THE CAPITAL OF THE FRA
Next morning it was raining, and to pass the time before breakfast I
examined a large packet of photographs which Speed had left with me the
night before—mementoes of that celebrated pioneer venture which had for
its object the laying out of the new Lincoln Highway from New York to
San Francisco. We had already en route heard so much of this trip that
by now we were fairly familiar with it. It had been organized by a very
wealthy manufacturer, and he and his very good looking young wife had
been inclined to make a friend of Speed, so that he saw much that would
not ordinarily have fallen under his vision. I was never tired of
hearing of this particular female, whom I would like to have met. Speed
described her as small, plump, rosy and very determined,—an iron-willed,
spiteful, jealous little creature—in other words, a real woman, who had
inherited more money than her husband had ever made. Whenever anything
displeased her greatly she would sit in the car and weep, or even yell.
She refused to stay at any hotel which did not just suit her and had
once in a Chicago hotel diningroom slapped the face of her spouse
because he dared to contradict her, and another time in some famous
Kansas City hostelry she had thrown the bread at him. Both were always
anxious to meet only the best people, only Mr. Manufacturer would insist
upon including prize-fighters and auto-speed record men, greatly to her
displeasure.
I wish you might have seen these pictures selected by Speed to
illustrate his trip. Crossing a great country like America, from coast
to coast, visiting new towns each day and going by a route hitherto not
much followed, one might gather much interesting information and many
pictures (if no more than postcards) of beautiful and striking things.
Do you imagine there were any in this collection which Speed left with
me? Not one! The views, if you will believe me, were all of mired cars
and rutty roads and great valleys which might have been attractive or
impressive if they had been properly photographed. The car was always in
the foreground, spoiling everything. He had selected dull scenes of cars
in procession—the same cars always in the same procession, only in
different order, and never before any radically different scene.
As a matter of fact, as I looked at these photographs I could tell
exactly how Speed’s mind worked, and it was about the way the average
mind would work under such circumstances. Here was a great automobile
tour, including say forty or fifty cars or more. The cars contained
important men and women, or were supposed to, because the owners had
money. Ergo, the cars and their occupants were the great things about
this trip, and wherever the cars were, there was the interest—never
elsewhere. Hence, whenever the cars rolled into a town or along a great
valley or near a great mountain, let the town be never so interesting,
or the mountain, or the valley, the great thing to photograph was the
cars in the procession. It never seemed to occur to the various
photographers to do anything different. Cars, cars, cars,—here they
were, and always in a row and always the same. I finally put the whole
bunch aside wearily and gave them back to him, letting him think that
they were very, very remarkable—which they were.
Setting off after breakfast we encountered not the striking mountain
effects of the region about Delaware Water Gap and Stroudsburg, nor yet
the fine valley views along the Susquehanna, but a spent hill
country—the last receding heaves and waves of all that mountainous
country east of us. As we climbed up and up out of Warsaw onto a ridge
which seemed to command all the country about for miles, I thought of
the words of that motorcyclist at Owego who said he had come through
Warsaw and that you climbed five hills to get in, but only one to get
out, going east. It was true. In our westward course the hills we were
to climb were before us. You could see two or three of them—the road
ascending straight like a ribbon, ending suddenly at the top of each one
and jumping as a thin whitish line to the next hill crest beyond.
The rain in which we began our day was already ceasing, so that only a
few miles out we could put down the top. Presently the sun began to
break through fleecy, whitish clouds, giving the whole world an
opalescent tinge, and then later, as we neared East Aurora, it became as
brilliant as any sun lover could wish.
A Sabbath stillness was in the air. One could actually feel the early
morning preparations for church. As we passed various farmyards, the
crowing of roosters and the barking of dogs seemed especially loud.
Seeing a hen cross the road and only escape being struck by the car by a
hair’s breath, Franklin announced that he had solved the mystery of why
hens invariably cross the road, or seem to, in front of any swift moving
vehicle.
“You don’t mean to tell me that it’s because they want to get to the
other side, do you?” I inquired, thereby frustrating the possibility of
the regulation Joe Miller.
“Actually, yes, but I’m not trying to put that old one over on you. It’s
because they always have the instinct, when any dangerous object
approaches, to run toward their home—their coop, which is often just
opposite where they are eating. Now you watch these chickens from now
on. They’ll be picking peacefully on the side of the road opposite the
farmyard. Our car will come along, and instead of moving a few feet
farther away from their home, and so escaping altogether, they will wait
until the car is near and then suddenly decide to run for home—the
longest way out of danger. Lots of times they’ll start, as this last one
did, and then find, when they’re nearly half way over, that they can’t
make it. Then they start to run ahead of the car and of course nearly
always they’re overtaken and killed.”
“Well, that’s an ingenious explanation, anyhow,” I said.
“They lose their heads and then they lose their heads,” he added.
“Franklin!” I exclaimed reproachfully and then turning to Speed added:
“Don’t let that make you nervous, Speed. Be calm. We must get him to
East Aurora, even though he will do these trying things. Show that you
are above such difficulties, Speed. Never let a mere attempt at humor, a
beggarly jest, cause you to lose control of the car.”
Speed never even smiled.
Just here we stopped for gas and oil. We were unexpectedly entertained
by a store clerk who seemed particularly anxious to air his beliefs and
his art knowledge. He was an interesting young man, very, with keen blue
eyes, light hair, a sharp nose and chin—and decidedly intelligent and
shrewd.
“How far is it to East Aurora from here?” inquired Franklin.
“Oh, about fifteen miles,” answered the youth. “You’re not from around
here, eh?”
“No,” said Franklin, without volunteering anything further.
“Not bound for Elbert Hubbard’s place, are you?”
“We thought we’d take dinner there,” replied Franklin.
“I ask because usually a number of people go through here of a Sunday
looking for his place, particularly now that he’s dead. He’s got quite
an institution over there, I understand—or did have. They say his hotel
is very good.”
“Haven’t you ever been there?” I inquired, interested.
“No, but I’ve heard a good deal about it. It’s a sort of new art place,
as I understand it, heavy furniture and big beams and copper and brass
things. He had quite a trade, too. He got into a bad way with some
people over there on account of his divorcing his first wife and taking
up with this second woman for awhile without being married to her. He
was a pretty shrewd business man, I guess, even if he wore his hair
long. I saw him once. He lectured around here—and everywhere else, I
suppose. I think he was a little too radical for most people out this
way.”
He looked as though he had vindicated his right to a seat among the
intellectuals.
I stared at him curiously. America is so brisk and well informed. Here
was a small, out of the way place, with no railroad and only two or
three stores, but this youth was plainly well informed on all the
current topics. The few other youths and maids whom we saw here seemed
equally brisk. I was surprised to note the Broadway styles in suits and
dresses—those little nuances of the ready made clothes manufacturers
which make one feel as if there were no longer any country nor any city,
but just smart, almost impudent life, everywhere. It was quite
diverting.
Looking at this fine country, dotted with red barns and silos and ripe
with grain, in which already the reapers were standing in various places
ready for the morrow’s work, I could see how the mountains of the east
were puffing out. This was a spent mountain country. All the real vigor
of the hills was farther east. These were too rolling—too easy of ascent
and descent—long and trying and difficult as some of them were. It
seemed as if we just climbed and climbed and climbed only to descend,
descend, descend, and then climb, climb, climb again. Speed put on the
chains,—his favorite employment in hilly regions.
But presently, after a few more hills, which finally gave way to a level
country, we entered East Aurora.
It is curious how any fame, even meretricious or vulgar, is likely to
put one on the _qui vive_. I had never been greatly impressed with the
intellect or the taste of Elbert Hubbard. He seemed too much the quack
savior and patent nostrum vender strayed into the realm of art. His face
as photographed suggested the strolling Thespian of country “opera
house” fame. I could never look upon his pictures without involuntarily
smiling.
Just the same, once here, I was anxious to see what he had achieved.
Many people have I known who, after visiting East Aurora and the
Roycroft (that name!) Shops, had commended its sacred precincts to my
attention. I have known poets who lived there and writers to whom he
allotted cottages within the classic precincts of his farm because of
their transcendent merits in literature. _Sic transit gloria mundi!_ I
cannot even recall their names!
But here we were, rolling up the tree shaded streets of a handsome and
obviously prosperous town of about twentyfive hundred which is now one
of the residential suburbs of Buffalo. Our eyes were alert for any
evidence of the whereabouts of the Roycroft Inn. Finally in the extreme
western end of the city we found a Roycroft “sign” in front of a campus
like yard containing a building which looked like a small college
“addition” of some kind—one of those small halls specially devoted to
chemistry or physics or literature. The whole place had the
semi-academic socio-religious atmosphere which is associated by many
with aspiration and intellectual supremacy and sweetness and light. Here
on the sidewalk we encountered a youth who seemed to typify the happy
acolyte or fanner of the sacred flame. His hair was a little long, his
face and skin pale, quite waxen, and he wore a loose shirt with a blowy
tie, his sleeves being rolled up and his negligee trousers belted at the
waist. He had an open and amiable countenance and looked as though life
had fortunately, but with rare discrimination, revealed much to him.
“What is this?” I inquired, waving my hand at the nearest building.
“Oh, one of the shops,” he replied pleasantly.
“Is it open?”
“Not on Sunday—not to the general public, no.”
He looked as though he thought we might gain special permission
possibly, if we sought it. But instead we inquired the location of the
Inn and he accompanied us thither on the running board of our machine.
It turned out to be a low, almost rectangular affair done in pea green,
with a fine line of veranda displaying swings, rockers, wicker chairs
and deep benches where a number of passing visitors were already seated.
It was a brisk, summery and rather conventional hotel scene.
Within, just off the large lobby was a great music or reception hall,
finished as I had anticipated in the Albertian vein of taste—a cross
between a farm home and the Petit Trianon. The furniture was of a solid,
log-cabin foundation but hopelessly bastardized with oil, glaze, varnish
and little metal gimcracks in imitation of wooden pegs. A parqueted
floor as slippery as glass, great timbers to support the ceiling which
was as meticulously finished as a lorgnette, and a six-panel frieze of
Athens, Rome, Paris, London and New York—done in a semi-impressionistic
vein, and without real distinction, somehow—completed the effect. There
were a choice array of those peculiar bindings for which the Roycroft
shop is noted—limp leather, silk linings and wrought-bronze corners and
clasps, and a number of odd lamps, bookracks, candelabra and the like,
which were far from suggesting that rude durability which is the fine
art of poverty. One cannot take a leaf out of St. Francis of Assisi,
another out of the Grand Louis and a third out of Davy Crockett and
combine them into a new art. The thing was bizarre, overloaded, soufflé,
a kind of tawdry botch. Through it all were tramping various American
citizens of that hybrid, commercial-intellectual variety which always
irritates me to the swearing stage. In the lobby, the library, and
various halls was more of the same gimcrackery—Andrew Jackson attempting
to masquerade as Lord Chesterfield, and not succeeding, of course.
Franklin, a very tolerant and considerate person when it comes to human
idiosyncrasies, was at first inclined to bestow a few mild words of
praise. “After all, it did help some people, you know. It was an advance
in its way.”
After a time, though, I noticed that his interest began to flag. We were
scheduled to stay for dinner, which was still three quarters of an hour
away, and had registered ourselves to that effect at the desk. In the
meantime the place was filling up with new arrivals who suggested that
last word of social investiture which the ownership of a factory may
somehow imply. They would not qualify exactly as “high brow,” but they
did make an ordinary working artist seem a little _de trop_. As I
watched them I kept thinking that here at last I had a very clear
illustration in the flesh of a type that has always been excessively
offensive to me. It is the type which everywhere having attained money
by processes which at times are too contemptible or too dull to mention,
are, by reason of the same astonishing dullness of mind or impulse,
attempting to do the thing which they think they ought to do. Think of
how many you personally know. They have some hazy idea of a social
standard to which they are trying to attain or “up to” which they are
trying to live. Visit for example those ghastly gaucheries, the Hotels
Astor or Knickerbocker in New York or those profitable Bohemian places
in Greenwich village (how speedily any decent rendezvous is spoiled once
the rumor of it gets abroad!) or any other presumably smart or different
place and you will see for yourself. A hotel like the Astor or the
Knickerbocker may be trying to be conventionally smart as the mob
understands that sort of thing, the Bohemian places just the reverse. In
either place or case these visitors will be found trying to live up to
something which they do not understand and do not really approve of but
which, nevertheless, they feel that they must do.
In this East Aurora restaurant the dinner hour was one o’clock. That is
the worst of these places outside the very large cities. They have a
fixed time and a fixed way for nearly everything. I never could
understand here or anywhere else why a crowd should be made to wait and
eat all at once. Where does that silly old mass rule come from anyhow?
Why not let them enter and serve them as they come? The material is
there as a rule to serve and waiting. But, no. They have a fixed dinner
hour and neither love nor money will induce them to change it or open
the doors one moment before the hour strikes. Then there is a rush, a
pell-mell struggle! Think of the dullness, the reducing shame of it,
really. The mere thought of it sickened me. I tried to talk to Franklin
about it. He, too, was irritated by it. He said something about the
average person loving a little authority and rejoicing in rules and
following a custom and being unable to get an old idea or old ideas out
their heads. It was abominable.
There was the female here with the golden-rimmed eye-glasses and the
stern, accusing eye behind it. “Are you or are you not of the best,
artistically and socially? Answer yes or avaunt.” There were tall,
uncomfortable-looking gentlemen in cutaway coats, and the stiffest of
stiff collars, led at chains' ends by stout, executive wives who glared
and stared and pawed things over. The chains were not visible to the
naked eye, but they were there. Then there were nervous, fussy, somewhat
undersized gentlemen with white side whiskers and an air of delicate and
uncertain inquiry, going timidly to and fro. There were old and young
maids of a severe literary and artistic turn. I never saw better
materials nor poorer taste than in their clothes. I remarked to Franklin
that there was not one easy, natural, beautiful woman in the whole
group, and after scrutinizing them all he agreed with me.
“Now, Franklin,” I said, “this shows you what the best circles of art
and literature should really be like. Once you’re truly successful and
have established a colony of your own—East Franklinia, let us say, or
Booth-a-rootha—they will come and visit you in this fashion.”
“Not if I know it, they won’t,” he replied.
The crowd increased. Those who in some institutions might be known as
waiters and waitresses, but who here were art directors and
directoresses at the very least, were bustling to and fro, armed with
all authority and not at all overawed by the standing throng which had
now gathered outside the diningroom door. I never saw a more glistening
array of fancy glass, plates, cups, knives, forks, spoons, flowers. The
small black mission tables—Elbert Hubbardized, of course—were stuffed
with this sort of thing to the breaking point. The room fairly sparkled
as though the landlord had said, “I’ll give these people their money’s
worth if it takes all the plate in the place. They love show and must
have it.” I began to feel a little sick and nervous. It was all so
grand, and the people about us so plainly avid for it, that I said, “Oh,
God, just for a simple, plain board, with an humble yellow plate in the
middle. What should I be doing here, anyhow?”
“Well, Franklin,” I said, as gaily as I could, “this is going to be a
very sumptuous affair—a very, very sumptuous affair.”
He looked at me wisely, at the crowd, at the long curio case diningroom,
and hesitated, but something seemed to be stirring within him.
“What do you say to leaving?” he finally observed. “It seems to me”—then
he stopped. His essential good nature and charity would not permit him
to criticize. I heaved a sigh of relief, hungry as I was.
We hustled out. I was so happy I forgot all about dinner. There was dear
old Speed, as human as anything, sitting comfortably in the front seat,
no coat on, his feet amid the machinery for starting things, a cigarette
in his mouth, the comic supplement of some Sunday paper spread out
before him, as complacent and serene as anyone could be.
He swung the car around in a trice, and was off. Before us lay a long
street, overhung with branches through which the sunlight was falling in
lovely mottled effects. Overhead was the blue sky. Outward, to right and
left, were open fields—the great, enduring, open fields.
“It was a bit too much, wasn’t it?” said Franklin.