Six weeks later, when the torrid summer heat was waning and September
breezes had begun to cool the streets, the nights, at any rate, I found
myself a reporter on the staff of the _New York Times_. My salary of
$35 a week seemed incredible. It was like coming into a fortune, and
its first effect was to make a miser of me. I had learned the value of
the single cent; I found myself fearful of spending even that cent. I
understood why people who pass suddenly from want to affluence become
stingy, complaining always of being hard-up. I determined to save. I
opened an account in a Savings Bank against another rainy day. This
trait, acquired in my unhappy New York period, remains in me still, I
notice. Never have I known from that time to this what it means to be
comfortably off, free from financial anxiety for more than a month or
two ahead, yet each time an extra bit of money comes in, I am aware
of the instinct to be extremely, unnecessarily careful of each penny.
The less I have, the more reckless I feel about spending it, and _vice
versa_.
Those six weeks, however, before Muldoon sent for me, proved the most
painful and unhappy of all my New York days. There was something
desperate about them; I reached bottom. It was the darkest period
before the dawn, though I had no certainty that the dawn was breaking.
My income from the eau de Cologne business was ended, my free-lance
work struck a bad streak, the artists were still out of town, the
studios consequently empty; my violin pupil had gone to Boston. It
was during this August that I slept in Central Park, and passed the
night--for there was not much sleep about it--beneath the Bronx Park
trees as well, though I had to walk all the long weary way to get
there. It was, also, _par excellence_, the height of the dried-apple
season. With the exception of Old Louis, occasionally Mullins too, I
had no companionship. Brodie, who by the way received no money from the
insurance companies, but equally, escaped a worse disaster, I never
saw again. The post on the _Times_, meanwhile, seemed far away, highly
problematical too. My comforts were Bronx Park, occasionally open-air
music, Louis, and my own dreams, speculations and, chief of all, the
Bhagavad Gita.... Hours I spent in the free libraries. Never, before or
since, did I read so many books in so short a time. This free reading,
of course, never stopped for a moment all the years I lived in New
York, but during these six weeks it reached a maximum.
From the ’vantage ground of easier days I have often looked back and
wondered why I made no real effort to better myself, to get out of the
hated city, to go west, for a railway pass was always more or less
within my power, and other fellows, similarly in difficulties, were
always changing occupations and localities. It was due, I think, to
a kind of resignation, though rather a fierce resignation, a kind of
obstinate spirit of acceptance in me. “Take it all, whatever comes,”
said this spirit. “Dodge, shirk, avoid nothing. You have deserved
it. Exhaust it then. Suck the orange dry.” And, as if life were not
severe and difficult enough, as it was, I would even practise certain
austerities I invented on my own account. Already I felt myself
immeasurably old; life seemed nearly ended; external events, anyhow,
did not _really_ matter....
A rolling-stone sees life, of course, but collects little, if any,
fruit; though I made no determined efforts to escape my conditions at
this time, a new adventure ever had attractions for me. Having once
tasted the essence of a particular experience, I found myself weary
of it and longing for a new one. This vagabondage in the blood has
strengthened with the years. A fixed job means prison, a new one sends
my spirits up. Routine is hell. To take a room, a flat, a job by the
year, means insupportable detestation of any of them soon afterwards.
It is a view of life that hardly goes to make good citizenship, but,
on the other hand, it tends to keep the heart young, to prevent too
early hardening of the mental arteries, while it certainly militates
against the dread disease of boredom. _Une vie mouvementée_ has its
vagabond values. To a certain side of my nature Old Louis’s wiser
epitaph (“Sorry _I_ spoke; sorry _they_ spoke”) made less appeal than
some anonymous verses I came across in _Scribner’s Magazine_ with the
title “A Vagrant’s Epitaph”--verses I knew by heart after a first
reading:
Change was his mistress; Chance his counsellor.
Love could not hold him; Duty forged no chain.
The wide seas and the mountains called him,
And grey dawns saw his camp-fires in the rain.
Sweet hands might tremble!--aye, but he must go.
Revel might hold him for a little space;
But, turning past the laughter and the lamps,
His eyes must ever catch the luring Face.
Dear eyes might question! Yea, and melt again;
Rare lips a-quiver, silently implore;
But he must ever turn his furtive head,
And hear that other summons at the door.
Change was his mistress; Chance his counsellor.
The dark firs knew his whistle up the trail.
Why tarries he to-day?... And yesternight
Adventure lit her stars without avail.
The plague of possessions, at any rate, has never troubled me, either
actually or in desire, while the instinct to reduce life to its
simplest terms has strengthened. The homeless feeling of living in my
trunks is happiness, the idea of domesticity appals, and the comforts
of rich friends wake no echo in me, assuredly no envy. A home, as a
settled place one owns and expects to live in for years, perhaps for
ever, is abhorrent to every instinct in me, and when acquaintances
show off with pride their cottage, their flat, their furniture, their
“collections,” even their “not a bad little garden, is it?” my heart
confesses to a vague depression which makes it difficult to sympathise
and give them my blessing. Life, at its longest, is absurdly brief
before health and energy begin to slip downhill; it is mapped with
a cunning network of ruts and grooves from which, once in, it is
difficult to escape; only the lucky ones are never caught, although the
“caught” are lucky perhaps in another way--they do not realize it. Yet
even to-day, when times are bad and the horizon not too clear for some
time ahead, the old dread of starvation rises in me; I never see apple
rings in a grocer’s window without getting their taste and feeling them
rise and swell within me like some troublesome emotion....
To my year and a-half on the _New York Times_ I look back with nothing
but pleasure; the slogan, “All the news that’s fit to print,” was
practised; and the men I worked with were a good company of decent
fellows. Muldoon, a fighting Irishman with a grim fierce manner and
a warm heart, had a sense of humour and a gift for encouraging his
reporters that made them love him. C. W. Miller was editor in chief,
and Carey, manager. Who owned the paper I have forgotten, but it was
not Colonel Jones who was present at the Union League Club dinner to
my father, when I made my maiden speech some nine years before. Hours
of work were from noon until the night assignment was turned in, which
meant any time from ten o’clock onwards; though, as emergency man, in
case of something happening late, I often had to stay in the office
till after one in the morning. Proper food, a new suit, comradeship
with a better class of men, came, perhaps, just in time for me. I
remember the pleasure of writing home about my new post. I had a
dress-suit again. I saved $15 a week.
Reporting for a New York newspaper can never be uneventful, but the
painful incidents of life make deeper impressions than the pleasant
ones. To meet the former means usually to call upon one’s reserves,
and memory hence retains sharper pictures of them corresponding to the
greater effort. On the _Times_ I was happy.
Two incidents stand out still in the mind, one creditably pleasing to
vanity; the other, exactly the reverse. The latter, though it annoyed
Muldoon keenly at the moment, fortunately for me appealed to his sense
of humour too. He had given me an evening off--that is, all I had to do
was to write a brief report of a Students’ Concert in which his little
niece was performing.
“Without straining veracity,” he mentioned with a grin, “ye might
perhaps say something kind and pretty about her!” He winked, whispering
her name in my ear. “Have ye got it?” he asked fiercely. I nodded. Was
I thinking of something else at the moment? Was my mind in the woods
that lovely evening in spring?
At the concert I picked out the name I remembered and wrote later a
sturdy eulogistic notice of an atrocious performer, saying the very
prettiest and nicest things I could think of, then went home to a
coveted early bed. But Muldoon’s grim smile next day, as I reported at
his desk for an assignment, gave me warning that something was wrong.
He did not keep me in suspense. I had selected for my praise, not
only the crudest performer of the concert--that I already knew--but
one whom all the other pupils disliked intensely, and whose name they
particularly hoped would be omitted altogether. The niece I had not
even mentioned.
The other incident that stands out after all these years was more
creditable. Dr. Lyman Abbott, Editor of the _Outlook_, which once Henry
Ward Beecher edited as the _Church Union_, was preaching in Beecher’s
Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, a series of sermons on “The Theology of
an Evolutionist,” and Muldoon had persuaded the editor-in-chief that
a full report on the front page every Monday would be a credit to
the paper. His proposal was agreed to, apparently without too much
enthusiasm. The Irishman was determined to justify it. “I want ye to
take it on,” said Muldoon to me. “Ye can write shorthand. Make it 150.”
A column was 100. To have a column and a-half on the front page, if I
could do it well, would be a feather in my cap. But my shorthand was
poor, I was out of practice too, bad notes are impossible to read for
transcription, and mistakes would mean angry letters of correction from
Dr. Abbott, probably.
Monday was my day off. I went to Plymouth Church with a new notebook
and three soft lead pencils, duly sharpened at both ends. In the brief
interval before Sunday I practised hard. The church was packed to the
roof, as I sneaked up the aisle--an unfamiliar place, I felt it!--to a
little table placed immediately beneath the pulpit. I came in after the
service, but just in time for the sermon. There were no other reporters
present. It thrilled me to see Dr. Abbott, who, as a young man of
twenty-three, had heard Lincoln speak on slavery.
The “Theology of an Evolutionist” was an arduous assignment that
strained every faculty I possessed, but indifferent shorthand lay at
the root of the strain. Dr. Abbott’s delivery was sure and steady, more
rapid than it sounded. He never hesitated for a word, he never coughed,
or cleared his throat, or even sneezed. There were none of those slight
pauses which help a poor shorthand-writer to pick up valuable seconds.
The stream of words poured on relentlessly, and the rate, I should
judge, was 250 a minute. Verbatim reporting was impossible to me. I
had to condense as I went along, and to condense without losing sense
and coherence was not easy. My pencil was always eight or ten words
behind the words I actually listened to, and the Pitman outlines for
the words I wrote down had to be recalled, while, at the same time,
memory had to retain those being actually uttered at the moment. Being
out of practice I often hesitated over an outline, losing fractions
of a second each time I did so. These outlines come automatically, of
course, to a good writer. Then there was the sense, the proportion,
the relative values of argument and evidence to be considered--matters
that could not be adjusted in the office afterwards, when there was
barely time, in any case, to transcribe my notes before going to Press.
The interest I felt in the subject, moreover, delayed my mind time
and time again. Occasionally a pencil-point would break as well, and
turning it round in my hand meant important delay in a process where
each fraction of a second counts. In the office afterwards, each page
transcribed was whipped away by a printer’s devil before it could be
reconsidered and re-read. I invariably went to bed after these evenings
in church with a splitting headache; but the 150 appeared duly on the
front page every Monday morning, though whether good or bad I had no
inkling. My impression, due to Muldoon’s silence, was that my reports
were hardly a success.
When the last of the long series came my opening report was confused
and inaccurate owing to an announcement from the pulpit which
embarrassed me absurdly. Dr. Abbott mentioned briefly that numerous
requests to print the sermons had reached him, but that he did not
propose to do so. He referred those interested, instead, to the reports
in the _Times_ which, he took pleasure in saying, were excellent,
accurate and as satisfactory as anything he could do himself. Being the
only reporter present, I felt conspicuous at my little table under the
pulpit in the immense building. But I remember the pleasure too. It
was an announcement I could use, was bound to use, indeed, in my own
report next day. Muldoon would be pleased. On the Tuesday morning, when
I appeared at his desk, he looked at me with such a fierce expression
that I thought I was about to be dismissed. “Have ye been to your
locker?” was all he said. In the locker, however, I found a letter from
Dr. Abbott to the editor-in-chief, thanking him for the reports of the
sermons, reports, he wrote, “whose brevity, accuracy, and intelligence
furnish a synopsis I could not have improved upon myself.” He added,
too, another important sentence: “by your reporter whom I do not know.”
It was not favouritism therefore. A brief chit to be handed to the
cashier was in my locker too. My salary was raised to $40 a week. The
headaches had proved worth while.
The year and a-half with the _Times_ was a happy period, though long
before it ended I had begun to feel my customary weariness of the job,
and a yearning for something new. The newspaper experience, which
began with the _Evening Sun_, was exhausted for me. The pleasant
and unpleasant sides of it I knew by heart. Though I took no action,
my mind began to cast about for other fields. I had saved a little
cash. My thoughts turned westwards, California, the Pacific Coast, the
bright sunshine and blue waters of the southern seas even. I was past
twenty-seven. To be a New York reporter all my life did not appeal. Nor
was it yet time to go back to England. No trace of literary faculty,
nor any desire to write, much less a consciousness that I could write
perhaps, had declared themselves. My summer holidays of two weeks I
spent again in the backwoods, with a view to some woodland life which
was to include, this time, Old Louis, too. Obstacles everywhere made me
feel, however, that it was not to be, for though they were obstacles I
could have overcome, I took them as an indication that fate had other
views for my future. When a thing was meant to be, it invariably came
of itself, I found. My temperament, at any rate, noted and obeyed these
hints. Old Louis, too, who was to collect his poems in our woodland
home, to write new ones as well, met all practical suggestions with,
“Let us consider, Figlio, a little longer first.” He was to write also
a political history of the United States and “I must collect more
data before I am ready to go.” The dread of being fixed and settled,
a captive in a place I could not leave at a moment’s notice, did not
operate where Nature was concerned. The idea of living in the forests
had no fear of prison in it.
Events, moreover, which brought big changes into my life had always
come, I noticed, from outside, rather than as a result of definite
action on my own part. A chance meeting in a hotel-bar set me
reporting, a chance meeting with Mullins landed me on the _Times_,
a chance meeting with Angus Hamilton in Piccadilly Circus led to my
writing books, a chance meeting with William E. Dodge now suddenly
heaved me up another rung of life into the position of private
secretary to a millionaire banker.
To me it has always seemed that some outside power, but an intelligent
power, pulled a string each time, and up I popped into an entirely new
set of circumstances. This power pushed a button, and off I shot in
a direction at right angles to the one I had been moving in before.
This intelligent supervision I attributed in those days to Karma. In
the mind, though perhaps with less decision there, it operated too. A
book, a casual sentence of some friend, an effect of scenery, of music,
and an express-lift mounts rapidly from the cellar of my being to an
upper story, giving a new extended view over a far, a new horizon. Much
that puzzles in the obscurity of the basement outlook becomes clear
and simple. The individual who announces the sudden change is unaware
probably how vital a rôle he plays in another’s life. He is but an
instrument, after all.
When, by chance, I found Mr. Dodge next me in a Broadway cable car, my
first instinct was to slip out on to the outside platform before he had
seen me, with, simultaneously, a hope that if he had seen me, he would
not recognize me. He was a friend of my father’s. We had dined at his
house on our first visit to New York, and once or twice since then our
paths had crossed for a moment or two. He was a man of great influence,
and of tireless philanthropy, a fine, just, high-minded personality. He
stared hard at me. Before I could move, he had spoken to me by name.
“How was I getting along?” he inquired kindly, and did I “like New
York?” What was I “doing at the moment?”
I seized the opportunity and told him of my longing to get out of
newspaper work. He listened attentively; he examined me, I was
aware, more than attentively. In the end he asked me to come and
see him for a personal chat--not in his office, but in his house.
He named a day and hour. An invitation to his office I should have
disregarded. It was the kindness of “my house” that won me. But the
interview was disappointing, rather embarrassing as well to me. He
asked many personal questions about my life and habits, it was all
very business-like and chilling. In the end he mentioned vaguely that
James Speyer, of Speyer Bros., was thinking, he believed, of engaging
a secretary, and that possibly--he could not say for certain--he might,
when he next saw him, suggest my name for the post. “Of course,”
he added, still more cautiously, “you will understand I must make
inquiries about you at the _Times_.” He promised to let me know if
anything further came of it. For many weeks I heard no word. Then I
wrote. The reply asked me to call at his office. He was kindness and
sympathy personified. “The _Times_ gives you an excellent character,”
he informed me, “and say they will be very sorry to lose you. I am
sorry there has been this delay.” He handed me a personal letter to
James Speyer. He invited me to dinner in his house the following
evening. Before brushing up my dress-suit for the occasion--my first
dinner in a decent house for many years--I had seen Mr. Speyer and
had been engaged at a salary of $2,000 a year for a morning job, from
8 till 2 o’clock daily, with a general supervision during the day of
his town and country houses, horses, servants, charities, and numerous
other interests.
The dinner in Mr. Dodge’s Fifth Avenue palace was a veritable banquet
to me. Immediately opposite, across the avenue, was the other palace
occupied by James Speyer. It was all rather bewildering, a new world
with a vengeance. Years among the outcast of the city had not precisely
polished my manners, nor could I feel at my ease thus suddenly among
decent folk again. I remember being absurdly tongue-tied, shy and
awkward, until M. de Chaillu, who was present, began to talk about
books, stars, natural history, and other splendid things, and took me
with him into some unimaginable seventh heaven. I had moments of terror
too, but the strongest emotion I remember is the deep gratitude I felt
towards Mr. Dodge. A further tiny detail clings as well, when I was
invited for a week-end to the Dodge country house on the Hudson, and
was bathing with the son. He was, like myself, six feet three inches,
well built, but well covered too, his age perhaps close on forty. As
we stood on the spring-board waiting for our second dive, he looked
at me. “You certainly haven’t got a tummy,” he remarked with admiring
envy. “I wish I were as thin!” And the casual words made a queer
impression on me. I realized abruptly how little of certain real values
such people knew ... how little these protected people ever _could_
know. I still see his admiring, good-humoured, kindly expression, as he
said the empty words....
James Speyer, brother of Edgar, who later became a baronet and member
of the Privy Council, was what we called in New York a “white man.”
I hardly think I proved an ideal private secretary. His patience and
kindness began at the first trial interview I had with him, when
my shorthand--he dictated a newspaper financial paragraph full of
unfamiliar terms--was not at its best, “not _very_ grand,” were the
actual words he used. As for bookkeeping, I told him frankly that
“figures were my idea of hell,” whereupon, after a moment’s puzzled
stare, he laughed and said that keeping accounts need not be among my
principal duties. A clerk from the office could come up and balance
the books every month. The phrase about hell, the grave expression
of my face, he told me long afterwards, touched his sense of humour.
The huge book in which I kept his personal accounts proved, none the
less, a daily nightmare, with its nine columns for different kinds of
expenditure--Charities, Housekeeping, Presents, Loans, Personal, and
the rest. It locked with a key. I spent hours over it. No total ever
came out twice alike. Yet Mr. Hopf, the bright-eyed, diminutive German
from the office, ran his tiny fingers up and down those columns like
some twinkling insect, chatting with me while he added, and making the
totals right in a few minutes. Max Hopf, with his slight, twisty body,
looked like an agile figure of 3 himself. In his spare time, I felt
sure, he played with figures. He was a juggler in my eyes.
The first week in my new job was a nervous one, though Mr. Speyer’s
tact and kindly feeling soon put me at my ease. My desk at first was
in a corner of an unused board room in the bank, where I sat like
a king answering countless letters on a typewriter. The shorthand
was discarded; I composed the replies from verbal hints and general
indications. Clerks treated me with respect; language was decent;
surroundings were sumptuous; it was some time before I “found” myself.
The second morning a caller was shown in, somebody to see Mr. Speyer.
He took a chair beside my desk, stared fixedly at me, opened his mouth
and called me by my Christian name--it was the Exchange Place banker
who used to stay in my father’s house and who had last seen me in bed
at East 19th Street. He congratulated me. I found out, incidentally,
then, how much my swindling friend of those days had “touched” him for
on my behalf ... and repaid it.
James Speyer proved a good friend during the two years or so I spent
with him; he treated me as friend, too, rather than as secretary. My
office was transferred to his palatial residence in Madison Avenue, a
new house he had just built for himself, and it was part of my job to
run this house for him, his country house at Irvington on the Hudson
as well. These establishments, for a millionaire bachelor, were on
a simple scale, though the amount of money necessary for one man’s
comforts staggered me at first. A married French couple were his chief
servants, the woman as cook, the man as butler; they had been with him
for a long time; they eyed the new secretary with disfavour; they were
feathering their nests very comfortably, I soon discovered. My hotel
experience in Toronto stood me in good stead here. But Mr. Speyer was
a generous, live-and-let-live type of man who did not want a spirit
of haggling over trifles in his home. I gradually adjusted matters by
introducing a reasonable scale. The French couple and I became good
friends. I enjoyed the work, which included every imaginable duty under
the sun, had ample time for exercise and reading, and my employer’s
zest in the University Settlement Movement I found particularly
interesting.
James Speyer was more than a rich philanthropist: he had a heart.
The column for Charities and Presents in the book Mr. Hopf juggled
with once a month was a big one, while that for Personal Expenditure
was relatively small. When I dined alone with him in the luxurious
panelled room I realized that life had indeed changed for me. His
house, too, was filled with beautiful things. He had rare taste. His
brother Edgar, whose English career had not yet begun, stayed with him
on his periodical visits from Frankfurt. There was music then, big
dinner-parties too, to which I was sometimes invited. Social amenities
were not always quite easy, for the position of a Jew in New York
Society was delicate, but I never once knew James Speyer’s taste or
judgment at fault. His intelligence showed itself not only in finance;
he was intelligent all over; imaginatively thoughtful for all connected
with him, and his philanthropy sprang from a genuine desire to help the
unfortunate.
For Jews I have always had a quick feeling of sympathy, of admiration.
I adore their intelligence, subtlety, keen love of beauty, their
understanding, their wisdom. In the best of them lies some intuitive
grip of ancient values, some artistic discernment, that fascinates
me. I found myself comparing Alfred Louis with James Speyer; their
reaction, respectively, upon myself showed clearly again the standard
of what, to me, was important: the one, alone among his unchangeable,
imperishable “Eternities,” unaware of comfort as of fame, unrecognized,
unadvertised, lonely and derelict, yet equally as proud of his heritage
as the other who, in a noisier market sought the less permanent
splendours of success and worldly honour. One filled his modern palace
with olden beauty fashioned by many men, the other had stocked his mind
with a loveliness that money could not buy. One financed a gigantic
railway enterprise, the other wrote the “Night Song.” All the one said
blessed and ornamented the mind, all the other said advised it. One
parted with a poem as though he sold a pound of his own living flesh,
the other was pleased, yet a trifle nervous, when Muldoon--thinking
to help me in my job--wrote a panegyric of easy philanthropies in
the _Brooklyn Eagle_, to which his fierce activities had now been
transferred from the _Times_. Both taught me much. From one, singing
amid his dirt in an attic, I learned about a world that, hiding behind
ephemeral appearances, lies deathlessly serene and unalterably lovely;
from the other, about a world which far from deathless and certainly
less serene, flaunts its rewards upon a more obviously remunerative
scale. Of both poet and financier, at any rate, I kept vivid, grateful,
pleasant memories.
Between the unsavoury world I had lived in so long and the new one I
had now entered, the Old Man of Visions, himself at home in all and
every kind of world, always seemed a bridge. His personality spread
imaginatively, as it were, over all grades and through all strata of
humanity. In my slow upward climb he seemed to hand me on, and in
return for his unfailing guidance it was possible to make his own
conditions a trifle more comfortable: possible, but not easy, because
there was no help he needed and did not positively scorn. He watched
my welfare with unfailing interest, but nothing would induce him to
buy a new hat, a new frock-coat, an umbrella or a pair of gloves. “Our
memories, at any given moment,” says Bergson, “form a solid whole,
a pyramid, so to speak, whose point is inserted precisely into our
present action.” On that “point” old Louis still drives through my mind
and wields an influence to-day....
The happier period with James Speyer was, of course, an episode,
like my other experiences. It was wonderful to draw a good salary
regularly for pleasant work; to have long holidays in the Adirondacks,
or moose-shooting in the woods north of the Canadian Pacific Railway;
wonderful, too, when my employer went to Europe for three months, to
know myself in charge of such big interests, with a power of attorney
to sign all cheques. But the usual restlessness was soon on me again,
desire for a change stirred in my blood. The Spanish-American War, I
remember, made me think of joining Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, a scheme
both Speyer and Louis strongly disapproved, and that an attack of
typhoid fever rendered impossible in any case.
It was during convalescence that it occurred to me I was nearing
thirty, and that if I meant to live in America all my life, it was time
to become naturalized. And this thought caused me to reflect on the
question of going home. My sister, with her children, passed through
New York about this time, returning from South Australia, where her
husband was Governor, and it was at dinner in my employer’s house,
where he had invited them, that the longing to return to England
suddenly declared itself. To find myself among relatives who called
me by the unfamiliar childhood name, woke English memories, English
values, and brought back the English atmosphere once more. My mother
was still alive.... I remember that dinner well. My sister brought a
tame little Mexican monkey with her. A man, also, called to ask Mr.
Speyer for help, and when I went to interview him in the hall, his long
story included a reference to something Mr. Dodge, he declared, had
done for him. “Mr. Dodge gave me this,” he said, and promptly scooped
one eye out of its socket and showed it to me lying in the palm of his
hand. The glass eye, the monkey, remain associated in my mind still
with the rather poignant memories of forgotten English days my sister’s
visit stirred to life, and with my own emotions as I reflected upon the
idea of going home at last. A chance meeting, again, worked its spell.
I had felt that half a universe separated me from the world in which
my relatives lived, but after they had gone I began to realize various
things I had not appreciated before. New York, I saw, could furnish
no true abiding city for my soul which, though vagabond, yet sought
something more than its appalling efficiency could ever give. What
did I miss? I could name it now, but I hardly named it then perhaps.
I was always hungry there, but with a hunger not of the body merely.
The hunger, however, was real, often it was devastating. With such a
lop-sided development as mine had been, my immaturity, no doubt, was
still glaring. The sense of failure, I know, at any rate, was very
strong. My relatives had been travelling, and they reflected a colour
of other lands that called to me. Thought and longing now turned to an
older world. There were ancient wonders, soft with age, mature with a
beauty and tenderness only timelessness can give, that caught me on the
raw with a power no Yosemites, Niagaras, or Grand Canyons could hope to
imitate. Size has its magic, but size bludgeons the imagination, rather
than feeds it. My heart turned suddenly across the sea. I loved the big
woods, but behind, beyond the woods, great Egypt lay ablaze....
I talked things over with the Old Man of Visions; he advised me to go
home. “See your mother before she dies,” he urged. “I cannot come with
you, but I may follow you.” He added: “I shall miss you,” then dropped
into poetry, as he always did when he was moved....
It was these talks with Old Louis about England, the atmosphere of
England as well, that my sister somehow left behind her, my own
yearnings now suddenly reawakened too, that decided me. My detestation
of the city both cleared and deepened. I began to understand more
vividly, more objectively, the reasons for my feeling alien in it. I
missed tradition, background, depth. There was a glittering smartness
everywhere. The great ideal was to be sharper, smarter than your
neighbour, above all things sharp and smart and furiously rapid,
above all things--win the game. To be in a furious rush was to be
intelligent, to do things slowly was to be derided. The noise and
speed suggested rapids; the deep, quiet pools were in the older lands.
Display, advertisement, absence of all privacy I had long been aware
of, naturally; I now realized how little I desired this speed and
glittering brilliance, this frantic rush to be at all costs sharper,
quicker, smarter than one’s neighbour, to win the game at any price. I
realized why my years in the city had brought no friendships, and why
they had been starved as well as lonely....
Some months passed before I booked a passage, however. I was sorry
to leave James Speyer. Then one day he spoke to me about--marriage.
For a year or more I had noticed his friendship with Mrs. Lowry,
a Christian, well-known figure in the social world; and, being the
confidant of both parties, I had done all I could to encourage a
marriage that promised happiness and success. In due course, Bishop
Potter, of New York, officiated. The ceremony was performed in the
drawing-room, and just before it began, James Speyer came up to me,
took the beautiful links out of his cuffs, and handed them to me. “I
should like you to have these,” he said, “as a little memento.” I have
them still.
A few months later, just before I was thirty, I found myself in a
second-class cabin in a Cunarder, with my savings in my pocket. Old
Louis, who followed me a year or two later, came down to see me off.
I was glad when the Statue of Liberty lay finally below the sea’s
horizon, but I shall never forget the thrill of strange emotion I
experienced when I first saw the blue rim of Ireland rise above the
horizon a few days later. A shutter dropped behind me. I entered a
totally new world. Life continued to be _mouvementée_, indeed, one
adventure succeeding another, and ever with the feeling that a chance
letter, a chance meeting might open any morning a new chapter of quite
a novel kind; but my American episodes were finished.
Of mystical, psychic, or so-called “occult” experiences, I have
purposely said nothing, since these notes have sought to recapture
surface adventures only.
INDEX
“A Case of Eavesdropping,” 252
Abbott, Dr. Lyman, sermons on the theology of an Evolutionist, 292
_et seq._
tribute to _N.Y. Times_ report of his sermons, 294
Aberdeen, Lord, Governor-General of Canada, 66
Advertising extraordinary, 105
Ahlwardt, Rector, anti-semitism of, 229
his meeting at Cooper Union Hall, 229 _et seq._
Alden, Mr., and A. H. Louis, 271
Amityville, a quasi lunatic asylum at, 226
Anti-semitic campaign in New York, 229 _et seq._
Apples, dried, and hot water, as hunger-appeaser, 111
Arson, frequency of, among Jews, 106
Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, a banquet at, 226
Beattie, Mr., Boyde and, 206
Beauchamp, Montague, 23
Belloc, Hilaire, an article by, based on author’s book, 224
Bennett, Sterndale, A. H. Louis a pupil of, 269
Benson, Archbishop, A. H. Louis’s memories of, 268
Bernhardt, Sarah, interview with, 106
Bernstein, Mrs., a long-outstanding account with, settled, 213
and her third floor back, 80
reduces rent--and why, 85
removes to another house, 209
“Bhagavad Gita,” the, world-scripture of, 32
Bingham, Billy, former proprietor of the Hub, 17, 39 _et seq._
Black Forest, schooldays in the, 24
Blackwood, Algernon, a childish recollection of his mother, 259
a poem in _The Week_ by, 38
an earl’s visit to _Sun_ office, 230
an interlude of play-acting, 255 _et seq._
and Boyde: a scene, 161 _et seq._
and the Hub hotel, 14, 16 _et seq._, 39 _et seq._
as reporter in the Tombs, 99 _et seq._
as story-teller, 222
as violinist, 5, 46, 75, 83, 87, 107, 168, 180
assigns his interest in the Hub, 61
attends a ball at Government House, 66
becomes a partner in an eau de Cologne business, 273, 274
beginning of friendship with Alfred H. Louis, 266
credited with powers of Black Magic, 77
“cribs” from an intoxicated reporter, 108
death of his father, 35, 231
“detachment” method of, 51, 227, 228
disagreement with Dr. Huebner, 156
discovers Boyde’s forgery, 132
dissolves partnership with Cooper, 14
Edinburgh University course of, 14, 51
eighteen months on staff of _New York Times_, 288 _et seq._
essays magazine writing, 84
evangelical upbringing of, 20, 23, 27, 71
examined on a charge of arson, 286
first experience of morphine, 178
five months on Lake Rosseau, 73 _et seq._
free-lance journalism, 252, 274
friendship with a dying doctor, 58 _et seq._
his mother’s letters, 258
improvises accompaniment to “Invocation to Opium,” 168
interviews a lion, 102
interviews in Tombs prison cell before trial, 101
learns French, 37
literary apprenticeship of, 6
loses faith in mankind, and a regretted act, 210 _et seq._
maiden speech of, 5, 291
off to the goldfields, 235 _et seq._
on staff of _Evening Sun_, 91
parents of, 17, 18, 21 _et seq._
partner in dairy concern, 10 _et seq._
pawnbroking experiences, 88, 110, 120, 252
plays in Drinkwater’s “Oliver Cromwell,” 256
poses in studios, 44, 158
reads Patanjali’s “Yoga Aphorisms,” 28 _et seq._
receives a visit from Pauline, 152
reports a raid on a quasi lunatic asylum, 226
reports Dr. Lyman Abbott’s sermons, 292 _et seq._
resumes duties on _Evening Sun_, 209
returns from Muskoka lakes, 78
returns to England, 304
secretary to James Speyer, 297 _et seq._
tackles Boyde _re_ a forged cheque, 138 _et seq._
talks with Boyde in his cell at Tombs prison, 202
teaches French, 5, 7
translates French stories, 102, 124, 128, 129
unhappy days in New York, 288
visited by a banker: further disclosures concerning Boyde, 148
visits of an eccentric German doctor, 116, 120, 125
visits winter quarters of Barnum and Bailey’s circus, 226
warned against Boyde, 112, 135, 136, 147
warns a pastor’s daughter against Boyde, 139
“Whitey’s” useful hints to, 96, 97, 98
why an opening in C.P.R. did not eventuate, 66 _et seq._
works by, 53, 78, 102, 123, 163, 182, 223, 224, 252
Blackwood, Sir Arthur (father), a disregarded counsel of perfection
of, 76
and the Hub venture, 40
death of, 35, 231
farewell to author, 40
fêted in New York, 5
marriage of, 21
religious and temperance views of, 17, 18, 21 _et seq._, 30
Bond, Bligh, his “Gate of Remembrance,” 228
Bookkeeping, author’s frank opinion of, 298
Borden, Lizzie, interview with, 100
Bostock’s Circus, a lion escapes from: reporting the episode, 102 _et
seq._
Boyde, Arthur Glyn, an echo of, 299
arrest of, 198
author’s attachment to, 108, 111
committed for trial to General Sessions, 201
communicates with Sir A. Blackwood, 202
confessions of, 139, 144, 206
disguises himself, 160
duplicity of, 132, 138 _et seq._, 149, 160, 206, 207, 211
his varied experience of New York, 86 _et seq._
hunt for, 182 _et seq._
last sight of, 207
letters to author from Tombs prison, 203 _et seq._
meeting with, 86
sentenced, 203
telegraphs news of his marriage, 151
uneasy suspicions regarding, 119, 122, 124, 129, 131, 134
warrant for arrest of, 163
Brodie, as salesman, 275
heavy insurances of--and a fire, 278 _et seq._
how he obtained recipe for eau de Cologne, 273
introduction to, 272
social aspirations of, 273
Bronx Park, Sundays in, 216 _et seq._
Brooklyn Bridge, reflections on, 81
Buddhism, a German doctor’s opinion of, 170
author’s interest in, 8, 51, 54
Dr. Withrow and, 8
Calder, introduces himself, 210
uninvited, sleeps in author’s bed, 211
Campbell, Sir Alexander, Governor of Ontario, 66
Canada, social customs unwittingly broken by author in, 66
Canadian Pacific Railway, how an opening in, was lost, 65 _et seq._
Canoeing on Canadian lakes, 74
Carey, Mr., manager of _New York Times_, 291
Clay, Cecil, introduction to, 90
Clothes, interchangeable, 110
Conversion, reflections on, 23 _et seq._
Cooper, Alfred, partner in Islington Jersey Dairy, 10 _et seq._
Cooper, Mr., news-editor of _Evening Sun_, 95
Cox, Cleveland, posing for, 158
Crayford, home life at, 33, 40
Croker, Boss, head of Tammany, 232
Dana, Charles A., editor of _Evening Sun_, 93
Davies, Acton, 211
and the Boyde story, 201
Davis, Richard Harding, a play by, 86
an interview with, 83
Boyde and, 206
Davis, R. H., witnesses capture of an escaped lion, 103
de Chaillu, M., 297
De Quincey’s “Confessions,” Dr. Huebner and, 125, 168
Dixon, his tight-rope walk across the Niagara, 130
Dodge, William E., a chance meeting with, 295 _et seq._
Drug stores and their attraction, 97
Drummond, Professor, Sunday lectures at Edinburgh of, 32
Dufferin, Lord, a photograph of, in Hub hotel, 43
Duluth, and the gold rush, 240
“Earth’s Earliest Ages,” Pember’s, 30
Easter Day in the Black Forest, 25
Eau de Cologne business, author and, 272 _et seq._
Edinburgh University, author at, 14, 51
“Education of Uncle Paul, The,” 123
Elephants, their fear of rats, 226
Eliot, George, and her Sunday receptions, 269
_Etruria_, launching of, 5
_Evening Sun_, slogan of, 91
_Evening World_, the, a scoop in, 98
Evolutionist theology, sermons on, 292 _et seq._
Ffoulkes, Maude, author’s indebtedness to, 224
“Final Word, The” (poem), 267
Free-lunch counters, 87, 90
Freytag, German reporter, 202, 229
his advice to author, 100
Frohman, Daniel, and Angus Hamilton, 222
Gallup, a half-breed guide, 240
camp-fire stories of, 242
Galt, Sir Thomas, 6
Germans, talkative, 251
Gibson, Charles Dana, author poses for, 158
Gilmour, jealousy of--and a realistic performance, 256-7
Gilmour, organizes a theatrical touring company, 112, 116
Gladstone, Right Hon. W. E., A. H. Louis and, 268
Goff, John, replaces Judge Smythe as Recorder, 232
Gold, a quest in search of, 235 _et seq._
Gosse, Edmund, “Father and Son” of, 22
Grant, and author, 114
hears and witnesses Boyde’s confession, 140 _et seq._
warns author against Boyde, 135, 136, 147
Hamilton, a clergyman publicly thrashed in, 233
Hamilton, Angus, 221, 222
and author’s stories, 223, 224
suicide of, 224
Harcourt, Sir William, president of Cambridge Union, 268
_Harper’s Magazine_, publication of A. H. Louis’s poems in, 267
Harris, Carlyle, electrocuted, 101
Haschisch, an experiment with, 182
Haultain, Arnold, private secretary to Goldwin Smith, 37
Henry, O., his conception of New York, 109
“Hereafter,” poem by A. H. Louis, 270
Hopf, Max, 298, 300
Hub hotel, advice to new proprietors of, 41
early customers at, 45
in hands of a receiver, 61
its former proprietor, 17, 39 _et seq._
opening of, 43
purchase of, 41, 42
Huebner, Dr. Otto, a disappointment for, 149
administers morphine to author, 178, 181
and Boyde, 122, 127, 155, 166
called in by Boyde, 116 _et seq._
confesses himself a morphine taker, 171
death of, 213
friendship with, 164 _et seq._
his wife and daughter, 164, 165
joins in search for Boyde, 183 _et seq._
life-story of, 174
urges author to become a doctor, 127
varying moods of, 125, 153, 155, 165, 170, 173, 185
Hypnotism, experiments in, 51, 52
Irving, Henry, interview with, 106
Irvington, Mr. Speyer’s country house at, 299
Islington Jersey Dairy, partnership in, 10
James, General, a dinner to Sir A. Blackwood, 5, 291
James, William, “Varieties of Religious Experience” by, 22, 217-18
Jews, a campaign against, 229
author’s admiration of, 300
“Jimbo,” author’s, 223
“John Silence,” 53, 78, 223
effects of haschisch described in, 182
publication of, 224
Jones, Colonel, 291
Joseph Lake, Northern Ontario, 74
“Julius Le Vallon,” 53
Kay, John, and the “Hub” venture, 16 _et seq._, 39 _et seq._, 46
effect of morphine on, 179
his immunity to “night-attacks,” 109
histrionic bent of, 46, 75, 90, 111, 112, 255
in search of Boyde, 189
poses to Smedley, 112
served with a blue writ, 64
Kingsley, Charles, baptizes A. H. Louis, 266
Laffan, Mr., of _New York Sun_, 91
Lake Rosseau, departure for, 63
five months on, 74 _et seq._
Lawler, Detective, 163, 186, 189, 200, 201
Lewes, George Henry, A. H. Louis’s talks with, 269
Lexow, Senator, and a Tammany investigation, 232
Liebesmahl, the, of Moravian Brotherhood, 25
Lightfoot, Bishop, A. H. Louis and, 268.
Lion, an escaped, a “strong man” and, 104
“Listener, The,” author’s, 163, 266
Louis, Alfred H., advice _re_ eau de Cologne business, 277
and politics, 268, 269
arrives, and a description of, 213
as editor, 269
breakdown of, 269
buried in a Hebrew cemetery, 266
Cambridge days of, 268
claims to be original of Daniel Deronda, 209
condemns Gladstone, 268
“Hereafter” of, 270
his farewell to author, 304
legal attainments of, 269
meeting with, 262
“Night Song” of, 264, 265, 271
self-chosen epitaph of, 267, 290
“The Final Word” of, 267
unfailing guidance of, 301
Lowry, Mrs., marries James Speyer, 304
Lunatic asylum (a quasi), raid on, 226 _et seq._
Manchester, Duchess of, marries Sir A. Blackwood, 21
Manning, Cardinal, A. H. Louis and, 269
Mantell, Bob (Shakespearean actor), 85
introduces author to Cecil Clay, 90
“Max Hensig, Bacteriologist and Murderer,” author’s story of, 102,
163
McCloy, Mr. (managing editor of _Evening Sun_), 91
and author, 221
interview with, 92
recollections of, 94, 95
McKay, owner of olive-oil warehouse, 262, 263
_Messe noire_, a, and its performers, 215
_Methodist Magazine_, author on staff of, 6 _et seq._
Miller, C. W., editor in chief of _New York Times_, 291
Mitchell, Fire-Marshal, examines author, 286
prosecutes Brodie, 282
Moody and Sankey visit England, 23
_Morning Post_, an article on the genus “ghost story” in: its writer,
224
Morphine, and its effects, 172 _et seq._, 178, 179
Morris (a reputed “stiff” and cut-throat), 248
an instance of his kindness, 249
Mosquitoes of Rainy Lake City, 247
Muldoon, Mr., and author’s report of a students’ concert, 292
City editor of _New York Times_, 285, 291
joins staff of _Brooklyn Eagle_, 300
Mullins, editorial writer on _Evening Sun_, 284
Muskoka Lakes of Northern Ontario, 73, 74
Mystical minor poet, a, 55 _et seq._
Nash, Eveleigh, publishes stories by author, 224
Nature, spell of, and its influence on author, 32, 35, 49 _et seq._,
169, 218, 233, 236, 238, 240
New York, a lively anti-semitic meeting at, 229
horrors of, 108, 109
miseries of summer heat in, 231
_New York Times_, author on staff of, 288
slogan of, 91, 291
Newspaper reporting, reminiscences of, 225 _et seq._
“Night Song,” poem by A. H. Louis, 264, 265, 271
Novelists, instances of their creative power, 77
Olive-oil, its value as food, 262
Opium, the Invocation to, 168, 169, 180
Otto, waiter in Krisch’s, 260
Palmer, Lynwood, and Boyde, 159, 206, 208
attends trial of Boyde, 203
kindness to author, 158
Patanjali, “Aphorisms” of, 28 _et seq._, 255
Pawnbroking, experiences of, 88 _et seq._, 110, 120, 252
Paxton, 233, 236 _et seq._, 246, 249
Pember, G. H., evangelical writer of prophetic school, 30, 31
Police, New York, the Tammany system and, 107, 183
Potter, Bishop, officiates at wedding of James Speyer, 304
Prison as “a proper vestibule to a city of Damned Souls,” 109
Rainy Lake City, arrival at, 246
desolateness of, 248
Rainy River district, gold discovered in, 232
Reporter, a drunken, 108
Reporting for New York papers, experiences acquired from, 92
Revivalist movement, author and, 23
Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, 301
Roper, and Boyde, 197, 198, 199
Ryan, a Tammany magistrate, 201
Schmidt, “Von,” personality of, 276
warns author against Brodie, 275, 277 _et seq._
Scott, Mr., revivalist, 28
_Scribner’s Magazine_, “A Vagrant’s Epitaph” in, 290
Selton, Morton, and his understudy, 86
Sevenoaks, a reminiscence of schooldays at, 253
Shakespearean rehearsals on Lake Rosseau, 75, 77
Smedley, Mr., posing for, 112, 158
Smith, Goldwin, and his private secretary, 37
Smith, Stanley, 23
Smythe, Judge, replaced by John Goff as Recorder, 232
sentences Boyde, 203
“Snipe” hunting, definition of, 214, 215
Social reporting, experiences of, 225
Sothern advances money to Boyde, 206
Spanish-American War, the, 301
_Spectator_ reviews author’s published stories, 224
Spencer, Herbert, A. H. Louis’s talks with, 269
Speyer, James, a letter of introduction to, 297
a present to author, 304
and the University Settlement movement, 299
as friend and employer, 299
as philanthropist, 298, 299
author becomes secretary to, 297 _et seq._
marriage of, 304
tact and kindly feeling of, 298
Speyer, Sir Edgar, 298, 300
Spiritualism, a doctor’s exposition of, 52, 53
Spiritualist, a cement-maker as, 55
Staten Island, a cricket match on, 85, 86
Stephen, Sir George, 65
Stevenson, R. L., a dictum of, 78
Stewart, Sir Donald, 65
Storey, Mr., editor of _Harper’s Young People_, accepts an article by
author, 84
Strathcona, Lord, 5
Studd brothers (cricketers), 23
Sullivan, Tim, and his rival saloon, 19
Tammany Hall, a Committee of Investigation into methods of, 232
Tammany system, the, 97, 107
the “Tenderloin” region and, 183
Temperance and General Life Assurance Company, author’s post in, 6, 18
Terry, Ellen, interview with, 106
Theosophical Society meetings, attendance at, 107
Theosophy, author’s early interest in, 32
“The Interpreters,” by A. E., 218, 219
“The Listener,” 163, 266
Tombs Police Court and Prison, the, 99
trial of Boyde at, 200
Toronto, author as hotel proprietor in, 39
Understanding, a spiritual wisdom, 270, 271
Union League Club dinner, author’s maiden speech at, 5, 291
University Settlement movement, the, James Speyer and, 299
“Vagrant’s Epitaph, A,” 290
van Horne, Sir William, 5, 65
Vermin-infested bedroom, an uncomfortable night in a, 85
Wallace, Professor, of Edinburgh University, 14
Whitey, a parting present of a bottle of rye whisky, 234, 237
hints to author, 96-98
Withrow, Dr., editor of _Methodist_ Magazine, 6 _et seq._
Yonkers theatre, a realistic scene in a, 257
Zogbaum, illustrator, 158
PRINTED BY
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE
LONDON, E.C.4.
F. 20.1023
Transcriber’s Notes
• Italics represented by _underscores_.
• Small caps converted to ALL CAPS.
• Footnotes renumbered consecutively and moved to below the paragraph
in which they were referenced.
• Obvious typographic errors silently corrected.
• Variation in hyphenation kept as in the original.
• P. 196: changed “an awful looked” to “an awful look” to make the
sentence grammatical.