked with especial approval at the enormous chandeliers, those great showers, or regular storms, of glass. "Pretty hard to beat," was his patriotic comment.
It's a big old building, dark inside, the Washington Post Office. He looked like some sort ofa guard about the premises who was too tired to stand up and so did his guarding sitting in a chair. My friend had got so accustomed to inquiring our way to the office of Secretary Hughes, and of Secretary Weeks, and so on, that he asked where we would find Secretary Hays.
The man looked at us very contemptuously. "The Postmaster General?" at length he boomed. Well, he was on the fifth floor. As we stepped from the car my friend remarked on the practice universal in Washington of men removing their hats when in the presence of women in elevators.
Our appointment was for ten o'clock. We had got quite used, however, to waiting an hour or so for the gentlemen we sought to see. Several other callers were ahead of us here, and we sat down in the outer office when we had presented our cards to a very kind and attentive young man who appeared to be in charge.
Within a very few minutes, however, we were ushered round into a secluded inner office. "The General," the young man said, "will be in in amoment. He sees them in two different rooms at the same time." This large room was entirely bare of painting or other decorations.
Speaking of decorations reminds me of the striking handsomeness of the Cabinet officers we had so far been seeing. Beginning with the President himself (prize winner of the lot in this respect) the spectacle of this Administration had up to this moment been a regular beauty show.
The physiognomy of Mr. Hays, of course, strikes a somewhat different note in the picture. Though he is not, I should say, as funny looking as some of his pictures suggest.
He fairly leaped into the room. Spidery figure. Calls you by your last name without the prefix of Mister. Very, very earnest in effect. No questions necessary to get him started. He began at once to talk. Poured forth a steady stream of rapid utterance. Denounced the idea of labor as a "commodity." Said: "We have a big job here. Three hundred thousand employees. Millions of customers. I think we can do it all right, though. But our people in the department all over the country everywhere must be made to feel that a human spirit is behind them. It's in the heart that the battle's won. It's because of the spirit behind them whetherour men throw a letter on the floor before a door or put it through the door." Made a gesture with his hands illustrating putting a letter through a door. Looked very hard at the very clean top of his desk much of the time as he talked. Now and then looked very straight indeed at us. Gave us a generous amount of his time. At length arose very briskly.
Routed us out around through some side way. Had a private elevator concealed somewhere in a dark corner. Turned us over to the colored man in charge of it with the request, "Won't you please take my friends down?"
As we were crossing the street we ran into our old friend from New York who edits a very flourishing women's magazine. Down here, he said, to get an article from Mrs. Harding. Had found her altogether willing to supply him with an article, but in so much of a flutter with her new activities that she didn't see her way to finding time soon to write it. What, we asked, was the article to be about? Well, Mrs. Harding's idea was to revive all the old traditions of the White House. And what were those traditions? Mrs. Harding hadn't said beyond the custom of Easter egg-rolling.
We were on our way over to see Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt. He is not in the State, Army and Navy building where Mr. Denby is, but some ten minutes' walk away, in the long, rather fragile looking Navy Department building constructed during the War.
Here numerous gold-braided officers continually come and go. The building is filled with very beautiful models of fighting ships. At one side of Roosevelt's door is a model of theSan Diego, at the other side a "sample U. S. Navy Patrol Boat."
As we gave him our cards a young man asked us if we knew "the Colonel." An old Washington newspaper man had told us that morning, "He will go far under his own hat." Several very large men, also waiting, were smoking very large cigars while we waited. While all male visitors to public offices in Washington appear to smoke continually, those in government positions apparently do not smoke during office hours. And government business hours there seem to be queer. The Senate goes into session at just about lunch time. The President seems to be around in his business office throughout the whole of the middle of the day. And the office of the Secretaryof State telephones you at six o'clock Saturday night.
The young man showed us in. Mr. Roosevelt arose from his desk, shook hands very cordially, said "How do you do?" sat down again and at the moment said nothing further. It was up to us to swing the conversation. So my friend launched out: We had nothing to do with affairs of state, had no design to interview him as to naval matters, simply were curious to see if we should find him eating an apple and wearing white sox, or what. With hearty good nature, Mr. Roosevelt replied that he was not eating an apple because he did not have one to eat, and that he had only once worn white sox, woolen ones, when a boy at school.
He was very neatly dressed in a suit of quiet dark material, wore rich dark red tie, with a stick pin to it. Curiously weather beaten looking complexion. As he has just published a book we asked him if he intended to carry on more or less of a literary career together with his public life. He said, well, perhaps more or less. But he wouldn't have time for much such work. He "practised" writing on Saturdays and Sundays, but mainly for the purpose of attaining to clearnessin expressing himself. He insisted that the great bulk of his father's writing had been donebeforethe full course of his political activities andafterhe had retired from them.
After we had arisen to go he walked up and down the room with us, with a somewhat arm-in-arm effect. Declared we should know a friend of his up in Boston, because we'd "like him." Said to look in on him again any time when in Washington. Very affable young man.
We went out on S Street to see Wilson's new house. Handsome enough structure, but, undetached from the building next door and fronting directly on the sidewalk, we decided that it looked somewhat more like a club than like a private residence. Were told later that the part of that house to look at is the back of it, as there are wonderful gardens there.
One cannot fail to note in the numerous art shops where pictures of Harding, Roosevelt, Washington, Lincoln and Cleveland are displayed in abundance the relative absence of pictures of Wilson.
Why do august statesmen in the lobby of the New Willard cross their legs so that we can see that their shoes need to be half-soled? Why doso many distinguished looking gentlemen in Washington wear their overcoats as though they were sleeveless capes? What on earth do so many Oklahoma looking characters do in Washington? Why is it that there the masses do not, as in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles, stroll about at night?
We stopped in again at the executive office of the White House. Remarkable number of doormen there got up somewhat like policemen, so that you repeatedly have to explain yourself all over again. Man new to us on today. Suspiciously asked our names. Then (though what just our names could have meant to him I cannot see) shook hands with immense friendliness, and told us his name.
Quite a throng waiting. Busy hum all about. Different crowd from usual. Hardly any reporters. Old gentlemen. Stout red-faced fellows with large black slouch hats. Several youngish women with very generous bosom displays. Some sort of a delegation, apparently. We did not make out just what. But the scene somewhat suggested a meeting of the Los Angeles branch of the Ohio Society. At lengththe company lines up. We trail in through with the rest.
The President, looming in the centre of his office, shakes hands with each caller in turn, in a manner of paternal affection. Holds your hand very gently within his for a considerable while. Rather odd position he takes when shaking hands. Right shoulder lifted. Looks (though I felt that he was unconscious of this effect) somewhat like a pose that a painter might put his model into when about to paint him shaking hands.
He bent over us in a very fatherly fashion. Said, yes, yes, he had got our letters while in the South. Which was quite a mistake, as we hadn't written him any letters. But his kindly intention was quite unmistakable.
Senator New's secretary, in his room on the second floor of the Senate Office building, was opening a wooden box that had come by mail. No; he wasn't exactly opening this box, either. He was looking at it suspiciously and cautiously tipping it from side to side. "Feels like it was a snake," he said fearsomely. "Soft, live-likeweight in there. I don't believe I'll open it. You see," indicating the stamps, "it's from India, too."
"But why would anybody be sending Senator New a snake?" inquired my friend.
"Goodness gracious! We get lots of things just as queer as snakes," replied Mr. Winter. "I guess the Senator must be coming in pretty soon," he remarked, glancing about. "So many people coming in," he added, and continued: "It's a remarkable thing. Visitors seem to have some sort of psychic knowledge of when the Senator will be in. Same way out in Indianapolis, we could always tell when Tom Taggart was likely to be back soon from French Lick—so many people (who couldn't have heard from him) looking for him at the Denizen House."
"Everybody," someone observed, "always comes to Washington at least once a year." All United-Statesians, at any rate, one would say looking about the city, probably do. And among visiting United-Statesians not habitually seen in such profusion elsewhere one would certainly include, Indians, Mormons, Porto-Ricans, Civil War veterans, pedagogues, octogenarians, vegetarians, Virginians, Creoles, pastors, suffragettes,honeymooners, aunts, portly ladies of peculiar outline, people of a very simple past, and a remarkable number of gentlemen who still cling to white "lawn" ties, hard boiled shirts and "Congress shoes."
Also, of course, that vast congregation of people who "want" something in Washington. "What are you looking for around here?" a remark commonly overheard in the hotel lobbies.
But there are other American cities to which "everybody" goes, too, now or then, though the visitors are not perhaps so recognizable. Coming out of the Capitol, passing through the grounds of the White House, what do you frequently overhear? Frequently some such remark as this: "Haven't you ever been in the subway? To the Bronx? When you go back you certainly must go in it."
And out in Los Angeles they boastfully tell you that one way in which Los Angeles "is like New York" is this: That whereas a man may or may not happen to go to Richmond or to Detroit, sooner or later you are bound to see him on the streets of Los Angeles. That, as I say, is what they tell you out there.
But what are those aspects of Washingtonwhich are peculiar to that city, and make it so unlike any other city in the United States? And which in some cases make it an influence for the bad to many of its visitors? And which in some cases it is so strange should be the aspect of such a city?
For one thing, the first thing which must strike any stranger to the city is the enormous extent of the souvenir business there. It is perhaps natural enough that this should be so, and that souvenir shops should range themselves in an almost unbroken stretch for miles. What is not altogether so easy to answer is why nearly all of the souvenirs should be the kind of souvenirs they are.
Printed portraits of the present President and of former Presidents, and plaster busts of these personages, of course. That many of the articles for "remembrance" should be touched with a patriotic design, of course, too. But why today should so many millions of the "souvenir spoons" (with the Capitol in relief on the bowl), the "hand painted" plates (presenting a comic valentine likeness of George Washington), the paper-weights (with a delirious lithograph of the Library of Congress showing through), the"napkin rings," butter knives, and so on and so on—why should such millions of these things be precisely in the style of such articles proudly displayed in the home of my grandmother when I was a boy in the Middle West?
Outside of Washington, as far as I know in the world, any considerable exhibition of wares so reminiscent of the taste of the past can only be found along the water fronts of a city where men of ships shop. And there, along water fronts, you always find that same idea of ornament.
Another thing. Where in Washington are shops where real art is sold—paintings of reputable character and rare specimens of antique furniture? They may be there; I do not swear that they are not, but they are remarkably difficult to find.
Painting reminds me. The Corcoran Gallery is, of course, a justly famous museum of art. But a minor museum, containing no Old Masters, but an excellent collection of American painting, particularly excellent in its representation of the period immediately preceding the present, the period of the men called our impressionist painters. Its best canvas, I should say, is thepainting by John H. Twachtman, called (I believe) "The Waterfall." My point is, that visitors there certainly are seeing what they are supposed to be seeing there—art.
What I am coming to (and I do not know why someone does not come to it oftener) is this: That hordes of people who come to Washington will look at with wonder as something fine anything which is shown to them. The numerous beautiful works of architecture—to which is now added the very noble Lincoln Memorial—they see, and probably derive something from. But the cultural benefits of their visits to their Mecca of patriotic interest must be weirdly distorted when they are led gaping through the Capitol and are charged twenty-five cents apiece to be told by a guard who knows as much about paintings as an ashman a quantity of imbecile facts about prodigious canvases atrociously bad almost beyond belief.
The Embarkation of the Pilgrims and Washington Resigning his Commission, and so forth, indisputably are historic moments for the American breast to recall with solemn emotion. And the iniquity of these paintings here to minds uninstructed in works of art is that by reason oftheir appeal to sentiments of love of country these nightmares of ugliness are put over on the visitor as standards of beauty.
Still speaking (after a fashion) of "art," another aspect of Washington hits the eye. And that is the extremely moral note here. In Los Angeles (that other nation's playground of holiday makers) perhaps even more picture cards are displayed for sale. A very merry lot of pictures, those out there—all of "California bathing girls" and very lightly veiled figures, limbs rythmically flashing in "Greek dances." Such picture cards of gaiety of course may be found in windows here and there on some streets in New York and other cities. But after much window gazing I fancy that anybody bent upon buying such things in Washington would have to get them from a bootlegger or someone like that.
And whereas, as I recall, in other centres of urban life, and especially on the Pacific Coast, the photographers' exhibits run very largely to feminine beauty and fashion, in photographers' windows in Washington, you will note, masculine greatness dominates the scene.
Speaking of photographers and such-like suggestsanother thing. Let us come at the matter in this way. A good many women of culture and means, I understand, choose to live in Washington; probably in large measure because the city is beautifully laid out, because it is a pleasant size, because there are no factories and subways there, and so on. We know that numerous retired statesmen prefer to remain there. There is society of the embassies. In consideration of all this, and in consideration further of the comparatively large leisure there for an American city, you would suppose that, behind the transient population, in Washington, a highly civilized life went on. Very well.
True, they have the third greatest reference library in the world and the numerous scholars associated with it. But where do the peoplebuytheir books? One bookstore of fair size. Another good but quite small. A third dealing mainly in second-hand volumes. Not one shop devoted to sets in fine bindings, first editions, rare items and such things. Though in Philadelphia, for instance, there is one of the finest (if not the finest) bookshops dealing in rare books anywhere in the world. In San Francisconumerous bookstores. Larger cities? Yes (as to that part of it), of course.
But it does seem queer that not a single newspaper in Washington runs book reviews or prints any degree at all of literary comment.
Alluding to San Francisco, that happy dale of thebon-vivant, how does he who likes good living make out in Washington, unless he lives in a club, an embassy, or at the White House? A grand public market, two first-class hotel dining-rooms, and many fine homes. But an earnest seeker after eating as a fine art could find tucked away none of those chop-houses and restaurants to dine in which enlarge the soul of man.
But, of course, perhaps you can't have everything at once. From the visitors' gallery the spectacle of the Senate in active session is a game more national than baseball. "There he goes!" cries one ardent spectator, pointing to a "home player," so to say, moving down the aisle. "That's him! Gettin' along pretty good, ain't he?"