SHAMELESS FUN
=i=
One way to write about Nina Wilcox Putnam would be in the way she writes
about everything. It's not so hard. As thus:
Some dull day in the office. We look up and whom should we see standing
right there before us but Nina Wilcox Putnam! Falling over backwards, that
being what our swivel chair is made for, we say: "Well, well, well! So
today is May 3, 1922! Where from? West Broadway?"
"I should not say so! South Broadway, I guess. I've just motored up from
Florida. But your speaking of West Broadway reminds me: I've written a
piece for George Lorimer of Saturday Evening Post. You see my book, _West
Broadway_, brought me so many letters my arm ached from answering them.
What car did you drive? Where d'y' get gas in the desert? What's the best
route? And thus et cetera. So now I have wrote me a slender essay
answering everything that anybody can ask on this or other
transcontinental subjects. Mr. Lorimer will publish, and who knows--as
they say in fiction--it might make a book afterward."
"How's Florida?"
"I left it fine, if it doesn't get in trouble while I'm away. I've bought
a ranch, for fruit only, on the East Coast, between Palm Beach and Miami,
but not paying these expensive prices, no, not never. And I shall live
there for better but not for worse, for richer, but most positively not
for poorer. I pick my own alligator pears off my own tree unless I want to
sell them for fifteen cents on the tree. Bathing, one-half mile east by
motor."
"Been reading your piece, 'How I Have Got So Far So Good,' in John
Siddall's American Magazine."
"Yes, I thought I would join the autobiographists--Benvenuto Cellini,
Margot Asquith, Benjamin Franklin, et Al, as Ring Lardner would insist. Do
you know Ring? He and I are going to have one of these amicable literary
duels soon, like the famous _Isn't That Just Like a Man? Oh, Well, You
Know How Women Are!_ which Mrs. Rinehart and Irvin Cobb fought to a
finish. But speaking of sport, I have discovered my grandest favourite
sport, in spite of motoring, which is deep sea fishing, nothing less. Let
me inform you that I landed a 9-pound dolphin which he is like fire-opals
all over and will grace the wall of my dining-room no matter if all my
friends suffer with him the rest of their lives. He was a male dolphin;
get that! It makes a difference from the deep sea fishing sportsman's
standpoint. And this place of mine at the end of South Broadway where I
can roll cocoanuts the rest of my life if I want to is at, in or about
Delray, Florida. D-e-l-r-a-y; you've spelled it."
"We're publishing your new book on how to get thin, _Tomorrow We Diet_."
"Oh, yes. Well, I am several laps ahead of that. Now, I am going up to my
home in Madison, Connecticut, to work. Later, I'll maybe drive out to
Yellowstone Park or some place. Well, I might stay here at the Brevoort
for a month; run down to Philadelphia, maybe. Did you know I once wrote a
book for children that has sold 500,000 copies? And, besides a young son
whom I am capable of entertaining if you'll let him tell you, I have a few
ideas...."
Hold on! This isn't so easy as it looked.
Probably Nina Wilcox Putnam is inimitable. This one and that may steal
Ring W. Lardner's stuff, but there is a sort of Yale lock effect about the
slang (American slanguage) in such books as _West Broadway_ which is not
picked so easily. As for the new Nina Wilcox Putnam novel, _Laughter
Limited_--if you don't believe what we say about N.W.P. inimitableness
just open that book and see for yourself. The story of a movie actress?
Yes, and considerable more. Just as _West Broadway_ was a great deal more
than an amusing story, being actually the best hunch extant on
transcontinental motoring, outside of the automobile blue books, which are
not nearly such good reading.
And then there's _Tomorrow We Diet_, in which Nina Wilcox Putnam tells how
she reduced fifty pounds in seven months without exercising anything but
her intelligence. But if you want to know about Nina Wilcox Putnam, read
her story in her own words that appeared in the American Magazine for May,
1922. Here is a bit of it:
"Believe you me, considering the fact that they are mostly men, which it
would hardly be right to hold that up against them, Editors in my
experience has been an unusually fine race, and it is my contracts with
them has made me what I am today, I'm sure I'm satisfied. And when a
fellow or sister writer commences hollering about how Editors in America
don't know anything about what is style or English, well anyways not
enough to publish it when they see it, why all I can say is that I could
show them living proof to the contrary, only modesty and good manners
forbids me pointing, even at myself. I am also sure that the checks these
hollerers have received from said Editors is more apt to read the Editor
regrets than pay to the order of, if you get what I mean.
"Well, I have had it pretty soft, I will admit, because all the work I
done to get where I am, is never over eight hours a day penal servitude,
locked up in my study and fighting against only such minor odds and
intrusions as please may I have a dollar and a quarter for the laundry, or
now dear you have been writing long enough, I have brought you a nice cup
of tea, just when I am going strong on a important third chapter. But my
work is of course not really work since it is done in the home, as my
relations often remind me. At least they did until I got George, that's my
pres. husband, and he never lets me be interrupted unless he wants to
interrupt me himself for a clean collar or something.
"Also besides working these short hours, four of which is generally what
us authors calls straight creative work, I have it soft in another way. I
got a pretty good market for my stuff and always had, and this of course
has got me so's I can draw checks as neat and quick as anybody in the
family and they love to see me do it.
"All kidding to one side it is the straight dope when I say that from
being merely the daughter of honest and only moderately poor parents I
have now a house of my own, the very one in our town which I most admired
as a child; and the quit-claim deed come out of my own easy money. I also
got a car or two--and a few pieces of the sort of second-hand stuff which
successful people generally commence cluttering up their house with as a
sign of outward and visible success. I mean the junk one moves in when one
moves the golden oak out....
"I never commenced going over really big until it was up to me to make
good every time I delivered, and this was not until my husband died and
left me with a small son, which I may say in passing, that I consider he
is the best thing I have ever published. Well, there I was, a widow with a
child, and no visible means of support except when I looked into the
mirror. Of course, before then I had been earning good money, but only
when I wanted something, or felt like it. Now I had to want to feel like
it three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
"I'll tell the world it was some jolt."
=ii=
_Perfect Behaviour_ is the calmly confident title of the new book by
Donald Ogden Stewart--a work which will rejoice the readers of _A Parody
Outline of History_. Behaviour is the great obstacle to happiness. One may
overcome all the ordinary complexes. One may kill his cousins and get his
nephews and nieces deported, and refuse to perform Honest Work--yet remain
a hopeless slave to the _Book of Etiquette_. In a Pullman car, with a
ticket for the lower berth, he will take the seat facing backward, only to
tremble and blush with shame on learning his social error. Who has not
suffered the mortification of picking up the fork that was on the floor
and then finding out afterward that it was the function of the waiter to
pick up the fork? What is a girl to do if, escorted home at night from the
dance, she finds the hour is rather late and yet her folks are still up?
Whether she should invite the young man in or ask him to call again, she
is sure to do the wrong thing. Then there are those wedding days, the
proudest and happiest of a girl's life, when she slips her hand into the
arm of the wrong man or otherwise gives herself away before she is given
away. Tragedy lurks in such trifles. Don Stewart, who has suffered
countless mortifications and heartbreaks from just such little things as
these, determined that something shall be done to spare others his own
unfortunate experiences.
_Perfect Behaviour_ is the result of his brave determination. It is a book
that will be constantly in demand until society is abolished. Then, too,
there is that new behaviouristic psychology. You have not heard of that? I
can only assure you that Mr. Stewart's great work is founded upon all the
most recent principles of behaviouristic psychology. Noted scientists will
undoubtedly endorse it. You will endorse it yourself, and you will be able
to cash in on it.
Stewart wrote _A Parody Outline of History_ for The Bookman. When the idea
was broached, John Farrar, editor of The Bookman, was about the only
person who saw the possibilities. Response to the _Parody Outline of
History_ was immediate, spontaneous and unanimous. When the chapters
appeared as a book, this magnificent take-off of contemporary American
writers as well as of H. G. Wells leaped at once into the place of a best
seller. It remains one. The thing that it accomplished is not likely to be
well done again for years.
=iii=
_Neither Here Nor There_ is the title of a new book by Oliver Herford,
author of _This Giddy Globe_.
I do not know which is funnier, Herford or his books. Among the
unforgotten occasions was one when he was in the Doran office talking
about a forthcoming book and nibbling on animal crackers. Suddenly he
stopped nibbling and exclaimed with a gasp of dismay:
"Good heavens! I've been eating the illustrations for my book."
=iv=
_Timothy Tubby's Journal_ is, of course, the diary of the famous British
novelist with notes by Theresa Tubby, his wife. Tubby, on his visit to
this side, was remarkably observant. He says:
"How weary we were after a few hours of being interviewed and
photographed! This deep appreciation on the part of the American people
was touching, but exhausting. Yet my publishers telephoned me every two or
three hours, to say that editions of my latest novel were flying through
multitudinous presses; that I must bear up under the strain and give the
public what it demands; namely, the glimpse of me and of my aristocratic
wife. This, it seems, is what sells a book in America. The public must see
an author in order to believe that he can write.
"When my distinguished forebear Charles Dickens[1] arrived in the town of
Boston, he found his room flooded with offers of a pew at Sunday morning
church. This fashion in America has apparently passed, though I was taken
on sightseeing expeditions to various cathedrals whose architecture seemed
to me to be execrable (largely European copies--nothing natively
American). It was never suggested that I attend divine service. On the
contrary, I had countless invitations to be present at what is known as a
'cocktail chase.' My New York literary admirers seemed tumbling over one
another to offer me keys to their cellars and to invite me to take part in
one of those strange functions. It is their love of danger, rather than
any particular passion for liquor, that has, I believe, given birth to
these elaborate fêtes.
"A cocktail chase takes place shortly before dinner. It may lead you into
any one of a number of places, even as far as the outlying districts of
the Bronx. If you own a motor, you may use that; if not, a taxi will do.
Usually a large number of motors are employed. Add to this pursuing
motorcycle policemen, and the sight is most impressive. The police are for
protection against crime waves, not for the arrest of the cocktail
chasers. A revenue agent performs this function, when it becomes
necessary.
"The number of our invitations was so large that it was hard to pick and
choose. Naturally, we did not care to risk attendance at any function
which might injure our reputation. Usually my wife has an almost psychic
sense of such matters; but the Social Register was of no assistance in
this case.[2] Before several hours had passed, however, we decided to hire
a social secretary. I phoned my publisher for a recommendation. 'Dear
Tubby,' he said, 'what you need is a publicity agent, not a social
secretary. I'll send you the best New York can offer immediately. It was
careless of me not to think of it before. You seemed to have a genius for
that sort of thing yourself.'
"The publicity agent is difficult to explain. He is somehow connected with
an American game which originated in the great northwest, and which is
called log-rolling. He stands between you and the public which is
clamouring for a glimpse of you. The difference between a social secretary
and a publicity agent seems to be that the former merely answers
invitations, while the latter makes sure that you are invited. He writes
your speeches for you, sometimes even goes so far as to write your novels,
and, in a strange place, will impersonate you at all public functions
unless your wife objects.[3]
"Mr. Vernay arrived, fortunately, in time to sort our invitations.
'First,' he said, 'just you and Terry' (he was one of those brusque new
world types and Theresa rather enjoyed his familiarity--'so refreshing,' I
remember she said) 'sit right down and I'll tell you all about literature
in this here New York.'"
... I have always been meaning to read Tubby's novels--so like those of
Archibald Marshall and Anthony Trollope, I understand--but have never got
around to it. Now I feel I simply must.
-----
[1] The relationship was on my husband's father's side. The
Turbots
were never so closely connected with the bourgeoisie.
[2] We, of course, had entrée to all the best Fifth Avenue
homes, but
since we have now become literary folk, we
hose to remain so. We therefore avoided the better
classes.
[3] Indeed Mr. Vernay was a most accomplished gentleman, and
I never
objected to him. I only remarked once that I was glad
Timothy was
not so attractive to the ladies as Mr. Vernay. This, I
did
not consider an objection.
=v=
Such an expert judge as Franklin P. Adams has considered that the ablest
living parodist in verse is J. C. Squire. Certainly his _Collected
Parodies_ is a masterly performance quite fit to go on the shelf with Max
Beerbohm's _A Christmas Garland_. In _Collected Parodies_ will be found
all those verses which, published earlier in magazines and in one or two
books, have delighted the readers of Punch and other magazines--"Imaginary
Speeches," "Steps to Parnassus," "Tricks of the Trade," "Repertory Drama,
How They Do It and How They Would Have Done It," "Imaginary Reviews and
Speeches" and "The Aspirant's Manual."
The great source book of fun in rhyme, however, is and will for a long
time remain Carolyn Wells's _The Book of Humorous Verse_. This has not an
equal in existence, so far as I know, except _The Home Book of Verse_.
Here in nearly 900 pages are specimens of light verse from Chaucer to
Chesterton. Modern writers, such as Bert Leston Taylor and Don Marquis,
share the pages with Robert Herrick and William Cowper, Charles Lamb and
Oliver Wendell Holmes. Verses whimsical, satiric, narrative,
punning--there is no conceivable variety overlooked by Miss Wells in what
was so evidently a labour of love as well as of the most careful industry,
an industry directed by an exceptional taste.
P. G. Wodehouse used to write lyrics for musical plays in England,
interpolating one or two in existing successes. Then he came to America
and began writing lyrics, interpolating them in musical comedies over
here. Then he began interpolating extremely funny short stories in the
American magazines and he has now succeeded in interpolating into modern
fiction some of the funniest novels of the last few years. This bit from
his latest, _Three Men and a Maid_, is typical:
"Mrs. Hignett was never a very patient woman. "'Let us take all your
negative qualities for granted,' she said curtly. 'I have no doubt that
there are many things which you do not do. Let us confine ourselves to
issues of definite importance. What is it, if you have no objection to
concentrating your attention on that for a moment, that you wish to see me
about?'
"This marriage.'
"'What marriage?'
"'Your son's marriage.'
"'My son is not married.'
"'No, but he's going to be. At eleven o'clock this morning at the Little
Church Around the Corner!'
"Mrs. Hignett stared.
"'Are you mad?'
"'Well, I'm not any too well pleased, I'm bound to say,' admitted Mr.
Mortimer. 'You see, darn it all, I'm in love with the girl myself!'
"'Who is this girl?'
"'Have been for years. I'm one of those silent, patient fellows who hang
around and look a lot, but never tell their love....'
"'Who is this girl who has entrapped my son?'
"'I've always been one of those men who....'
"'Mr. Mortimer! With your permission we will take your positive qualities
for granted. In fact, we will not discuss you at all.... What is her
name?'
"'Bennett.'
"'Bennett? Wilhelmina Bennett? The daughter of Mr. Rufus Bennett? The
red-haired girl I met at lunch one day at your father's house?'
"'That's it. You're a great guesser. I think you ought to stop the
thing.'
"'I intend to.'
"'Fine!'
"'The marriage would be unsuitable in every way. Miss Bennett and my son
do not vibrate on the same plane.'
"That's right. I've noticed it myself.'
"'Their auras are not the same colour.'
"'If I thought that once,' said Bream Mortimer, 'I've thought it a
hundred times. I wish I had a dollar for every time I thought it. Not the
same colour! That's the whole thing in a nutshell.'"
Mr. Wodehouse is described by a friend as "now a somewhat fluid inhabitant
of England, running over here spasmodically. Last summer he bought a
race-horse. It is the beginning of the end!"