pictures. The only sound heard is the grinding of mechanical devices
hanging in their frames. No’isms and no’ismisms are Coady’s
specialties. Confusion outside harmony inside are his themes. He is an
excellent talker. He does it kindly and patiently and seldom will he be
interrupted by his listeners.
Stieglitz’ 291
Stieglitz is trying in vain to make a carping friend believe that the
pictures on exhibition are a step up from Cezanne or Matisse. If he
doesn’t like this one, well, here is one not so modern. Why shouldn’t he
like that. And here is one not so modern even as that one.
Walkowitz is always there agreeing--if he didn’t agree he wouldn’t be
there.
Stieglitz had had a hair cut last week. Stieglitz always has a hair cut
when the cold winter winds start to blow.
It is a historical moment each year when Alfred Stieglitz, “specialist
of work of all kinds,” feels the approach of the cold winter breezes and
knows that the time has come to have his hair cut again. Ha! how it will
grow until next year, until it has to be cut again. But the Fifth Buddha
isn’t born yet and Stieglitz’s soul still walks three steps ahead of its
body.
The Sunwise Turn Bookshop
There they are simply quiet and awfully Batik. Another art shop for
art’s sake where the returns more than justify us in being artistic.
“See this Batik dress, isn’t it expressive, why won’t people dress like
that all the time?” Nobody but a Bahaist or a Rosicrucionist or a
Greenacre disciple would be seen dead in it. Then there are books, lots
of nice books by nice people and bought by nice people.
The room is decorated in the scheme of a musical chord. A rope would be
more appropriate for those who are responsible for its decoration.
At Ehrich’s Gallery
It is like stepping from Churchill’s on Broadway into the Fifth Avenue
Cathedral, if one has spent the forenoon in the modern art galleries on
the Avenue and then walks into Ehrich’s. Here is a good healthy
commercial atmosphere dealing in the Renaissance. Whether the lights are
turned out out of respect for the Annunciation which holds the stage
with footlights before it or whether Mr. Ehrich recognizes that where
people speak with more than bated breath and hushed voices as they do in
museums, the lights ought to be lowered, is the question? Here you not
only lower your voice, but you study the art of tiptoeing. Madonnas,
saints’ pictures, and other pictures which will be sainted by virtue of
their purchase prices are on the walls.
Please pass the incense pot.
1916
’Way Down in Greenwich Village
The fad of false Bohemia in Greenwich Village has passed. The purple and
orange brand of tearooms and of so-called gift shops where art lovers
and artistic people from the Bronx and Flatbush assembled, have gone out
of existence. The designers and manufacturers of astounding atrocities
who called themselves “modern artists” have disappeared. True there are
a few short-haired women left, who parade the streets in their unusual
clothes, but they, too, will soon move to other parts of the city with
the return of the soldiers, and will reassume their real calling in
life.
Workers and ambitious strivers have taken possession, once more, of the
sacred grounds, where memories and hopes are holy possessions, where so
many have worked and toiled and spread an evangel, now accepted
universally.
New places have sprung up where idlers find themselves isolated, where
enthusiasm and sincerity is written on walls and faces. And people are
doing things once more in Greenwich Village. Commercialism seems to have
disappeared, and men are willing to help men.
The Paint Box
Mrs. Williams has opened an art gallery, the Paint Box, where anybody
may exhibit, anybody who wishes to hang his or her pictures. Everybody
is welcome to view the exhibits; who is willing to pay an obolus of ten
cents. But it is worth it. And Mrs. Williams has to pay rent and light.
Her idea is not new by any means. Five years ago I came to Washington
Square and opened what was later called Bruno’s Garret. “Here are my
walls,” I said. “Come and hang your pictures, if you are an artist. Here
is my magazine, voice in it your opinion of any subject you may choose,
if you are a writer. Here is an auditorium with comfortable chairs;
come and recite your poems, face your critics, if you are a poet....”
I charged nothing for all of this, no admission fees, no wall space
rates. I did not sell or try to sell anything. But I believe that Mrs.
Williams’ plan is better. The small admission fee will not interfere
with the number of visitors, and the altruistic motive therefore less
evident, and more ready acceptance by the people. Her galleries are
spacious, light, airy rooms in No. 44 Washington Square. The walls are
hung with pictures. Pictures everywhere. Small and large. In oil and
water. Miniatures and life-sized paintings; cubist and conventionals;
foreign and familiar; so many pictures on each wall that there is not
enough space for the proverbial pin to glide through and fall to the
floor.
We met old acquaintances on the walls. There was Glen Coleman, in our
estimation the best of the younger artists in America. He is painting in
oil now. My readers will remember my frequent references to Coleman’s
pen and ink sketches, to his street scenes, especially his sketches of
Greenwich Village. There is so much peace and life in his work. His
houses tell stories. His old lantern lighting the corner of a narrow
street somewhere on the East Side becomes familiar and we grow really
attached to it.
Coleman has a genius for depicting the eternal in the fleeting moments
of life. He seems far above men and things. His brush is dipped in love.
He is the only American artist who gives grandeur to the poverty of
every day life on city streets.
Stuard Davis has some of his latest works there. A cemetery. I have
forgotten where it is situated, very appealing with its crosses and
stones, on a sloping hill bathed in sunrays. This cemetery is perhaps
unique in the world. No remains of weary travelers repose beneath the
crosses. They were erected by loving hands, while the loved one perished
in some strange land or on the sea. And nothing but the sad news of
their death has come as a last message to friends and relatives.
He has a musician there whose nose is bleeding. We sympathize with the
stricken musician.
Bobby Edwards, the singer of the village, hung a few ukeleles and some
very eye-fetching pictures.
Have you ever heard of that master of the lost art of wood engraving,
Gustave Baumann, and his incomparable scenes of cities from all over the
Union. “Gloomy Gus” he was called in the West, this untiring artist who
wanders from city to city cutting his own wood blocks, printing them on
his old hand press, always independent, always free, an eternal
traveler. He struck New York and the Village and left his card in the
shape of a few leaves that attract attention the very minute we enter
the room.
Howard Heath’s pictures, which remind so very much of the work of Acton
Davies during the cubist craze, are right near Ezra Winter’s “The
Philosopher.” The Philosopher is a gentleman commonly called a bum. He
is seated near a beach, taking a foot-bath in the splashing waves, and
staring meditatively at a tiny daisy in his grisly, awkward hand.
And fifty other artists of whom the world will hear some day (or never)
have accepted the invitation of Elvin Williams and have joined her happy
family in the Paint Box. And she, herself? No, she has not short hair.
She is not an old maid, not eccentric. Nothing wrong with her. A
charming young woman, even dressed as any other one above Fourteenth
Street. She had an idea, she said. The idea seems to work out all right.
1919
President Harding’s Favorite Book
President-elect Harding was, and is, a newspaper man. Thank God for
that. He knows life as it is, and as it appears to be in the press. The
man who knows how to read our newspapers has won half of the battle. And
newspaper men are generous and excellent judges of men.
Harding smokes cigarettes. This puts him in a different class. Look out
for the man who warns you against cigarettes. Who tells you (on offering
him your case) with a superior smile: “Thanks, I don’t use them.”
Sometimes I will sing a song of hate against those black cigars of the
sedate and of the respectable. I loathe the cigar of the habitual
smoker, so justly characterized by Schopenhauer as a stimulant of
thought for people who do not think. Not one smoker of cigarettes ever
arrives at that low level of enjoyment.
To smoke a cigar is not much more than a hobby. The cigarette is a
passion, a vice.
The cigarette is intoxicating. If one inhales the aromatic smoke, draws
it deep into one’s lungs, into blood and nerves, one feels that this
narcotic wonder-poison liberates the soul from a profane pressure, and
one’s spirit is lured to lighter and brighter regions. Intoxication is
the sweet magic of the cigarette, and, therefore, the cigarette is
inseparable from all extravagant enjoyments. The cigarette is in the
gambling den. It can be found always where they drink champagne. It is a
part of frivolity, of sin, of the poetry of enjoyment. Its aromatic
fragrance, the tender rings that vanish swiftly into grotesque
figures.... The cigarette is the perfume of the boudoir.
The cigarette smoker never looks for a stronger brand, as the consumer
of cigars, who methodically tans his tongue with his weed. The cigarette
smoker increases his daily ration, and finally smokes between the
courses of his meal, between his kisses.... In the green room of
theatre and concert room, you can see him hungrily reaching for his
silver case, the gift of his beloved. He awakens in the night and lights
his cigarette, and what peace and joy after each long draught of the
sweet redeeming bewilderment. That’s quite different from that brown,
ill-smelling butt, chewed from one corner of the mouth to the other,
lighted again and again, until it has happily dissolved itself into
ashes. A bedroom filled with smoke: a long story of enlightenment to the
one who knows. The cigarette fits in our nervous times. A nervous
pleasure for a nervous people. We smoke cigarettes because we are
nervous. We are nervous because we smoke cigarettes.
How beautiful they look, golden, tender threads enclosed in fragile rice
paper, like a lovely woman’s beautiful hair, fragrant and tempting.
Compare them with the most beautiful box of cigars. Those black,
strong-smelling cigars, carcasses of leaves transformed into mummies.
Think of the men who smoke them, and tell me isn’t there some
similarity?
In some Sunday paper, I read that Mr. Harding’s favorite book was
written by Edgar Saltus. You rack your brains? You don’t remember
Saltus? Twenty years ago, he was hailed as the coming American novelist.
At least twenty books of his appeared in short succession. Today he is
known almost exclusively to the booklover. First (often the only)
editions of some of his books are in demand and sell at fancy prices,
while others can be found at the book bargain counters of Liggett’s Drug
Stores at twenty-five cents a copy. His Magdalene appeared at the time
of Oscar Wilde’s visit to America. Both men met here, in London and
Paris. Critics contend that Wilde received from this book his
inspiration for Salome. There are pages and pages of great similarity in
both books. Saltus’ Magdalene is a fine contribution to the world’s
literature of Magdalenes. In all his books there is a touch of the
French eighties, and a resonance with the English nineties. If Saltus
had not been a scholar, he would be another George Moore. Only a
connoisseur can take a fancy to Saltus, a man who has a fine sense for
literature and for life.
I love to think of the newspaper man with literary inclinations smoking
his cigarette, while reading one of Saltus’ books, in his study in the
White House.
1920
INDEX
Adams, John, 75, 85
Adams, John Quincy, 76
American News Co., 58
Anderson Galleries, 75
American Art Association, 26, 27
American Art News, 33
Ann Street, 39
A Kempis, Thomas, 64
Astor, 24
Astor Library, 39
Atherton, Gertrude, 50
Arens, Egmont, 52
Anderson, Zoe, 54
Adam, Villiers de L’Isle, 91
Albany, 109, 111
Baxterstreet, 12, 13
Botticelli, 31
Beauregarde, General, 34
Bingham, Mrs., 35
Beardsley, Aubrey, 43, 91
Breslow, Max, 44
Bender, Frank, 44, 45, 46
Bierce, Ambrose, 51
Benjamin, W. R., 71, 72, 73, 74
Burr, Aaron, 48
Boumann, Gustave, 122
Boni, Brothers, 52
Boni and Liveright, 52
Broadway, 56
Bowery, 63, 64
Brunswick Hotel, 71
Bruno’s Garret, 120
Benjamin, Park, 72
Buchanan, James, 76
Brentano, 82
Beethoven, 89
Brown, Cowley, 11
Baudelaire, 91
Boston, 101
Buffalo, 101
Burnham, Thomas, 102
Bay Psalm Book, 103
Blaine, James J., 103
Braithwaite, Stan, 104
Beckfort, Bertha, 104
Badger Publish. Co., 106
Balzac, 113
Canina, 46
Cezanne, 118
Chicago, 56, 87, 88
Chicago Chap Books, 91
Comstockery, 53
Corot, 26, 43
Clark, Aug., 27
Coady’s Gallery, 118
Chippendale, 33
Central Park, 39
Custer, E. A., 40, 41, 42, 43
Carnegie Libraries, 83
Casement, bookseller, 59
Casement, Roger, Sir, 59
Chambers, Robert, 62
Carter, Nick, 65
Corbett, bookseller, 67
Civil War, 72
Coleman, Glenn, 121
Collector, The, 73
Chesterton, G. K., 75
Cleveland, Grover, 76
Crane, Stephen, 81
Cadigan, Mr., 82
Clay, Henry, 85
Caine, Hall, 91
Chandler, George, 98
Colesworthy, 102
Cornhill, 102
Clarion Book Shop, 10
Daniel’s Gallery, 117
Darrow, General, 27
Dana, Editor, 72
Davies, Acton, 117
Davis, Stuart, 121
Davidson, John, 114
Degas, 26
Dickens, 41
Duke, Jerome, 47
Dreambooks, 60
Democratic Revue, 79
Davidson, John, 91
Dill Pickle, 98
Dan Martin Mission, 87
Duerer, Albrecht, 87, 95
Doerner Julius, 87, 88, 89, 90, 95
Dowson, Ernest, 91
Detroit, 100
Dodd, Mead & Co., 102
Duff Gordon, Lady, 104
Dutton’s, 114
Des, Forges, 109
Drake, J. F., 113
Dennen’s, 10
East Side, The 54
Eaton Bill, 92
Edwards, Bobby, 122
Ehrich’s Gallery, 118, 119
Engelke, George, 98
Emerson, Ralph W., 102
Fifth Ave. Auction Rooms, 26
Flatau’s Auction Rooms, 28
Fulton, Robert, 85
Field, Eugene, 91, 92, 93
Four Seas Co., 106
Gardenside Book Shop, 104
Garvice, Charles, 66
Goldsmith, Alfred, 49, 50, 51
Griswold, Rufus, 97
Garfield, James A., 76
Grant, Ulysses, 76
Greenwich Village, 52, 99, 120, 121, 122
Glebe Magazine, 52
Gerhardt, Christian, 54
Gillin, Jim, 69
Goose Quill, 91
Goethe, 96
Harding, Warren S., 123
Hartman, Auctioneer, 26
Harte, Bret, 60
Hartpence, W., 117
Harvey Alexander, 114
Holmes, Sherlock, 33
Heath, Howard, 122
Harris, Frank, 91, 97, 114
Haberson, D. L., 67
Healy’s Cabaret, 68
Hergesheimer, 114
Hamilton, Alexander, 85
Hill, Walter, 93
Hubbard, Elbert, 101
Heine, Heinrich, 101
Heineman, 114
Holmes, Oliver W., 102
Hurst, Bishop, 103
Howard, Alma, 105
Hugo, Victor, 113
Higgins, Bookseller, 9, 10
I. W. W., 99
James, Henry, 60
James, Miss, 60
Jumel, Mme., 48
Johnson, Mr., 69
Jefferson, Thomas, 75
Janski, 98
Johns, John, 98
Johnson, Ben, 112
Kranach, Master, 95
Kemp, Harry, 114
Kennerly, Mitchell, 113, 114
Kettel’s Theatre, 63
Kirby, Mr., 26
Kolliskis’, 29
Knoke, Joe W., 65
Kant, Em., 101
King, Ben, 91
Kirschenbaum’s, 64
Kipling, Rud., 73, 91
Kreymborg, Alfred, 52
Kimball & Stone, 91
Liggett’s Drug Stores, 124
Madison, Book Store, 59
Maria, Old, 54
Marie Antoinette, 80
Marshall Field, 22
Middleton, Richard, 114
Matisse, 118
Monahan, Michael, 114
Municipal Courts, 63
Markham, Edwin, 67
MacCarthy, J. F., 32, 33, 34, 35
Merrick, Leonard, 114
McKinley, William, 76, 77, 85
Mt. Vernon, 35
Millet, 43
Monroe, James, 76
Madigan, Francis P., 78, 79, 80
Madigan, Thomas, 84, 85, 86
Moody, Church, 87
Moore, George, 124
Mozart, 89
Morris, Frank, 91
Mallarme, Stephen, 91
Mahoney, Bertha, 105
Milwaukee, 108
MacKee, Walter, 10
New York, 39, 100
Nye, Bill, 91
New Era Book Shop, 110
Oxford Book Shop, 49
Osgood, James R., 86
Old Corner Book Shop, 102
Papyros, 114
Paint Box, 120
Patter, Palmer, Mrs., 89
Parkrow, 12
Philadelphia, 37, 101
Pimple, Mr., 50, 51
Poe, Edgar A., 71, 78, 79, 96
Peledan, Joseph, 91
Powner’s Book Shop, 10, 93, 98
Pearson’s Magazine, 97
Pound, Ezra, 106
Phillips, David Graham, 110
Paine, Thomas, 113
Proctor, Arthur, 10
Raab, George, 109
Radical Book Shop, 98
Reliance Book Shop, 19
Rubens, 22, 31
Reynolds, Joshua, 54
Riley, James, 75
Roosevelt Theodore, 10, 77, 85
Richelieu, Cardinal, 81
Rosetti, Gabriel D., 85
Reed, Opie, 91
Rockefeller, J. D., 96
Royce, Mr., 113
Saturday Evening Post, 114
Saltus, Edgar, 124
Salop, Alexander, 60
Salvation Army Book Dept., 17, 19, 20, 21
Schopenhauer, 123
Shaw, Bernard G., 30
Silo, Auctioneer, 27
Schulte, Theodore, 47, 81, 82
Stone, Harry, 114, 115, 116
Stiezlitz, Alfred, 118
Sumnerism, 53
Sunwise Turn, 118
Stuart, Gilbert, 30, 33
Sutton, James, 34
Stammer, Peter, 47, 60, 69, 70
Sinclair, Upton, 50
Schnitzler, Arthur, 53
Studio Club, 60
Shakespeare, 63
Street & Smith, 66
Shaffat’s, 10
Schwartz, Osia, 69
Sumner, Charles, 69
Society for Prevention of Vice, 69, 101
San Francisco, 101
Shelly, P. B., 71
Schenectady Daily Union, 72
Southern Literary Messenger, 79
Smith, George D., 79
Sargent, John S., 86
Stieglitz, Alfred, 98
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 113
Tintoretto, 22
Times, N. Y., 55
Traubel, Horace, 44, 114
Tucker, Benjamin, 60
Thompson, John R., 70
Talley, Miss, 79
Tiffany’s, 89
Taft, William Howard, 77, 85
Taylor, Bayard, 86
Thomas, Collin F., 102
Vanderbilt Hotel, 29
Van Southall, 51
Velasquez, 31
Vogue, 62
Verlaine, 91
Visscher, Bill, Col., 92
Walkowitz, 118
Waterloo, Stanley, 91
Washington, Martha, 22, 29, 36
Washington, George, 33, 75, 85
Washington Square, 53
Washington Square Book Shop, 52
Whistler, J. McN., 26, 87
Wertmueller, 34
Whitman, Walt, 44, 53, 96, 114
Wiggins, K. D., 50
Weyhe, E., 53
Williams, Elvin, 121, 122
Wilde, Oscar, 60, 64, 78, 80, 91, 96
Wells, H. W., 75
Wilson, Woodrow, 77, 85
West, Benjamin, 87
White Chapel Club, 91
Whittier, 102
Weber, Bookseller, 103
Wells, Gabriel, 113, 114
Zorn, 26, 83