SO VERY THEATRICAL
There is a young woman I thought of taking there for luncheon the other
day, but when I called for her it did not seem to me that she had used
her lip-stick that morning--and so we went somewhere else.
She is pretty good-looking and was dressed not at all unfashionably. She
would have done all right at the Waldorf, or at the Vanderbilt, or
Biltmore, or Ritz-Carlton, or Ambassador. Indeed, I don't know but that
at some such place as that I should have been rather proud of her.
But, you see, for the place I had in mind her skirt was a little too
long--it came almost halfway to her ankles. Her bosom was quite covered.
She moves with fair grace, but without striking sinuousness. And I
suddenly recollected that she does not smoke much.
No; I saved myself just in time; I should have been chagrined,
embarrassed, most decidedly uncomfortable; she would have been
conspicuous. I should probably have lost caste with the waiters, too;
and not again have been able to get a table after the plush rope had
been thrown across the entrance to the dining-room; which, so keen is
competition for places there, is shortly before one o'clock.
If you know where this place is, why, of course, all right. But nobody
has any business to go shouting all over the housetops exactly where it
is. People who aren't just naturally by temperament a part of the
picture oughtn't to know how to find it. Though it is a perfectly good
bet that bunches of them would like to know.
But that's just the way so many of these havens of the elect get ruined.
A lot of curious "visitors" go piling in right along; the scene soon
loses all its authenticity; and shortly becomes bogus altogether. Why, I
can remember when artists--painters and writers--lived in Greenwich
Village. There, in those days.... But all that was years ago.
This much only will I tell you about the location of the most
_distingué_ place there is in which to have luncheon. The centre of the
inhabited world is, of course, Longacre Square, that widened curving
stretch of Broadway looking north several blocks from the narrow stern
of the gracefully towering Times Building, rising from its site of a bit
of an island surrounded by four surging currents of traffic. A few miles
away (from Longacre Square) the provinces begin. But there, the most
gleaming spot on this our globe under the canopy of the purple night, is
the quintessence, the apex of human life.... I am here speaking, of
course, in the spirit of those of that nomad race whose hopes for gold
and fame lie through the "stage entrance"--I mean the ladies and
gentlemen of the theatre.
To the east just off Longacre Square along the crosstown streets is a
medley of offices of divers theatrical and screen journals, chop-houses,
and innumerable band-box hotels whose names doubtless only a district
messenger boy could recite in any number. The particular one for which
we are headed is famous enough to those familiar with fame of this
character. Here the "Uncle Jack" of the American stage, Mr. Drew, for
some time made his residence. It is always the stopping place in New
York of perhaps the finest of our novelists, Joseph Hergesheimer. That
mystical Indian gentleman, Mr. Rabindranath Tagore, has found it a not
unworthy tent on his western pilgrimages. And so on.
You cannot be long in its rich little lobby without overhearing struck
the high note of its distinctive clientele. "Where do you open?" asks
someone of someone else. And the answer is not unlikely to be: "At
Stamford. When do you close?" In the subdued light bare satin arms and
enspiriting lengths of colorful stocking flash from the deep chairs
where feminine forms are waiting. A graceful hand opens a telephone
booth to expel a smoking cigarette.
Here enters Walter Prichard Eaton, come down from his Berkshire farm for
the height of the theatrical season. A tall, leisurely, very New
Englandish, smooth-shaven young man, now coming decidedly grey just over
the ears. Entering the dining-room we come plump against our old friend
Meredith Nicholson lunching with a bevy of friends. A youthful fifty
perhaps now, the author of one of the best sellers of any day, "The
House of a Thousand Candles." Clean-shaven, with a physiognomy
suggesting that of a Roman senator. What has brought him just now from
Indiana? Well, he is revolving in his mind the idea of writing a new
play, as soon, he adds, as he "can find the right ink." Hasn't been
able to get hold of any that just suited him.
But much more important to his mind, apparently, than this play is
another mission in which he has become involved. He is going to have
himself "mapped," that is, have his horoscope cast. Yes, by one of the
ladies of his party, who, it appears, is eminent as a professor of this
science, now rapidly coming into a period of great vogue. When he has
supplied her with the data concerning his birth she will reveal to him
the course of his career through 1922.
On a number of the tables are cards marked "Reserved." Around two sides
of the room upholstered seats running the length of the wall seat
couples in greater intimacy of tête-à-tête side by side before their
little tables. Most of the young women present--but could you really
call many of them young women?... Their most striking feature, after the
dizziness of their beauty, and the ravishing audacity of their clothes,
is the bewitching tenderness of their years. More than several of these
dainty, artfully rose-cheeked smokers look to be hardly past seventeen.
Their foppishly dressed male companions frequently are in effect far
from anything like such youth; and in a number of cases are much more
likely to remind you of Bacchus than of Apollo.
Two of these misses nearby are discussing with one another their
"doorman." "Isn't he," exclaims one, "the very dearest old doorman you
have ever seen in all of your whole life!" Yes, it would seem that,
peering down the long vista of the past, from out of their experience of
hundreds of theatres, neither of these buds of womanhood could recall
any doorman so "dear" as their present one.
The dominant group in the room is a gay and populous party about a large
round table in the centre. And undoubtedly the dominant figure of this
party is, you recognize, Alexander Woollcott, dramatic critic of the New
York _Times_, invariably at this same table at this same hour, a very
spirited, a very round plump young man, very dapper to the end of every
hair in his trim little black moustache. Next to him who is that? Why,
goodness me! if it isn't Edna Ferber, who, though I doubt not she would
not want to be counted in the fledgling class of some of our soubrette
friends here, indeed does seem to be getting younger all the while.
Joining this party now is an odd and rather humorous looking figure,
tall, amusingly stooping and amusingly ample of girth for a character of
such apparently early manhood, an intensely black crop of hair and a
very blackish streak of moustache, soft collar, unpressed clothes. Sits
down, hooping himself over his plate with a suggestion of considerable
shyness. Gives you an impression, perhaps by the brightness of his eyes,
of Puckish mirth playing within his mind. Heywood Broun.
At the table on our right we perceive a very popular lady known to us,
Miss Margaret Widdemer, or, as she now is, Mrs. Robert Haven Schauffler.
Her general air breathing the simplicity of a milkmaid amid this scene.
Under her mammoth floppy hat reminding you of an early summer rose. She
is discussing with a spectacled person who looks as if he might have
something to do with book publishing whether her next book should be a
light romance on the order of her "Wishing-Ring Man" and "Rose Garden
Husband" or she should come into the new movement of serious "Main
Street" kind of realism.
And there, on our left, certainly is a publisher, Mr. Liveright of the
firm of Boni and Liveright. Young fellow, thirty-five perhaps. Maybe he
is talking about some of his striking successes, such as "Potterism" and
"From Mayfair to Moscow." With him Ludwig Lewisohn, literary and
dramatic critic.
Back of us we detect young Burton Rascoe, former literary editor of the
Chicago Tribune, newly arrived in New York as managing editor of
_McCall's Magazine_, and to whom (by the way) the suppressed novel
"Jurgen" was dedicated. You wouldn't think anybody would be so frowning
as to want to suppress Mr. Rascoe. He looks as if he might be twin
brother to any dewy bud here.
Who is that he is with? Theodore Maynard, I declare. Young English poet,
critic and novelist. And the other side of him is a gentleman, Oliver
Saylor by name, who at the height of the revolution went to Russia to
study the Russian drama, and engrossed in æsthetics lived for a time in
quarters midway between the contending military forces. Beyond we see a
young lady recently come on from Ted Shawn's song and dance studio in
Los Angeles.
And yonder you see a young man who is just as dear and sweet as he can
be. He served his country during the war by knitting a sweater and a
"helmet" for a poet he knew in the army in France. He, this dainty
youth, looks pretty much lip-sticked himself. In order not to sin
against daintiness this young person has a habit of powdering his nose.
A coarse friend of his forbade his doing this, and the next time he met
him neatly powdered rebuked him for it. Whereupon the young man replied:
"Oh! You wouldn't (would you?) let a little powder come between
friends."
And, finally, here most happily we are ourselves.