After the initial formalities, I fell this time first into the hands of a driving sort of fellow who had the air of being perpetually up to his neck in work, and who handed me to his wife with the remark: "Here's another job for you tomorrow. Make a careful, working synopsis of the story, and I'll dip into the manuscript here and there when I come home to get a line on the style and general character of the thing." The next night, after rustling energetically through me, he wrote out his report, and, passing it to his wife, said: "There are no outright mis-statements of fact as to the plot in that, are there?"
I next fell in the way of a fashionable character just leaving for a week-end, who read me in the smoking-car on his way up into the country. He burned several holes in my pages with the falling ash of his cigarettes. He read me in bits between scraps of conversation with his seat neighbour and recesses of enjoyment of the flying scenery. And he found it rather awkward holding me balanced on his legs crooked up against the seat in front of him. This, my precarious position, led to a grievous calamity. I toppled and fell, and my reader, making a swooping clutch at me as I went, but the more scattered my pages over the polluted floor of the car. An evil draught carried my third page underneath a seat, the third forward from my reader. It was an anguishing thing, but I could not cry out, I could not tell him: as my reader, cursing me heartily (for what I cannot admit was my fault) gathered me up, he neglected to crawl far enough under the seat before him to perceive my page three.
But it does not fall within the scope of my present design to extend this chronicle to the length of an autobiography. With what pain and labour my poor parent recovered from his memory, and then very imperfectly, of course, my third page; how he grew more melancholy of countenance at each of my successive returns to the house of my birth and formative years; how I sometimes remained away for months at a time, and how once an office boy mis-addressed me to a lady in New Jersey who very graciously herself forwarded me to my parent; how my poor parent was obliged at length by the increasing dilapidation of my appearance to go to the expense of having me completely re-typed by a public typist, and how directly after this he entirely re-wrote, expanded, and elaborated me at the instigation of one firm of publishers; how I was read by a delightful old lady who knitted in her office as she read; by a lady of cosmopolitan mien who had me together with many other manuscripts sent to her home in a box, and who consumed innumerable cigarettes as she perused me; by a young gentleman who I am sure had a morning "hang over" at his desk; by a tough-looking customer who wore his hat at his desk; by a young lady of futurist aspect who took me home to her studio; by an old, old man who seemed to "see" me quite, and by many more—all this I may merely indicate.
One very striking phenomenon I should by no means fail to mention, and this uncanny fact may be illustrated thus: If an object is blue or if it is yellow it will be recognised by all men as being blue or yellow, as the case may be. One will not say of it, "See that lurid yellow object," to have another reply, "What! that object directly before us? I see nothing yellow about it; it is as black as ink." But I was apparently exactly like such an impossible object. I was, figuratively speaking, no colour of my own and I was all colours. One, so to speak, saw me as green, another as white, and yet another as orange, while some saw quite red as they looked at me. That is, my character consisted altogether, it seemed, in the amazingly diverse reactions I inspired in my successive readers. I was intolerably dull, I was abundantly entertaining, I was over-subtle, I was painfully obvious, I was exceedingly humorous, and I lacked all humour.
How, at length, a group of editorial gamblers succeeded in coming sufficiently into harmony about me to render a composite verdict that I would be a fair publishing risk; but how the title my poor parent had given me it was unanimously held wouldn't do at all; and how I got another in book committee meeting; how, after I was (wonderful thing!) "accepted," I lay in a safe until I thought I should crumble away with age; and how I was suddenly brought forth and hastily read by the manufacturing department for ideas for my cover to be, and then by the advertising department for "copy dope," before being rushed to the composing room—of these things I have not time to speak further, as I am now on the press, and am rapidly ceasing to be merely a manuscript.
"Lavender, sweet lavender,Who will buy my sweet blooming lavender?Buy it once, you'll buy it twice,And make your clothes sweet and nice!"
She was a wretched-looking creature, with a great basket; and it was so she sang through the street. By this you know where we are, for this is one of the old cries of London town.
For the sake of my clothes, and for the noble pleasure of associating for an instant with the original of a coloured print of old London types, I bought a sprig of lavender. "Thank you, sir," she said.
I saw it coming; ah! yes, by now I knew she would. "You are anAmerican, sir," she added, eyeing me with interest.
You would think that since the "American invasion" first began ever so long ago, some time after Dicky Davis "discovered" London, they, the British, would have seen enough of us to have become accustomed to us by now. But, as you have found, it is not so—we are a strange race from over the sea.
"You are an American, sir," said the barmaid. She was a huge young woman who could have punched my head in. I am not so delicate, either. And she had a pug nose.
"I do not so much care for American ladies," she said. "I think they are a bit hard, don't you?" Then, perhaps feeling that she may have offended me, she quickly added: "Not of course that I doubt that there are maidenlike ladies in America."
They are a curious people, these English, with their nice ideas, even among barmaids, of the graces of a mellow society. For some time I could not understand why she was so beautiful. Then I perceived that it was because of her nose. She looked just like the goddesses of the Elgin marbles, whose noses are broken, you know. Still I doubt whether it would be a good idea for a man to break his wife's nose in order to make her more beautiful.
I will grave her name here on the tablet of fame, so that when you go again to London you may be able to see her. It is Elizabeth.
He was a cats' meat man. And on his arm he carried a basket in which was a heap of bits of horse flesh (such I have been told it is), each on a sliver of stick. There was a little dog playing about near by. "Would you care to treat that dog to a ha'penny's worth of meat, sir?" asked the man.
I had never before treated a dog to anything, though treating is an American habit. So I "set up" the dog to a ha'penny's worth of meat. "Thank you, sir," said the cats' meat man. I saw by the light come into his eye that he had recognised me. "You are———" he began. "I know it," I said; "I am."
I looked at the wretched dog. Would he too accuse me? But he ate his meat and said never a word. Perhaps he was not an Englishman. No, I think he was a tourist, too, like myself. I was glad I had befriended him in an alien land.
"What is the price of this?" I asked. "Thri'pence?" I inquired, reading a sign.
"Three pence," pronounced the attendant very distinctly. It was but his way of saying, "You are an American."
I went into an office to see a man I know. "How are you?" I said in my democratic way to the very small office boy. "You are looking better than when I saw you last," I remarked with pleasant home humour.
"I never saw you before, sir," replied the office boy. "He is anAmerican," I heard him, apologising for me, tell the typist.
Some considerable while after this I went to this office again. I had quite forgotten the office boy. I handed him my card. A bright lad, he. "I'm feeling much better, sir," he said.
In Pall Mall there is a steamship office in the window of which is displayed a miniature sheet of water. At opposite sides of this little ocean are small dabs of clay, one labelled England, the other America. Tiny ships ply back and forth between the two countries. Observers cannot make out how it is that these little boats turn about as they do, apparently of their own accord. And the scene has continually a number of spectators. (This was before the war.)
One day I was looking in at this window, very much interested in this problem. Standing next to me was a fine specimen of a Pall Mallian, with his silk "topper," his black tail coat, his buttonhole, his checked trowsers, his large grey spats, his shining boots, his stick and his glass on its ribbon, apparently equally absorbed. I turned to him after a hit—a quite natural thing to do, I thought—and, "How the deuce do you suppose that thing works?" I said.
The tall gentleman slowly turned. Slowly, stiffly, with an aristocratic gesture, he raised his arm and placed his glass in his eye, for a moment. I was frozen by his blank stare, quite through. Then he lifted his eyebrow; the glass dropped and bounded before him on its ribbon. And he turned and walked away. Walked away, I dare say, to his frowning club, to tell how he had just been set upon in the street and insulted by some strange ruffian. But, you see, I didn't know; I was an American.
To Epsom I went in a cart to see the Derby. It was at Epsom, you know, that the King's horse was thrown several seasons ago by a suffragette who lost her life in the act. Well, most of the fine gentlemen of England, I think, were there, all in splendid tall grey hats and with their field glasses slung over their shoulders. And a horde of the cleverest crooks in Europe also.
There I had my pocket "cut" by a pickpocket. That is the way they go through you in England, neatly lift your pocket out. I thought this was an interesting thing, so I told it about that I had had my pocket cut, but I did not see any international significance in the affair.
The achievement, however, I discovered was much relished by my hearers in England. I, an American, had come over there and had my pocket cut. He, the crook, an Englishman very probably, had been "cuter" than I; he had "had" me, an American.
It is a curious thing, and a fact not generally known, I believe, that all decayed taxicab drivers in London, those who are unfortunate, have fallen from a high estate. Each and every one of them used to drive the London to Oxford coach in the days of 'orses.
I met a number of these personages, fat, with remarkably red faces and large honeycombed noses. Not at all like the alert, athletic lads, a type of mechanical engineer, who have arisen as cabbies with the advent of taxis. What do they know about 'orses?
It was such an old boy who drove me from the neighbourhood of RussellSquare, where I was stopping, to Chelsea, where I went into lodgings.He frequently had the pleasure of driving Americans, he remarked."Thank you, sir," he said.
I required to have my shoes repaired, and I inquired of my landlord where might be found a good cobbler. He told me that there was an excellent one in Battersea. "In Battersea!" I said. "Is there none in Chelsea? How am I to get my shoes clear over to Battersea?"
"Why," he replied, "we will send the cobbler a card and he'll send some one over for the boots and——"
"And then, I suppose," I said, "he will send us another card saying that the boots are done and so on. And in the meantime I could have had the boots repaired and worn out again."
Naturally I was for wrapping up the shoes in a piece of newspaper and setting out straight off to find a cobbler. But my landlord would not hear of such a thing at all. "Of course you are an American," he said.
I gathered that while such a proceeding might be all right in my country it wouldn't do in England. He did not want lodgers, I understood, going in and out of his house with parcels under their arms. It would reflect on him. He was a man with a lively mind, and he told me a little story.
"How do you like the new lodger?" asked the first housemaid of the second.
"Oh, he's very nice indeed," replied the second housemaid. "But he's not a gentleman. He helped me carry the coals upstairs yesterday."
"Could you spare me a trifle, sir?" asked the errand man in my street."I haven't had tea today."
It's a funny thing, that; isn't it?—our just being all "Americans"(when we are not referred to as "Yankees" or "Yanks"). We are neverUnited Statesians. It is the "American Ambassador," and the "AmericanConsul-General." I have even heard Dr. Wilson referred to as the"President of America."
One day I saw a tourist. He was an American, a young man I knew in New York. I found him going into the Houses of Parliament. I was fond of going in there frequently, and said I would accompany him.
With an easy stride, at a speed I should say of about two miles an hour, he walked straight through the Houses of Parliament; through the Norman porch, through the King's robing room, the Royal or Victoria gallery, the Prince's chamber, the sumptuously decorated House of Peers, the Peers' lobby, the spacious central hall, the Commons' corridor and the House of Commons; glancing about him the while at art and architecture, lavish magnificence and the eternal garments and symbols of history. Returning to the central hall, we passed through St. Stephen's and Westminster Hall and arrived again in the street.
"How long did it take us to do that?" said my friend, questioning his watch.
"Oh, about fifteen minutes," I replied.
He said he thought he would go across the way and "do" the Abbey next while he was in the neighbourhood.
I suppose I could have helped him in the matter of despatch, but I didn't think of it at the time. Later I heard of two Americans who drove up to the abbey in a taxi. Leaping out, one said to the other: "You do the outside and I'll do the inside, and that way we'll save a lot of time."
The thing a man does in America, of course, when he gets into a railroad train is to light a cigar and begin talking to the fellow next to him. There were two of us in the railway carriage compartment on my way down into Surrey. I made a number of amiable observations; I asked a number of pleasant questions. My object was to while away the time in human companionship. "Quite so," was his reply to observations.
In replying to questions he would commit himself to nothing; he wouldn't even say that he didn't know. "I shouldn't undertake to say, sir," was his answer. And then, certainly, there was no possibility of pursuing the subject further.
He wasn't reading a paper; he wasn't doing anything but gaze straight in front of him. I concluded that he was "sore" at me; I concluded that he was a surly bear, anyway. And so an hour or so passed in utter silence.
The pretty landscape whirled by; we went through a hundred tunnels (more or less); the little engine gave a shrill little squeak now and then; at old, old railway stations, that remind one agreeably of jails, rough-looking men in black shirt sleeves and corduroy waistcoats ran out to the train to open the carriage doors, and I forgot the gentleman altogether. Till at length we came to his station.
When he had got out he turned to latch the door, and putting his head in at the window, he said to me in the pleasantest manner possible: "Good aufternoon, sir." He wasn't sore at me a bit! That was simply his fashion of travelling, in silence.
I was going into the countryside, to the country places where the old men have pleasant faces and the maidens quiet eyes. To fare forth upon the King's highway, to hedgerows and blossoms and the old lanes of Merrie England, to mount again the old red hills, bird enchanted, and dip the valleys bright with sward, to the wind on the heath, brother, to hills and the sea, to lonely downs, to hold converse with simple shepherd men, and, when even fell, the million tinted, to seek some ancient inn for warmth in the inglenook, and bite and drop, and where, when the last star lamp in the valley had expired, I would rest my weary bones until the sweet choral of morning birds called me on my way.
There was an ancient character going along the road. He walked with a staff, a crooked stick. His coatless habit was the colour of clay; his legs were bound about just below the knee by a strap (wherein, at one side, he carried his pipe), so that his trowsers flared at the bottom like a sailor's; over his shoulder he bore a flat straw basket. Under his chin were whiskers; his eyes were merry and bright and his cheeks just like fine rosy apples, with a great high light on each. I asked of him the way and we trudged along together. "You are from Mericy," he said with delight.
He told me about himself. He was seventy-four and he had never had "a single schooling" in his life. Capel was his home, a village of about twenty houses which we were approaching, thirty miles or so from London. The last time he been to London was when he was fifteen. He had then seen some fireworks there. No fireworks in Capel, he said, had ever been able to touch him since. He had been pushing on, he said, pushing on, pushing on all the while.
"You were not born in Capel, then?" I said.
Born in Capel! Why, he had been born seven miles from Capel.
The difficulty was that I had overlooked the fact that everybody goes out of London town at Whitsuntide. Village and county town I tried and I could not find where to lay my head. Everything was, as they say in England, "full up." It was coming on to rain and the night fell chill and black. Would I have to use my rucksack for a pillow and sleep in the fields?
At length I found a man—it was at quaint Godalming, I think, where the famous Charterhouse School is—who could not give me a room, but offered me a bed and breakfast at half a crown. "There's another fellow up there," he said. "But he's a nice, quiet fellow; something like yourself," he said. "I think you'll like him."
"You are an American," remarked my landlord. I sat with him in his little parlour behind the bar. It had a gun over the mantelpiece, a great deal of painted china and a group of stuffed birds in a glass case. He asked me if I liked reading, because, if I did, he had an old dictionary to which I was welcome at any time.
At length it was the hour for bed. I followed my heavy host with his candle up difficult stairs. "I think they're all asleep," he said.
"They're all asleep!" I exclaimed. "Who are?"
"Why," replied my landlord, "there are five of them, you know. But they are nice quiet fellows. Something like yourself," he added. "I think you will like them."
In that shadowed, gabled room were the noises of many sunk in slumber. Well, they were, I found in the morning, rather inoffensive young fellows, all cyclists, and indeed not altogether unlike myself. It was after my bacon and eggs that I found on my way a place for a "wash and brush up, tuppence."
"Traveller, sir?" inquired the publican, in response to my knock and peering cautiously out at his door. For it was Sunday, after three o'clock in the afternoon and not yet six; and to obtain refreshment at a public house at that hour one must be a "traveller over three miles' journey." "I'm a traveller all the way from the U.S.A.," said I.
I stood my battered shilling ash stick in a corner and looked out again from my window over the old red roofs and at the back of the house where he dwelt who when the Queen had commanded his presence said, "I'm an old man, ma'am, and I'll take a seat." When Annie, the maid, had brought my "shaving water, sir," in a kind of a tin sprinkling can and when I had used it I took up my Malacca town cane and went out to see how old Father Thames was coming on.
I thought I would buy some writing paper and I went into a drug store kind of a place. "I see you are an American, sir," said the shopman. "This is a chemist's shop," he explained; "you get paper at the stationer's, just after the turning, at the top of the street."
Hurrying for my passport, I inquired as to the location of such and such a street—whatever the name of it is—where, I understood, the place was where this was to be had. "Ah!" said he whom I addressed, "you want the American Consul-General."
George Moore once presented the idea that the only thing of interest and value about the creative art of a woman was the feminine quality of that art. The novels of Jane Austen come readily to mind as an argument in support of this provocative idea. Quite first among their charms, every one will admit, is the indisputable fact that no man could possibly have written them. They have the lightness, brightness, sparkle, perfume, flavour, grace, fun, sensitivity of a young feminine mind. No one more than Miss Austen has captivated the roarers among men. A man admires, say, Conrad. He—if he is a manly man—falls in love with Jane Austen. Very well.
Now, then, it is a curious and a paradoxical thing that no man of masculine character can read the novels written by women to-day, unless he has to; that is, unless he is a book-reviewer, publisher's reader, magazine editor, proofreader, or some such thing. And the reason he can't do it, in view of George Moore's idea and Miss Austen's renowned magnetism, is curious indeed. It is because of the peculiarly feminine attitude of mind of our present women-novelists. At least, this is the arresting pronouncement delivered with much robust eloquence by my leonine friend, Colonel Bludgeon.
The present writer (a pale, spectacled, middle-aged young man) is too conscious of the wondrous nature of women to question their ability in anything. But of one of whom he stands in greater awe than of anything else in the world he is a humble friend. The dictum of this my friend comes from a quite different character than myself. He is a great man; he has read everything; seen everything; known everybody. Exception to him could be taken only on one ground. He is perfectly awful. He belongs to an old school; splenetic, choleric. He is Sir-Anthony-Absolute-like; a critic in the spirit of the thundering days of William Ernest Henley. His face is like a beefsteak. His frame is like "a mountain walking." His voice, Johnsonian. He knows more about literature than probably any other living man.
"No, sir," he rumbled, "you cannot find to-day a cigar-smoking animal" (though the Colonel is so erudite a man, his language is terrible) "who could be lured into the pages of our women novelists without snorts—snorts, sir—of disgust, or bellows of derisive mirth. Why? Because these pages no longer contain an acute transcript of life as only a sensitive feminine mind would have the cunning to observe it, and of a form of human life in itself highly feminine in its character, but they now present a singularly insular travesty of man, an unconscious caricature of man as he could only appear to a feminine mind bound by the romantic limitations of sex, a mind, that is, devoid of masculine understanding, unable to recognise by virtue of affiliation of instinct that which is fine in the male character and that which is false to type.
"Sir," continued the Colonel, "these pictures are coloured, on one hand, by ludicrous prejudice against masculine qualities which the feminine nature temperamentally feels to be antagonistic, or dangerous, to itself; and, on the other hand, by sentimental worship of masculine attributes conceived to be desirable complements to the frailty of women. This amusing view of man springs not only from the element of sex, as I have said, but from the very marrow of sex. We do not get from the contemporary authoress creative literature at all; that is, a disinterested criticism of mankind; we get in each picture of a male character her instinctive, and intensely interested, feeling as to whether or not he is a man whom it would be desirable, and safe, for a young woman to marry. Paradoxically enough, it would seem that women have less and less knowledge of the world as they have contrived to see more of it; that as they have become more emancipated in liberty of action they have become more clannish in thought; and that as the range of their opportunities has widened and their interests have multiplied, their concern with the most elemental female instinct, their preoccupation with their immemorial business of the chase, has but intensified. By word of mouth the modern woman tells us that in her practical and intellectual capacities she has advanced far beyond her sisters of an earlier day; we chance to look into that pool of fiction wherein she mirrors her heart, and we find her the same self-centred huntress as of yore.
"Sir," cried the Colonel, jolting some tobacco ash off the ledge made by his abdomen, which he did by pounding the side of his torso with a bulky volume of the "Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini," "what is the theme of the most conspicuous portion of our fiction by feminine hands? In large measure it is a peevish criticism of husbands. We have the popular creator of a type of husband held up to the scorn and ridicule of the sorority of her readers, remarking by way of commentary on her satirical pictures that there should be 'a school for husbands.' It is, apparently, this lady's complacent belief that the origin of the domestic difficulties of the world is in the inadequate training of husbands for their delicate office. One of 'the essential requirements' for marriage which 'men should go to school to learn' she mentions as 'understanding.' Wives, presumably, are born perfectly equipped for their functions and do not require to be made. At any rate, as the production of fiction nowadays is so largely a feminine industry, and as a dominant trait of the male, even when recording his observations, is his chivalrous point of view, there is little or no opportunity given us on the benches, as you might say, to catch a glimpse of life pointing a way for us to see it steadily and see it whole."
The Jovian Colonel blew a heavy cloud of tobacco smoke from out his massive ebony beard, and sat for a moment looking like some portentous smouldering volcano; then continued:
"Men with hair on their chests would find the most agreeable society in the pages of our women novelists to be that of the horrible or, as the case may be, pitiful scoundrels at whom the authors themselves are most indignant. These miserable beings, generally amiable though rather purposeless spirits, are, as Colonel Harvey not long ago remarked of one of them, of a sort that almost all men like and hardly any woman can tolerate. Men are free to enjoy their engaging qualities because men are not subject to possible misfortune by reason of the corresponding infirmities of such characters, that is, men are not dependent upon them for their own safety. Women, on the other hand, fear such characters because instinct tells women that they could not trust their own comfortable security to them; and, consequently, women heartily dislike such as these and find them villainous, beings to be branded in any feminine discussion of life as enemies of the sex.
"In the latest novel by one of our most prominent women novelists," the Colonel went on, "for months the best-selling book in the country, and also undoubtedly the work of an artist sincerely interpreting the world according to her lights, we are presented with a distressing scene, an incident holy horror at which would make a thrilling and delicious success of any tea party. An undisciplined young pup who is the husband comes home a bit late one night, and, as a man would describe it, somewhat 'lit up.' An earnest student of this story cannot find that this misguided youth was any worse than is ordinarily the case in such delinquencies. It is intimated, however, that he has been this way before. The horror, the loathing, which the humorous young scamp's weakness inspires in his wife, a young woman of thoroughly feminine loftiness of character, is dramatic indeed, and partakes of the nature of that which so frequently is occasioned by the nervous organism of women, a 'scene.' The total lack of large-hearted and intelligent 'understanding' of human nature displayed by the conduct of the young man would send any connubial craft on to the rocks."
The Colonel mopped his brow with a large bandanna handkerchief. "Sir," he resumed, "obnoxious as it is to a sensible man to do so, let us glance at the hero type of the most popular recent novels by women, the figure which strikes admiration into the feminine soul. Now," he roared (and I declare, my hair rose on end), "the most awful thing any nigger can call another is a 'nigger.' So we all rebel against what we feel to be the weaknesses of our own position. None so quick as the vulgar to denounce 'no gentleman.' And so on. Thus, as we see, there is nothing the weaker sex so much despises in a man as weakness of character, and, as is consistent with all such reactions of feeling, nothing which so much attracts it as a firmness and strength of will beyond itself. Naturally, the adored figures in the popular women's fiction are always of the 'strong man' type, in feminine eyes. And here we come to a most extraordinary obliquity of the feminine eye.
"What," he demanded, "are the marks by which you are to know a 'strong man'—in the feminine picture? A strong man, of course, is a man with the bark on; polish is incompatible with rugged strength. An exhilarating air of brusqueness breathes from all strong men. They are as ignorant of manners as they are of the effete conventions of grammar. They have fought their way up, and no one can down them. They can be depended upon absolutely as what are called 'good providers.' In short, by the written confession of her heart, woman's idea of a 'dear,' after several centuries more or less of civilisation, remains precisely the primitive conception that it was in the days when man wooed her by grabbing her by the hair and handing her one with a club."
The Colonel was breathing heavily with the exertion of animated speech as he added: "In real life a man of any stability of judgment would be decidedly suspicious of the hero of a modern woman's novel if one should walk into his office, or, doubtless, he would observe this whimsical caricature with something of the amusement he would find in the ludicrously false comic Irishman of the vaudeville stage. This irreverent flight of fancy on our part, however, is yanking the strong man from his appropriate and supporting setting, where paste is given the glow of an authentic stone; in the sympathetic pages created by feminine intuition he dominates the machine. When the heroine takes into her own hands the right of the individual to a second chance for happiness," the Colonel declaimed with a demoniac grin, "she turns to experience with such a one perfect love, as the honoured wife of a splendid and prosperous man and the mother of beautiful children.
"The ethics of that engrossing theme of divorce," the Colonel went on, lighting another corpulent and very black cigar, "as decided by the Supreme Court of our contemporary women novelists suggests that justly celebrated principle of perfect equity: 'What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own.' Listen," he demanded; "listen (as the author of 'The Gentle Art of Making Enemies' was wont to introduce his lectures) to the story of the unfolding of a woman's heart through marriage, as it is unfolded in the recent book of a novelist whom both the million-headed crowd and shoals of reviewers, of very uneven critical equipment, place 'well forward among America's novelists.' A penniless young woman brought up amid the standards of very common people marries for money, and comes to face the collapse of her dreams. She realises that she is tied to a man for whom she cares nothing. Also he is a brute, a typical bad egg of a husband from the extensive though rather monotonous stock of this article dealt in by our women novelists. Is it right for this young woman to throw away the chances of her whole life for happiness—and so on? It certainly should not seem so to readers of the book. And it is natural enough, as her husband has totally failed to hold her, that this young woman's mind, and heart, too, should convince her that she may make what she regards as a wiser disposition of her life.
"The inevitable strong man whom she eventually marries seems unfortunately to have a bit of a flaw in his granite character; at any rate, something is wrong with him, as the heroine fails to hold him altogether, and matters even begin to look as though she might lose him. But with her great happiness had come a new standard of honour, and a distrust of divorce as the solution of any marital problem. Would it be right for her to lose a husband who has tired of her? Not by a long shot! Marriage is the one vow we take before God. It is a contract. Is it not against all moral law to break a contract? And all the rest of it. So feminine logic disposes of what is described as one of the great problems of the day."
Suddenly the Colonel broke into a terrifying smile. "This novelist of whom we have just been speaking," he said, "somewhere remarked in an interview that it was too bad about poor George Gissing—where she picked up Gissing, God only knows—as, writing away all his life at stuff people didn't care for, he was one of the tragedies of literature. Well, Gissing may be dead and gone, but his works stick on. I could tell her"—the Colonel glared as he pawed his enormous hand through his mane—"of a more profound tragedy of literature."
Birds of a feather flock together, you can tell a dog by its spots, a man is known by the company he keeps—and all that sort of thing.
It is quite astonishing that nobody has before been struck by what I have in my eye. People go round all the while writing about Old Greenwich Village, the harbour, the Ghetto, the walk uptown. Coney Island, the Great White Way, the subway ride, Riverside Drive, the spectacle of Fifth Avenue, the Night Court, the "lungs" of the metropolis, the "cliff dwellers," "faith, hope, and charity" on University Heights—a cathedral, a university, and a hospital, "lobster palace society," the "grand canons" of lower Manhattan, and about every other part of and thing in New York except this most entertaining section which I am about to discuss.
Now, I never lived on Mars——
You know "Sunday stories" in the newspapers are continually bringing a gentleman resident on Mars to marvel, with his fresh vision, at the wonders of this world.
As I say, I never lived on Mars, but, what amounts to the same thing in this case, perhaps, I did live all of my New York life, up to a short time ago, below Forty-second Street. I gathered from reading and conversation that there were districts of the city above this where people dwelt and went about their daily affairs, just, I supposed, as fish do at the bottom of the ocean, and beasts in the jungle. But I knew that I could not breathe at the bottom of the ocean, nor be comfortable in the jungle.
However, it's this way. The person to whom I am married declared that she could not live below Forty-second Street; said that that was not done at all, nobody "lived" below Forty-second Street. So the matter was settled. I moved "uptown." Of course, by stealth I continue to visit the neighbourhood of Gramercy Park, as a dog, it is said, will return to that which is not nice.
The beauties and the advantages of the region in which I now live have been pointed out to me. It is quite true that everything hereabout is new and "clean." Here the streets are not infested by "old bums" as those are in that dirty old downtown. Here one is just between the beautiful Drive on the one hand and our handsome Central Park on the other. Here there is fresh air. Here Broadway is a boulevard, and, further, it winds about in its course like the roads, as they call them there, in London, and does not have that awful straight look of everything in that checker-board part of town. Here everybody is well dressed. And even the grocers' and butchers' shops are quite smart. All this is indisputable.
But all this is a description of the physical aspects of this part of town. What I purpose to do is an esoteric thing. Through the outward aspects of this part of town, its vestments, the features of its physiognomy, I will show, as through a glass, the beatings of its heart. I will exhibit the soul of it, interpret its spirit, make plain for him that runs its inner, hidden meaning.
The part of town that I mean may be said to begin at Seventy-secondStreet; it runs along Broadway, and comprises the neighbourhood ofBroadway, to, say, a bit above One Hundred and Tenth Street. Now weshall see what we shall see.
You remember what a celebrated irascible character said about a circulating library in a town. Be that as it may. As you stroll along Broadway, up from Seventy-second Street, you observe, being a person of highly alert mind, an astonishing number of circulating libraries, devoted exclusively to the latest fiction. And you note that all corner drug stores and all stationers' shops present a window display of "50-cent fiction." Ah! refinement. Reading people are nice people; they are not rough people. There is, you feel at once, an air, there is taste—how shall I say?—selectness, about this part of town. It is not as other parts of town are.
You perceive, as you continue your stroll with a brightened and a more perfumed mind, that there are no shoe stores here. Shoo stores!! "Booteries," these are. Combined with "hosieries." Countless are the smart hat shops for women. That is to say, the establishments of "chapeaux importers." In the miniature parlours framed by the windows' glass these chic and ravishing creations, the chapeaux, rise in a row high upon their slim and lovely stems. This one is the establishment of Mlle. Edythe, that of Mme. Vigneau. Countless, too, are the terrestrial heavens devoted to "gowns." Headless they stand, these symphonies in feminine apparel, side by side here in the windows of the Maison la Mode, there of the Maison Estelle. Frequent are the places where the figure is cultivated with famous corsets, the retreats of "corsetieres"; this one before you bears the name Fayette; it is where the model "Madame Pompadour" is sold. And numerous are shops luxuriating in waists, "blouses," lingerie, and "novelties" of dress. Conspicuous among them, the "Dolly Dimple Shop." The many "furriers" here all deal in "exclusive" furs and their names all end in "sky."
And there are roses, roses all the way. That is to say, "roseries," "violeteries," and the like—what we call florists' shops, you know. Spots of gorgeous colour and intense fragrance, heaped high with orchids, violets, roses, gardenias, or, in some cases, "artificial flowers."
See! the luscious wax busts in the window. With their grandes coiffures. And their pink and yellow bosoms resplendent with gems. It is a hair-dresser's, just as in London, with a gentlemen's parlour at the back. "Structures" are made here in human hair, and "marcel waving" is done, not, however, we may suppose, for gentlemen. Here may be had an "olive oil shampoo," and a "facial massage." One could be "manicured" in the stroll you are taking every ten minutes or so, if one wished. And "hair cutting" is done along this way by artistes from various lands. There is, for instance, the Peluqueria Espanola. "Service," too, is offered "at residence." Beauty here is held in esteem as it was among the Greeks. Upon one side of the "chemist's" window "toilet requisites" are announced for sale. The "valet system" is extensively advertised. The industry of "dry cleansing" nourishes, and the "shoe renovator" abounds. And hats are "renovated," and "blocked," and "ironed," in places without number.
What a delightful tea-room is this! With its woodwork, its panelling, and its little window lattices, all in beautiful enamelled white.Thatis not a tea-room! I'm 'sprised at you. That is a laundry. A laundry? Shades of Hop Loo! It is even so. There are a variety of types of laundry in this part of the world, but the great point of them all is their "sanitary" character. All things are sanitary here; the shaving brushes at the barber's are proclaimed sanitary; "sanitary tailoring" is announced; and the creameries of this district, it would seem, go beyond anything yet achieved elsewhere in the way of sanitation. It might be imagined from a study of window signs that a perverse person bent upon procuring un-"pasteurized" milk in this part of town would be frustrated of his design.
I was sent to what my understanding conceived to be the "bakery" in our immediate neighbourhood, on an errand. This place, I found, was called the "Queen Elizabeth." I was dreadfully abashed when I got inside. I was afraid that there might be some bit of mud on my shoes which would soil the polished floor; and I became keenly conscious that my trowsers were not perfectly pressed. I should, of course, have worn my tail-coat. There were several ladies there receiving guests that afternoon. I had a tete-a-tete with one of these, who gossiped pleasantly about the cakes—I was to get some cakes. The nicest cakes at the "Queen Elizabeth," it seems, are of two kinds: "Maids of Court" and "Ladies in Waiting." Our neighbourhood is rich in shops given to "pastry," "sweets," "bon bons." Shops of charming names! There is the "Ambrosia Confection Shop," and the place of the "Patisserie et Confiserie."
In our neighbourhood there are, too, a vast number of "caterers" and "fruiterers," and, particularly, delicatessen shops. Delicatessen shops in our neighbourhood are described upon the windows as places dealing in "fancy and table luxuries." I have heard my wife say that many people "just live out of them." They are certainly handsome places. Why, you wouldn't think there was any food in them. Everything is so dressed up that it doesn't look at all as if it were to eat, it is so attractive.
Restaurants hereabouts are commonly named "La Parisienne," or something like that, or are called "rotisseries." There are some just ordinary restaurants, too, and many immaculate, light-lunch rooms. "Afternoon Tea" is a frequent sign, and one often sees the delicate suggestion in neat gilt, "Sandwiches." Grocers in this part of town, it would seem, handle only "select," "fancy," and "choice" groceries, and "hot-house products." There are a number of fine "markets" in this district, very fine markets indeed. In the season for game, deer and bears may be seen strung up in front of them; all their chickens appear to come from Philadelphia, their ducks are "fresh killed Long Island ducks," and they make considerable of a feature of "frogs' legs." These markets are usually called the "Superior Market," or the "Quality Market," or something like that. Great residential hotels here bear the name of "halls," as "Brummel Hall" on the one hand and "Euripides Hall" on the other.
You will by now have begun to perceive the note, the flair, of my part of town. Its care is for the graces, the things that sweeten life, the refinements of civilisation, the embellishments of existence. Nothing more clearly, strikingly, bespeaks this than the proofs of its extraordinary fondness for art—I have mentioned literature. Painting and sculpture, music, the drama, and the art of "interior decoration," these things of the spirit have their homes without number along this stretch of Broadway.
"Art" shops and art "galleries" are on every hand. In the windows of these places you will see: innumerable French mirrors; stacks of empty picture frames of French eighteenth-century design, at an amazingly cheap figure each; remarkably inexpensive reproductions in bright colours of Sir Joshua, Corot, Watteau, Chardin, Fragonard, some Italian Madonnas; an assortment of hunting prints, and prints redolent of Old English sentiment; many wall "texts," or "creeds"; a variety of the kind of coloured pictures technically called, I believe, "comics"; numerous little plaster casts of anonymous works and busts of standard authors; frequently an ambitious original etching by an artist unknown to you; and an occasional print of the "September Morn" kind of thing; together with many "art objects" and a great deal of "bric-a-brac." Upon the windows you are informed that "restoring," "artistic framing," "regilding," and "resilvering" are done within. And, in some cases, that "miniatures" are painted there. There are, too, a number of "Japanese art stores" along the way, containing vast stocks of Japanese lilies living in Japanese pans, other exotic blossoming plants, pink and yellow slippers from the Orient, and striking flowered garments like a scene from a "Mikado" opera.
In this part of town photography, too, is made one of the fine arts. You do not here have your photograph taken; you have, it seems, your "portrait" made. "Home portraiture" is ingratiatingly suggested on lettered cards, and, further, you are invited to indulge in "art posing in photographs." The "studios" of the photographers display about an equal number of portraits of children and dogs. The people of this community take joy not only in the savour of art, and in taking part in its professional production, but they would themselves produce it, as amateurs. The sign "Kodaks" is everywhere about, and "enlarging" is done, and "developing and printing for amateurs" every few rods. So we come to the subject of music.
Caruso, Melba, Paderewski, Mischa Elman, Harry Lauder, Sousa, Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Brahms, Grieg, Moszkowsky, the "latest song hit" from anything you please. Ask and you will find along this thoroughfare. There are no more prosperous looking bazaars on this street than those consecrated to the sale of "musical phonographs" of every make. And if the name of these places is not exactly legion, it is something very like that. Besides every species of Victophone and Olagraph, the music lover may muse upon the wonders and the variety of "mechanical piano players." All of de luxe "tone quality."
As for the drama. The brightest word at night in this galaxy of ultra signs is the gracious word "Photo Play House." Deep beyond plummet's sound is the interest of this part of town in the human story, as revealed upon the "screen." Grief and mirth, good and evil, danger and daring, and the horizon from Hatteras to Matapan may be scanned upon the poster boards before the entrances of these showy temples of the mighty film. Here one is invited to witness "Carmen," and also a "drama of life," "Tricked by a Victim," and also "a comedy drama full of pep" entitled "Good Old Pop," productions of the "Premier Picture Corporation." Announcements of scenes of tornadoes, the Great War, of "Paris fashions," and, ah, yes! of "beauty films" line the way.
To turn to the home. The people of this part of town dwell, according to their shops, entirely amid "period and art furniture." And it would seem, by the remarkable number of places in this quarter where this is displayed for sale, that they dwell amid a most amazing amount of it. These marts of household gods are of two kinds: ones of imposing size, with long windows stretching far down the cross street, and dealing in shining "reproductions," and the tiny, quaint, intimate, delightful kind of thing, where it is said on a sign on a gilded chair that "artistic picture hanging by the hour" is done.
The fascinating places are the more alluring. Herein rich jumbles are, of tapestries, clocks of all periods—including a harvest of those of the "grandfather" era—fire-screens, brass kettles, andirons, stained-glass, artistic lamps in endless variety, the latest things in pillow cushions, book racks, wall papers, wall "decorations" and "hangings," draperies, curtains, cretonnes. The "decorators" deal, too, in "parquet floors," and flourish and increase in their kind in response, evidently, to the volume of demand for "upholstering" and "cabinet work." And the floors of this part of town must hold rich stores of Oriental rugs, as importers of these are frequent on our way.
The higher civilisations turn, naturally, to refinements of religious thought. What the Salvation Army is to Fourteenth Street, what the Rescue Mission is to the Bowery, the Christian Science Reading Room is to this stretch of Broadway, and there is no trimmer place to be seen on your stroll. Then, one of the marks of our culture to-day is the aesthetic cultivation of the primitive. Our neighbourhood is invited, on placards in windows, to assemble "every Sunday evening" to enjoy the "love stories of the Bible."
For the rest, you would see on your stroll, for man cannot live by taste and the spirit alone, sundry places of business concerned with real estate, electrical accoutrement, automobile accessories, toys, the investment and safeguarding of treasure, and so on, and particularly with ales, wines, liquors, and cigars. Each and all of these, however, are affirmed to be "places of quality."
Now, the social customs of this part of town, as they may be abundantly viewed on our thoroughfare, are agreeable to observe. At night our boulevard twinkles with lights like a fairyland. The view of across the way through the gardens, as they should be called, down the middle of the street, is enchanting. All aglow our spic-and-span trolley cars—all our trolley cars are spic-and-span—ride down the way like "floats" in a nocturnal parade. Upon the sidewalks are happy throngs, and a hum of cheery sound. The throngs of our neighbourhood are touched with an indescribable character of place; they are not the throngs of anywhere else. They are not exactly Fifth Avenue; they are not the Great White Way. They are nice throngs, healthy throngs, care-free throngs, modish throngs in the modes of magazine advertisements. And all their members are young.
You will notice as you go and come that you pass the same laughing groups in precisely the same spot, hour after hour. Those who compose these groups seem to be calling upon one another. Apparently, on pleasant evenings, it is the form here for you to receive your guests in this way, in the open air. And you jest, and converse, and while the time amiably away, just as many people do at home. "Well," says my wife, "the rooms in the apartments in this part of town are so small that nobody can bring anybody into them."
A clerk may look at a celebrity. For a number of years, we, being diligent in our business, stood and waited before kings in a celebrated book shop. Now (like Casanova, retired from the world of our triumphs and adventures) we compose our memoirs. "We know from personal experience that a slight tale, a string of gossip, will often alter our entire conception of a personality,"—from a contemporary book review. This, the high office of tittle-tattle, is what we have in our eye. We are Walpolian, Pepysian.
"These Memoirs, Confessions, Recollections, Impressions (as the title happens) are extremely valuable in the pictures they contain of the time. Especially happy are they in the intimate glimpses they give us of the distinguished people, particularly the men of letters, of the day. The writer was an attache of the court," the writer was this, the writer was that, but always the writer had peculiar facilities for observing intimately—and so forth. So it was with the writer here.
We remember with especial entertainment, we begin, the first time we saw F. Hopkinson Smith. (We are ashamed to say that he was known among our confrere, the salesmen, as "Hop" Smith.) He introduced himself to us by his moustache. Looming rapidly and breezily upon us—"Do you know me?" he said, swelling out his "genial" chest (so it seemed) and pointing, with a militarish gesture, to this decoration. We looked a moment at this sea gull adornment, somehow not unfamiliar to us, and said, "We do." Mr. Hopkinson Smith, we perceived, regards this literary monument, so to say, as a household word (to put it so) in every home in the land. Mr. Smith, a very robust man, wore yellow, sulphur-coloured gloves, a high hat, a flower in his buttonhole, white piping to his vest. A debonair figure, Chanticleerian. Fresh complexion. Exhaling a breeze of vigour. Though not short in stature, he is less tall than, from the air of his photographs, we had been led to expect. A surprise conveying a curious effect, reminded one of that subconscious sensation experienced in the presence of a one-time tall chair which has been lowered a little by having had a section of its legs sawed off.
Mr. Smith's conversation with book clerks we found to be confined to inquiries (iterated upon each reappearance) concerning the sale of his own books. We appreciate that this may not be the expression of an irrestrainable vanity, or obsessing greed, realising that very probably his professional insight into human character informs him that the subject of the sales of books is the range of the book clerk's mind. He expressed a frank and hearty pride (engaging in aspect, we felt) in the long-sustained life of "Peter," which remarkably selling book survived on the front fiction table all its contemporaries, and in full vigour lived on to see a new generation grow up around it there. In a full-blooded, sporting spirit Mr. Smith asked us if his new book was "selling faster than John Fox's." Heartiness and geniality is his role. A man built to win and to relish popularity. With a breezy salute of the sulphur-gloved hand, he is gone. Immediately we feel much less electric.
Alas, what an awful thing! Oliver Herford, with heavily dipped pen poised, is about to autograph a copy of his "Pen and Ink Puppet," when, lo! a monstrous ink blot spills upon the fair page. Hideous! Mr. Herford is nonplused. The book is ruined. No! Mr. Herford is not Mr. Herford for nothing. The book is enriched in value. Sesame! With his pen Mr. Herford deftly touches the ink blot, and it is a most amusing human silhouette. How characteristic an autograph, his delighted friend will say.
We were quite satisfied in the introduction given us in our sojourn as a book clerk with Mr. Herford. That is to say, our early education was received largely from the pages ofSt. Nicholas Magazine; and when grown to man's estate and brought to mingle with the great we might easily have suffered a sentimental disappointment in Mr. Herford. But no, he is as mad as a March hare. He never, we should say, has any idea where he is. An absolutely blank face. Mind far, far away. Doesn't act as though he had any mind. A smallish, clean-shaven man, light sack suit, somewhat crumpled. A fine shock of greyish-hair. Cane hooked over crooked arm. List to starboard, like a postman. Approaches directly toward us. We prepare to render our service. Perceives something in his path (us) just in time to avert a collision, swerves to one side. Takes an oblique tack. But speaks (always particular to avoid seeming to slight us) in a very friendly fashion. Though gives you the impression that he thinks you are some one else. A pleasant, unaffected man to talk to. Somewhat dazed, however, in effect. Curious manner of speech, of which evidently he is unconscious, partly native English accent, partly temperamental idiosyncrasy. A very simple eccentric, what in the eighteenth century was called "an original." Reads popular novels.
It was given to us to see the launching throes of a nouveau novelist. We noticed day after day a well-built young man come in to gaze at the fiction table, a sturdy, spirited, comely chap. A fine snap to his eye we particularly noticed, and admired. He seemed to derive much satisfaction from this occupation and to be in an excellent frame of mind. And then, it struck us, he grew of troubled mien. He asked us one day how "Predestined" was selling. So we had the psychology of the situation. He asked, on another, if we had sold a copy of "Predestined" yet. A few days following he inquired, "How long does it take before a book gets started?" Dejected was his mien. It took "Predestined" some time. Then it went very well. We sold a joyous-looking Stephen French Whitman, an embodiment of gusto—there was a positive crackle to his fine black eyes—a pile of books concerning themselves with Europe, and did not see him again for some time. Then he flashed upon us a handsome new moustache.
Our acquaintance with Mrs. Wharton was—merely formal. "Oh, very pleased," exclaimed an equiline lady, patrician unmistakable, of aristocratic features which we recognised from the portraits of magazines, "I'll take this." She had in her hand a copy of the then quite new pocket edition "Poems" of George Meredith. She was very fashionably, strikingly, gowned, somewhat conspicuously; a large pattern in the figure of the cloth. She carried a little dog. There was about her something, difficult to denote, brilliant and hard in effect, like a polished stone. And we felt the rarefied atmosphere of a wealthy, highly cultivated, rather haughty society. "Charge to Edward Wharton," she said, very nicely, bending over us as we wrote "Lenox, Mass." She pronounced it not Massachusetts, but Mass, as is not infrequent in the East. "Thank you," she said; she swept from us. Our regard was won to this incarnation of distinction by the pleasant humanity of her manners, her very gracious "Good morning" to the elevator man as she left.
"Dicky" Davis we always called him behind his back. And such he looks. A man of "strapping" physique, younger in a general effect than probably he is; immense chest and shoulders, great "meaty" back; constructed like (we picture) those gladiators Borrow lyrically acclaims the "noble bruisers of old England"; complexion, (to employ perhaps an excessive stylistic restraint) not pale. A heavy stick. A fondness for stocks. Very becoming. A vitality with an aversion, apparently, to wearing an overcoat in the coldest weather; deeming this probably an appurtenance of the invalid. Funny style of trowsers as if made for legs about a foot longer. In the reign of "high waters"!
We had picked up the notion that Mr. Davis was a snobbish person; we found him a very friendly man; gentle, describes it, in manner. Very respectful to clerks. "One of the other gentlemen here ordered another book for me," he mentions. But more. A sort of camaraderie. Says, one day, that he just stepped in to dodge some people he saw coming. Inquires, "Well, what's going on in the book world?" Buys travel books, Africa and such. Buys a quart of ink at a clip. He conveyed to us further, unconsciously, perhaps, a subtle impression that he was, in sympathy with us, on our side, so to say; in any difficulty, that would be, that might arise; with "the boys," in a manner of speaking. Veteran globe trotter and soldier of fortune on the earth's surface, Mr. Davis suffered a considerable shock to discover in tete-a-tete that we had never been in London.London? Such a human vegetable, we saw, was hardly credible.
"Charge," he said, "to James Huneker." He pronounced his name in a very eccentric fashion, the first syllable like that in "hunter." In our commerce with the world we have, with this rather important exception, invariably heard this "u" as in "humid." A substantial figure, very erect in carriage, supporting his portliness with that physical pride of portly men, moving with the dignity of bulk; a physiognomy of Rodinesque modelling. His cane a trim touch to the ensemble. Decidedly affable in manner to us. "Very nice man," comments our hasty note. "One of our young gentlemen here, black eyes, black hair."—describes with surprising memory of exact observation a fellow-serf—"was to get a book for me a couple of months ago." Bought the Muther monograph on Goya. Referred humorously to his new book—one on music. Said, "Many people won't believe that one can be equally good, or perhaps bad, at many things." Spoke of Arnold Bennett; said he was "a hard-working journalist as well as a novel writer." Seemed to possess the greater respect, great esteem, for the character of journalist. We felt a reminiscence of that solid practicality of sentiment of another heavy man. "Nobody but a blockhead," said Dr. Johnson, "ever wrote except for money."
Mentioned the novel then just out, "Predestined." "He [the author] is one of our [Sun] men, you know." Fraternal pride and affection in inflection, though he said he did not know Mr. Whitman. "Thank you very much indeed," he said at leaving.
From his carriage, moving slowly in on the arm of a Japanese boy, his servant, came one day John La Farge. Tales of the Far East. Profound erudition, skin of sear parchment, Indian philosophies, exotic culture, incalculable age, inscrutable wisdom, intellectual mystery, a dignity deep in its appeal to the imagination—such was the connotation of this presence. (Fine as that portrait by Mr. Cortissoz.) An Oriental scholar, all right, we thought. Mr. La Farge was in search of some abstruse art books. He did not care, he said, what language they were in, except German. He said he hated German. "Well, we have to go to the German for many things, you know," we said. "Yes," said Mr. La Farge, "we have to die, too, but I don't want to any sooner than I can help."
But it is not famous authors only that are interesting. We were approached one day by a tall, exceedingly solemn individual who asked for a copy of a book the name of which sounded to us like the title of what "the trade" knows as "a juvenile." "Who wrote it?" we inquired, puzzled. In a deep, hollow voice the unknown gentleman vibrated, "I did."
A very light-coloured new Norfolk suit, with a high hat; an exceedingly neat black cutaway coat and handsome checked trowsers, a decidedly big derby hat (flat on top), an English walking coat, with plaid trowsers to match, the whole about a dozen checks high. This? An inventory of the wardrobe of Dr. Henry van Dyke, as it has been displayed to our appreciation. Has not the handsome wardrobe been a familiar feature in the history of literature? And does anybody like Dr. Goldsmith the less for having loved a lovely coat?
A slight figure, very erect and alert. A dapper, dignified step. Movement precise. An effect of a good deal of nose glasses. Black, heavy rims. A wide, black tape. Head perpendicular, drawn back against the neck. Grave, scholarly face, chiselled with much refinement of technique; foil to the studious complexion, a dark, silken moustache. Holding our thumb-nail sketch up to the light, we see it thus.
We regret that our view of this figure so prominent in our literature is perforce so entirely external. But for this Dr. van Dyke has no one to blame but himself, his fastidiousness in clerks. Ignoring, as he passes, our offer of service, at the desk where he seats himself he removes his hat—a large head, we note, for the figure, a good deal of back as well as top head—and, preparing to write, to fill out the order forms himself, fumbles a great deal with his glasses, taking off and putting on again. A friend discovering him here, he springs up and greets him with much vivacity. His orders written out, he delivers them into the hands of the manager of the shop with whom he chats a bit. . . .
Nature imitated art, indeed, when she designed William Gillette, remarkable fleshly incarnation of the literary figment, Sherlock Holmes. In the soul of Mr. Gillette, as on a stage, we witnessed a dramatic moral conflict. Two natures struggled before us within him. Which would prevail? Mr. Gillette was much interested in Rackham books. Bought a great many. In stock at this time was a very elaborate set in several quarto volumes of "Alice in Wonderland," most ornately bound, with Rackham designs inlaid in levant of various colours in the rich purple levant binding. The illustrations within were a unique, collected set of the celebrated drawings made by various hands for this classic. The price, several hundred dollars. Mr. Gillette was torn with temptation here. And yet was it right for him to be so extravagant? Periodically he came in, impelled to inquire if the set had yet been sold. If somebody only would buy the set—why, then, of course—it would be all over.
In our contemplation of the literari we have amused ourselves with philosophic reflection. We recalled that old saw of Oscar Wilde's (as George Moore says of something of Wordsworth's) about the artist tending always to reproduce his own type. And we thought what an excellent model to the illustrator of his own "Married Life of the Frederic Carrolls" Jesse Lynch Williams would have been. No name itself, it struck us, would be happier for Mr. Williams than Frederic Carroll—if it were not Jesse Lynch Williams. A "colletch" chap alumnus. A typical, clever, exceedingly likable young American husband, fairly well to do: it is thus we behold him. Slender, in an English walking coat, smiling agreeably. One, we thought, you would think of as a popular figure in a younger "set."
It is irrelevant, certainly, but we must acknowledge our indebtedness to a lady customer who supposed that the "Married Life of the Frederic Carrolls" was an historic work, dealing with the domestic existence of the author of "Alice."
Thomas Nelson Page, autographing presentation copies of "A Coast of Bohemia," remarks, "This is one of the rewards of poetry." At this task, or, rather, pleasure, Mr. Page spent a good part of several successive days in the store. A gentleman, with a flavour of "the South" in his speech, very like his well-known pictures; stocky; an effect of not having, in length, much neck. Light, soft suit, or very becoming Prince Albert, and high hat. "He will wear you out," whispers a colleague to us; "he has no idea where any of his friends live. I doubt if he knows where he lives himself." The junior Mr. Weller, we recollect, when an inn "boots" referred to humankind in terms natural to his calling. "There's a pair of Hessians in thirteen," he said. Viewing Mr. Page with the eye of an attendant, we should remark that he is a Tartar. But a kindly, patient, courteous Tartar.
City directories, telephone "books," social registers, "Who's Whos," all are necessary to enable him to tell the addresses of his friends. And these are inadequate. He wishes to send, as a token of his regard, a book, affectionately inscribed, to his friend, let us say, J. M. D——, Esq. We learn by the agency of the machinery to which we have recourse that there reside in the City of New York four gentlemen of this identical name: one on Madison Avenue, one on Ninety-first Street, another in Brooklyn, the other somewhere else. Mr. Page is completely bewildered as to which is his friend. "Well, I don't know," he says, "but this man married former Senator So-and-So's daughter." Now, can't we solve that, somehow? Historic Spirit! we cried that day, impracticality of literary men for petty, mundane details, here hast thou still thy habitat, a temple in Mr. Page!
Lor', how we do run on!