IN spite of this little mishap, which did me no great harm, there was a
marked improvement in my affairs in every way. I had a better room,
various friends—Wood, McCord, Rodenberger, Hazard, Bellairs, a new
reporter by the name of Johnson, another by the name of Walden Root, a
nephew of the senator—and the growing consideration if not admiration of
many of the newspaper men of the city. Among them I was beginning to be
looked upon as a man of some importance, and the proof of it was that
from time to time I found myself being discussed in no mild way. From
now on I noticed that my noble Wood, whom I had so much looked up to at
first, began to take me about with him to one or more Chinese
restaurants of the most beggarly description in the environs of the
downtown section, which same he had discovered and with the proprietors
of which he was on the best of terms. They were really hang-outs for
crooks and thieves and disreputable tenderloin characters generally
(such was the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America), but not
so to Wood. He had the happy faculty of persuading himself that there
was something vastly mysterious and superior about the entire Chinese
race, and after introducing me to many of his new laundry friends he
proceeded to assure me of the existence of some huge Chinese
organization known as the Six Companies which, so far as I could make
out from hearing him talk, was slowly but surely (and secretly, of
course) getting control of the entire habitable globe. It had complete
control of great financial and constructive ventures here, there and
everywhere, and supplied on order thousands of Chinese laborers to any
one who desired them, anywhere. And this organization ruled them with a
rod of iron, cutting their throats and burying them head down in a
bucket of rice when they failed to perform their bounden duties and
transferring their remains quietly to China, in coffins made in China
and brought here for that purpose. The Chinese who had worked for the
builders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this company, so he
said.
Again, there were the Chinese Free Masons, a society so old and so
powerful and so mysterious that one might speak of it only in whispers
for fear of getting into trouble. This indeed was _the_ great
organization of the world, in China and everywhere else. Kings and
potentates knew of it and trembled before its power. If it wished it
could sweep the Chinese Emperor and all European monarchs off their
thrones tomorrow. There were rites, mysteries, sanctuaries within
sanctuaries in this great organization. He himself was as yet a mere
outsider, snooping about, but by degrees, slowly and surely, as I was
given to understand, was worming its secrets out of these Chinese
restaurant-keepers and laundrymen, its deepest mysteries, whereby he
hoped to profit in this way: he was going to study Chinese, then go to
China. There he would get into this marvelous organization through the
influence of some of his Chinese friends here. Then he was going to get
next to some of the officials of the Chinese Government, and being thus
highly recommended and thought of would come back here eventually as an
official Chinese interpreter, attached perhaps to the Chinese Legation
at Washington. How he was to profit so vastly by this I could not see,
but he seemed to think that he would.
Again, there was his literary world which he was always dreaming about
and slaving over, his art ambitions, into which I was now by degrees
permitted to look. He was forging ahead in that realm, and since I was
doing fairly well as a daily scribbler it might be that I would be able
to perceive a little of all he was hoping to do. His great dream or
scheme was to study the underworld life of St. Louis at first hand,
those horrible, grisly, waterfront saloons and lowest tenderloin dives
and brothels south of Market and east of Eighth where, listening to the
patois of thieves and pimps and lechers and drug-fiends and murderers
and outlaws generally, he was to extract from them, aside from their
stories, some bizarre originality of phrase and scene that was to stand
him in good stead in the composition of his tales. Just now, so he told
me, he was content with making notes, jotting down scraps of
conversation heard at bars, in sloppy urinals, cheap dance-halls, and I
know not what. With a little more time and a little more of that slowly
arriving sanity which comes to most of us eventually, I am inclined to
think that he might have made something out of all this; he was so much
in earnest, so patient; only, as I saw it, he was filled with an almost
impossible idealism and romance which threw nearly everything out of
proportion. He naturally inclined to the arabesque and the grotesque,
but in no balanced way. His dreams were too wild, his mood at nearly all
times too utterly romantic, his deductions far beyond what a sane
contemplation of the facts warranted.
And relative to this period I could other tales unfold. He and Peter,
long before I had arrived on the scene, had surrounded themselves with a
company of wayfarers of their own: down-and-out English army officers
and grafting younger sons of good families, a Frenchman or two, one of
whom was a poet, several struggling artists who grafted on them, and a
few weird and disreputable characters so degraded and nondescript that I
could never make out just what their charm was. At least two of these
had suitable rooms, where, in addition to Dick’s and mine, we were
accustomed to meet. There were parties, Sunday and evening walks or
trips, dinners. Poems, on occasion, were read, original, first-hand
compositions; Dick’s stories, as Peter invariably insisted, were
“inflicted,” the “growler” or “duck” (a tin bucket of good size) was
“rushed” for beer, and cheese and crackers and hot crawfish, sold by old
ambling negroes on the streets after midnight, were bought and consumed
with gusto. Captain Simons, Captain Seller, Toussaint, Benèt—these are
names of figures that are now so dim as to be mere wraiths, ranged about
a smoky, dimly lighted room in some downtown rooming-house. Both Dick
and Peter had reached that distinguished state where they were the
center of attraction as well as supports and props to these others, and
between them got up weird entertainments, knockabout Dutch comedian
acts, which they took down to some wretched dance-hall and staged, each
“doing a turn.” The glee over the memory of these things as they now
narrated them to me!
Wood was so thin physically and so vigorous mentally that he was
fascinating to look at. He had an idea that this bohemianism and his
story work were of the utmost importance; and so they were if they had
been but a prelude to something more serious, or if his dreams could
only have been reduced to paper and print. There was something that lay
in his eye, a ray. There was an aroma to his spirit which was delicious.
As I get him now, he was a rather underdone Poe or de Maupassant or
Manet, and assuredly a portion of the makings was certainly there. For
at times the moods he could evoke in me were poignant, and he saw beauty
and romance in many and strange ways and places. I have seen him enter a
dirty, horrible saloon in one of St. Louis’s lowest dive regions with
the air of a Prince Charming and there seat himself at some sloppy
table, his patent leather low-quarters scraping the sanded or sawdusted
floor, order beer and then, smiling genially upon all, begin to
transcribe from memory whole sections of conversations he had heard
somewhere, in the street perhaps, all the while racking his brain to
recall the exact word and phrase. Unlike myself, he had a knack of
making friends with these shabby levee and underworld characters,
syphilitic, sodden, blue-nosed bums mostly, whom he picked up from
Heaven knows where. And how he seemed to prize their vile language,
their lies and their viler thoughts!
And there was McCord, bless his enthusiastic, materialistic heart, who
seemed to take fire from this joint companionship and was determined to
do something, he scarcely knew what—draw, paint, write,
collect—anything. His mind was so wrought up by the rich pattern which
life was weaving before his eyes that he could scarcely sleep at nights.
He was for prowling about with us these winter and spring days, looking
at the dark city after work hours, or investigating these wretched dives
with Dick and myself. Or, the three of us would take a banjo, a mandolin
and a flute (McCord could perform on the flute and Dick on the mandolin)
and go to Forrest Park or one of the minor parks on the south side, and
there proceed to make the night hideous with our carolings until some
solid policeman, assuming that the public had rights, would interfere
and bid us depart. Our invariable retort on all such occasions was that
we were newspaper men and artists and as such entitled to courtesies
from the police, which the thick-soled minion of the law would
occasionally admit. Sometimes we would go to Dick’s room or mine and
chatter and sing until dawn, when, somewhat subdued, we would seek out
some German saloon-keeper whom either Peter or Wood knew, rouse him out
of his slumbers and demand that he come down and supply us with ham and
eggs and beer.
My stage critical work having vivified my desire to write a play or
comic opera on the order of _Wang_ or _The Isle of Champagne_, two of
the reigning successes of that day, or the pleasing _Robin Hood_ of de
Koven, I set about this task as best I might, scribbling scenes, bits of
humor, phases of character. In this idea I was aided and abetted not
only by Wood and McCord, both of whom by now seemed to think I might do
something, but by the fact that the atmosphere of the _Globe_ office, as
well as of St. Louis itself, was, for me at least, inspirational and
creative. I liked the world in which I now found myself. There were
about me and in the city so many who seemed destined to do great
things—Wood, McCord, Hazard, a man by the name of Bennett who was
engaged in sociologic propaganda of one kind and another, William Marion
Reedy, already editing the _Mirror_, Albert Johnson, a most brilliant
reporter who had, preceding my coming, resigned from the _Globe_ and
gone over to the _Chronicle_, Alfred Robyn, composer of _Answer_ and
_Marizanillo_, one of whose operas was even then being given a local
tryout. I have mentioned the wonderful W. C. Brann who preceded me in
writing “Heard in the Corridors” and who later stirred America with the
_Iconoclast_.
All this, plus the fact that Augustus Thomas had come from here, a
reporter on the _Post-Dispatch_, and that I was now seeing one of his
plays, _In Missouri_, moved me to the point where I finally thought out
what I considered a fairly humorous plot for a comic opera, which was to
be called _Jeremiah I_. It was based on the idea of transporting, by
reason of his striking accidentally a mythical Aztec stone on his farm,
an old Indiana farmer of a most cantankerous and inquisitive disposition
from the era in which he then was back into that of the Aztecs of
Mexico, where, owing to a religious invocation then being indulged in
with a view to discovering a new ruler, he was assumed to be the answer.
Beginning as a cowardly refugee in fear for his life, he was slowly
changed into an amazing despot, having at one time as many as three
hundred ex-advisers or Aztec secretaries of state in one pen awaiting
poisoning. He was to be dissuaded from carrying out this plan by his
desire for a certain Aztec maiden, who was to avoid him until he
repented of his crimes. She eventually persuaded him to change the form
of government from that of a despotism to that of a republic, with
himself as candidate for President.
There was nothing much to it. Its only humor lay in the thought or sight
of a cranky, curious, critical farmer super-imposed upon ancient
architecture and forms of worship. Having once thought it out, however,
and being pleased with it, I worked at it feverishly nights when I was
not on assignments, and in a week or less had a rough outline of it,
lyrics and all. I told McCord and Wood about it. And so great was their
youthful encouragement that at once I saw this as the way out of my
difficulties, the path to that great future I desired. I would become
the author of comic opera books. Already I saw myself in New York, rich,
famous.
But at that time I could not possibly write without constant
encouragement, and having roughed out the opera I now burned for
assistance in developing it in detail. At last I went to Peter and told
him of my difficulty, my inability to go ahead. He seemed to relish the
whole idea hugely, so much so that he made the thing seem far more
plausible and easy for me to do and urged me to go ahead, not to faint
or get cold feet. Enamored of costumes and gorgeous settings, he even
went so far as to first suggest and then later work out in water color,
suggestions for costumes and color schemes which I thought wonderful. I
was lifted to the seventh heaven. To think that I had worked out
something which he considered interesting!
Later that evening, at Peter’s suggestion I outlined portions of it to
Wood. He also seemed to believe that it was good. He insisted that there
must be an evening at his room or mine when I would read it all to them.
Accordingly a week later I read it in Dick’s room, to much partial
applause of course. What else could they do? Peter even went so far as
to suggest that he would love to act the part of Jeremiah I, and
forthwith began to give us imitations of the prospective king’s
mannerisms and characteristics. Whatever the merit of the manuscript
itself, certainly we imagined Peter’s characterizations to be funny.
Later he brought me as many as fifty designs of costumes and scenes in
color, which appealed to me as having novelty as well as beauty. He had
evidently worked for weeks, nights after hours and mornings before
coming to the office and on Sundays. By this I was so thrilled that I
could scarcely believe my eyes. To think that I had written the book of
a real comic opera that should be deemed worthy of this, and that it was
within the range of possibility that it would some day be produced!
I began to feel myself a personage, although at bottom I mistrusted the
reality of it all. Fate could not be that kind, not so swift. I should
never get it produced ... and yet, like the man in the Arabian fable who
kicked over his tray of glassware, dreaming great dreams, I was tending
toward the same thing. There was always in me the saving grace of doubt
or self-mistrust. I was never quite sure that I should be able to do all
that at times I was inclined to hope I might, and so was usually
inclined to go about my work as nervously and as enthusiastically as
ever, hoping that I might have some of the good fortune of which I
dreamed, but never seriously depending on it.
Perhaps it would have been better for me had I.
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