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."
XII
A CLERK MAY LOOK AT A CELEBRITY
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 of _St. 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!
XIII
CAUN'T SPEAK THE LANGUAGE
Whenever we go to England we learn that we "caun't" speak the language.
We are told very frankly that we can't. And we very quickly perceive
that, whatever it is that we speak, it certainly is not "the language."
Let us consider this matter. A somewhat clever and an amusingly
ill-natured English journalist, T. W. H. Crosland, not long ago wrote a
book "knocking" us, in which he says "that having inherited, borrowed
or stolen a beautiful language, they (that is, we Americans) wilfully
and of set purpose distort and misspell it." Crosland's ignorance of
all things American, ingeniously revealed in this lively bit of
writing, is interesting in a person of, presumably, ordinary
intelligence, and his credulity in the matter of what he has heard
about us is apparently boundless.
However, he does not much concern us. Well-behaved Englishmen would
doubtless consider as impolite his manner of expression regarding the
"best thing imported in the Mayflower." But however unamiably, he does
voice a feeling very general, if not universal, in England. You never
get around--an Englishman would say "round"--the fact over there that
we do not speak the English language.
Well, to use an Americanism, they,--the English,--certainly do have the
drop on us in the matter of beauty. Mr. Chesterton somewhere says that
a thing always to be borne in mind in considering England is that it is
an island, that its people are insulated. An excellent thing to
remember, too, in this connection, is that England is a flower garden.
In ordinary times, after an Englishman is provided with a roof and four
meals a day, the next thing he must have is a garden, even if it is but
a flowerpot. They are continually talking about loveliness over there:
it is a lovely day; it is lovely on the river now; it is a lovely spot.
And so there are primroses in their speech. And then they have
inherited over there, or borrowed or stolen, a beautiful literary
language, worn soft in colour, like their black-streaked, grey-stone
buildings, by time; and, as Whistler's Greeks did their drinking
vessels, they use it because, perforce, they have no other. The
humblest Londoner will innocently shame you by talking perpetually like
a storybook.
One day on an omnibus I asked the conductor where I should get off to
reach a certain place. "Oh, that's the journey's end, sir," he
replied. Now that is poetry. It sounds like Christina Rossetti. What
would an American car conductor have said? "Why, that's the end of the
line." "Could you spare me a trifle, sir?" asks the London beggar. A
pretty manner of requesting alms. Little boys in England are very fond
of cigarette pictures, little cards there reproducing "old English
flowers." I used to save them to give to children. Once I gave a
number to the ringleader of a group. I was about to tell him to divide
them up. "Oh, we'll share them, sir," he said. At home such a boy
might have said to the others: "G'wan, these're fer me." Again, when I
inquired my way of a tiny, ragged mite, he directed me to "go as
straight as ever you can go, sir, across the cricket field; then take
your first right; go straight through the copse, sir," he called after
me. The copse? Perhaps I was thinking of the "cops" of New York.
Then I understood that the urchin was speaking of a small wood.
Of course he, this small boy, sang his sentences, with the rising and
falling inflection of the lower classes. "Top of the street, bottom of
the road, over the way"--so it goes. And, by the way, how does an
Englishman know which is the top and which is the bottom of every
street?
Naturally, the English caun't understand us. "When is it that you are
going 'ome?" asked my friend, the policeman in King's Road.
"Oh, some time in the fall," I told him.
"In the fall?" he inquired, puzzled.
"Yes, September or October."
"Oh!" he exclaimed, "in the autumn, yes, yes. At the fall of the
leaves," I heard him murmur meditatively. Meeting him later in the
company of another policeman, "He," he said to his friend, nodding at
me, "is going back in the fall." Deliciously humorous to him was my
speech. Now it may be mentioned as an interesting point that many of
the words imported in the _Mayflower_, or in ships following it, have
been quite forgotten in England. Fall, as in the fall of the year, I
think, was among them. Quite so, quite so, as they say in England.
Yes, in the King's Road. For, it is an odd thing, Charles Scribner's
Sons are on Fifth Avenue, but Selfridge's is in Oxford Street. Here we
meet a man on the street; we kick him into it. And in England it is a
very different thing, indeed, whether you meet a lady in the street or
on the street. You, for instance, wouldn't meet a lady on the street
at all. In fact, in England, to our mind, things are so turned around
that it is as good as being in China. Just as traffic there keeps to
the left kerb, instead of to the right curb, so whereas here I call you
up on the telephone, there you phone me down. It would be awkward,
wouldn't it, for me to say to you that I called you down?
England is an island; and though the British government controls one
fifth, or something like that, of the habitable globe, England is a
very small place. Most of the things there are small. A freight car
is a goods van, and it certainly is a goods van and not a freight car.
So when you ask what little stream this is, you are told that that is
the river Lea, or the river Arun, as the case may be, although they
look, indeed, except that they are far more lovely, like what we call
"cricks" in our country. And the Englishman is fond of speaking in
diminutives. He calls for a "drop of ale," to receive a pint tankard.
He asks for a "bite of bread," when he wants half a loaf. His "bit of
green" is a bowl of cabbage. He likes a "bit of cheese," in the way of
a hearty slice, now and then. One overhearing him from another room
might think that his copious repast was a microscopic meal. About this
peculiarity in the homely use of the language there was a joke in
_Punch_ not long ago. Said the village worthy in the picture: "Ah, I
used to be as fond of a drop o' beer as any one, but nowadays if I do
take two or dree gallons it do knock I over!"