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TURNS ABOUT TOWN
ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
By ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
TURNS ABOUT TOWN
MEN AND BOOKS AND CITIES
BROOME STREET STRAWS
WALKING-STICK PAPERS
PEEPS AT PEOPLE
BOOTH TARKINGTON
THE MEMOIR TO:
JOYCE KILMER: POEMS
ESSAYS AND LETTERS
TURNS ABOUT
TOWN
BY
ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
_Copyright, 1921,
By George H. Doran Company_
_Printed in the United States of America_
CORRESPONDENCE
CONCERNING
THE
DEDICATION
OF THIS BOOK
TO JOHN BUNKER, ESQRE
_The Players,
16 Gramercy Park,
New York City,
June 10, 1921._
DEAR JOHN:
I am, with your permission, dedicating to you a new book of
mine--that it, on condition that you help me read the proofs. The
book is to be called "Turns About Town." It will be published
sometime this autumn.
_Ever yours,_
BOB.
_To: John Bunker, Esqre_
* * * * *
_New York,
521 West 148th Street,
June 12, 1921._
DEAR BOB:
_You can't intimidate me by any such threat. On the contrary, I
think I shall be secretly (and tremendously) pleased. As for the
proofs, all I have to say is (in the words of the stage villain),
"Produce your proofs!"_
_Always, dear Bob,
Sincerely yours,_
JOHN.
_To: Robert Cortes Holliday, Esqre_
FOREWORD
More than half of these pieces were syndicated in a number of American
newspapers by The Central Press Association of New York. Several others
of them originally appeared in _The Bookman_. "Literary Lives" has been
amplified since it was written for the New York _Times_ as a review of
the "Dictionary of National Biography," Second Supplement, Volumes II
and III. "Only She Was There" and "Former Tenant of His Room" are
reprinted from the New York _Evening Post_. "The Sexless Camera" was
contributed to a magazine called _The International_. "I Know an Editor"
was written at the invitation of a gentleman whose name I cannot recall,
and whether or not he ever used it in whatever publication it was with
which he was connected I do not know.
I thank all these friends of mine for permitting me to here reprint
these articles.
R. C. H.
New York, 1921.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD vii
I THE HOTEL GUEST 13
II A HUMORIST MISFITS AT A MURDER TRIAL 28
III QUEER THING, 'BOUT UNDERTAKERS' SHOPS 36
IV THE HAIRCUT THAT WENT TO MY HEAD 46
V SEEING MR. CHESTERTON 55
VI WHEN IS A GREAT CITY A SMALL VILLAGE? 72
VII THE UNUSUALNESS OF PARISIAN PHILADELPHIA 81
VIII OUR LAST SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT AS A FINE ART 90
IX WRITING IN ROOMS 99
X TAKING THE AIR IN SAN FRANCISCO 115
XI BIDDING MR. CHESTERTON GOOD-BYE 124
XII NO SYSTEM AT ALL TO THE HUMAN SYSTEM 141
XIII SEEING THE "SITUATIONS WANTED" SCENE 151
XIV LITERARY LIVES 162
XV SO VERY THEATRICAL 173
XVI OUR STEEPLEJACK OF THE SEVEN ARTS 182
XVII FORMER TENANT OF HIS ROOM 196
XVIII ONLY SHE WAS THERE 205
XIX A HUMORIST'S NOTE-BOOK 216
XX INCLUDING STUDIES OF TRAFFIC "COPS" 228
XXI THREE WORDS ABOUT LITERATURE 236
XXII RECOLLECTIONS OF LANDLADIES 242
XXIII AN IDIOSYNCRASY 256
XXIV THE SEXLESS CAMERA 271
XXV I KNOW AN EDITOR 276
XXVI A DIP INTO THE UNDERWORLD 281
XXVII NOSING 'ROUND WASHINGTON 290
XXVIII FAME: A STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 328
TURNS ABOUT TOWN
TURNS ABOUT TOWN
CHAPTER I
THE HOTEL GUEST
Some people just go to a hotel (sometimes referred to as "an hotel") and
stay awhile and go away again. And think nothing about the matter.
Of course, some may complain more or less at the place about the
"service." Or swank round outside about the address, saying carelessly:
"Oh! yes: at the Blackstone, you know." Or again, if it's a rather
inexpensive place, remark to friends: "Isn't it a funny hole! But the
cuisine is excellent. You'd be surprised! That's why I stop there. And
then it's much more homey, too, than those garish places."
Now I myself am a fan for hotels.
If I was a rich man I'd do like an aristocratic and restless young man I
know, who used to go to one New York hotel about twelve at night (after
the evening's entertainment) and leave a call for ten in the morning,
when he would get up and drive to another hotel, check in, eat lunch and
dinner there, and move on to a third New York hotel that night. A
cheerful way he had of adding variety to his life.
He was a highly agreeable youth, this chap. Always "wore" a
silver-headed cane. I'm sorry to have to say that he is now in jail.
Yep! You see, he had many attractive qualities, but dependability was
not a feature of his equipment. However, his is a resilient nature, and,
fortunately, he is an epicure by temperament. I was rather distressed,
myself, when I heard that he was in jail; and other of his friends that
I met also were decidedly disturbed about him. One day one of them got a
letter from him (it was in France, you know, that he was then in jail),
a bubbling, delightful letter (just like the youth), in which he
declared with much gusto that the jail he was in had the best menu of
any jail in France.
But about hotels. Oh, yes!
I always like those huge, brown-paper laundry bags they have hanging up,
pressed beautifully flat, in the rooms, closets or bathrooms of hotels.
You can't roll up your laundry all in one wad and thrust it into one of
these bags, because this would tear the bag. The way to do is to put in,
for instance, first your collars, then, say, your sox, follow perhaps
with your shirts, and so on. In hotels of the very first water, you have
observed, a neat little pocket is attached to the outside of the bag,
into which you have the fun of pinning your laundry slip, all
elaborately made out.
Next thing, of course, is to get your laundry started on its way. And
here come up a view of the nice nuances of hotels. You gotta watch your
Ps and Qs in these matters or you're likely to get a black-eye at your
hotel. All right in a modest sort of place just to holler down the
telephone for a boy. Then you say to boy, waving hand toward objects:
"Laundry to go down, suit to be pressed, hat to be ironed, shoes to be
polished, letters to be mailed," and so forth. Boy gathers up
miscellaneous collection of articles and proceeds upon these divers
assignments. Presto! Nothing further to detain you.
But suppose you have gone in for a little more class in the matter of
your hotel--Statler, or something like that. Then you find much more of
a ritual to life. To accomplish your existence requires thought, a clear
head--and time. You pay the penalty of the dignity of pomp and
circumstance. No large, off-hand, free and easy manner about sending up
a boy. The "operator" knows nothing of boys. In the matter of your
laundry you may request her to connect you with the "bell captain,"
through whose agency (but not otherwise) a boy may be procured. One
message. In the matter of your suit you may request to be connected with
the "valet service." Message two. And so on.
Then you sit you down and await the procession. Or, if you prefer,
contemplate the spectacle of life by looking out at the window.
You fee Buttons. Lapse of time.
Boots (as Dickens calls him) arrives--what probably here is a
porter--for shoes. Then you have an excellent opportunity (which may not
occur again during the day) for a slight period of philosophical
meditation, or to whistle a tune, before the valet appears.
In such places as I am describing it is not etiquette at all (though it
may seem to you the simplest way of doing the thing) to call a bellboy
to get down your bag. The porter does that--and through the correct
channel, that is by way of the freight elevator. And, say, something
goes wrong with your ice-water pipe. You are not to outrage hotel
decency here. What is necessary for you to procure is a waiter. Waiters
attend to your inner wants.
I like best the character of valet when he is English (either so by
birth, or this by self-cultivation); wears a skirt coat, immaculately
pressed, and a "buttonhole"; advances into the room in the attitude of a
bow, and comes to a pause in the pose of one listening with deep and
profoundly respectful attention to the haughty utterance of a stage
earl. Though, indeed, there is an element of disquiet in your being thus
elevated to the Peerage if, as with me, the suit you turn over to this
unexceptionable servitor is of Hirt, Snuffler and Muss manufacture, and
growing a trifle frail in the seat.
The same thing is true of bath-rooms. I don't, of course, mean that
bath-rooms perform the valet act. But that the more aristocratic in
hotels you get the more likely you are, so to say, to get into hot water
in bath-rooms. Like this:
If you get into a bathtub which is not quite the last word in bathtubs,
that is a bathtub which has legs and spigots to turn on the water, you
know where you are at all the while. You turn on the hot water in the
amount desired. It comes out of the hot water spout. As desired you turn
on the cold water. Out of the cold water spout comes it.
But, as you know, the last word in bathtubs is not simple and democratic
like that. It is built onto the floor and has a clock-like dial on the
wall. Dial marked at different points: "Cold," "Medium," "Hot," "Off."
Turn little handle to regulate temperature and flow of water. All out of
same pipe. Yes--but--dial untruthful--very. "Off" scalds you; "Medium"
freezes you. Bad time trying to take last word in baths.
"Tub or shower?" Maybe you say "shower." And draw one of those
police-court cells. Except the door, no opening in the little, square,
completely cement room but the small hole in the center of the floor
through which the water runs away. But that's not the way to look at it.
These little catacomb-like chambers are æsthetic in their ascetic
character. You may entertain yourself by fancying that you are St.
Jerome, or somebody like that. In here nothing that it will hurt can
get wet, and you can have a fine time making the whole room a
merry-go-round of splashes. One disturbing thought may occur to you. If
the door should stick you might not be found until the hotel got worried
about your bill, when perhaps it would be too late.
Still, I think the chummiest bath-rooms are those with a bay-window;
very reprehensible those which have no hooks on which to hang your
pajamas and razor strop.
Then there are those hotels so far-seeing into the possibilities of evil
chance and so solicitous of your equanimity that they provide your pin
cushion with one suspender button. I suppose the thought is to impress
you with the idea that nothing for your comfort, even down to the
smallest detail, is forgotten. Still, though I do not know that such an
untoward incident ever happened, it is within the range of human
possibility that a man might be shorn of two suspender buttons at once.
If, further, the hotel management were co-ordinated with the gentlemen's
underwear business a safety pin would be served along with the suspender
button--in view of the singular fact that, until your wife has taken a
reef in them, all nether garments are much too great in girth for any
figure at all approximating normal.
Working, however, as it does, with human material no hotel can get away
with perfection. For, as Dr. Johnson observed, "a fallible being will
fail somewhere." It was in San Francisco recently that three days were
required for me to recover a suit sent in the morning to be pressed by
that afternoon. This mischance was occasioned by three circumstances. To
wit: goblins (presumably) made away with the ticket attached to it; the
hotel tailor fell indisposed with (I hope) leprosy; and his assistant
had a slight mental infirmity, in other words he was seven times an
idiot.
Reverse English in Los Angeles a few days later. When one night I found
neatly hung on the coat frame in my closet a suit of excellent material,
of fashionable design, and seemingly of virgin character. I reported the
matter to the third assistant manager. One criticism only I have to make
of that suit. It was too confoundedly tight.
Then, of course, even at the best places (I almost think particularly in
the best places) you are likely any time to find under your door in the
morning a telephone message stamped "Rush," directing you to call
so-and-so "as soon as possible"--and dated 5:17-1/2 two days earlier.
Or, on coming in you are handed by the clerk a memorandum which states
that Mr. Cohan telephoned. Such matters, you reflect, are retrogressive.
If you are unacquainted with any gentleman of the name of Mr. Cohan, so
it may very well be that the guest here who is a friend of Mr. Cohan
received notice that _your_ friend Mr. Sloan telephoned. And there you
are!
My friend Harry Heartydrop (who, I declare! looks rosier even than
before the middle of January, 1920) has adopted a hotel life altogether
of late. He explains to me that the advantage of this is the new
side-line activity of numerous compassionate bell captains, who, it
seems--but that would be telling.
One of the pleasantest things, I think, about hotels is the "night maid
service" furnished at fashionable places. When you come in you find your
light burning and so do not break your shins, and your bed is "turned
down" for you. Very softening to the spirit, this. In a kind of a sort
of a hazy way one's thoughts turn back to the maternal solicitude which
used to "tuck" one "in."
Good night!