It is only after years of such gymnastic that one can sit down at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to do it.
Only last night it was I was talking to Jesse Lynch Williams. He said nothing of "legions of words swarming to his call," nary a mention of "dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice." Instead, he asked if I found that writing came easier as time went on. No, he said, it seemed to him that writing became harder and harder the longer one wrote. That he had torn up everything he had done for a long while.
Always the paradox! Again, there are men who write with astonishing ease, or at least with astonishing rapidity, and write well. Not so long ago I began a novel in collaboration with a writer known and admired from coast to coast, a frequent contributor to The Bookman, and one of the best. We were to do this thing turn and turn about, a chapter by me, then a chapter by him, and so on. For something like ten days I toiled over chapter one. I labored and I groaned. When it was finished I was spent. I handed him the manuscript; he stuffed it into his overcoat pocket and went whistling away. Returned within a few days and handed me a wad of copy covering, I think, three chapters. Again I toiled in the sweat of my brow. Gave him another chapter. When, after a couple of weeks or something like that, he returned and I had read what he had done I discovered that he had got people married that I hadn't known were yet born. The collaboration busted up.
My excellent friend does not like me to tell this story, because he thinks it represents me as the conscientious artist and him as the shallow scribbler. Well, that was not so; his chapters were far better than mine. Nevertheless, his name I shall not give; I'll merely say that it has very much the sound of a name borne by one of the Elizabethan dramatists.
Then there is that sort of human head-piece which can only write when it absolutely has to. I allude to the magical instrument of coercion known as a "copy date." I know people, dozens of them, who having a month and a half ahead of them in which to do an article can't possibly get started on it until it is almost too late for them to get it in on time to go to press—when a mad frenzy seizes them, their indolence vanishes like mist before the rising sun, their minds open like a flower, and all is well.
And the "galley slaves," those poor devils who for years have lived under the whip of copy day every day. How they dream of the "real" things they might do, given time. If (they think) the Lord would only subsidize them! Now and then the Devil takes one of them and does this very thing. The happy man gets some sort of a sinecure. All he has to do is to go write. And (in all probability) that's all there is to that story. He is like those things Riley tells about who "swaller theirselves." He gets nothing written.
What do you write with? And why do you write with whatever it is you write with instead of with something else? Why did Mr. Howells (in all the writing of his which I have seen) use a script-letter typewriter instead of a Roman-letter machine? Why does Mr. Le Gallienne do so much of his copy (if not all of it) by hand? Why is it that Mr. Huneker could never either dictate or learn to run a typewriter? How is it possible for those Englishmen—Swinnerton and Bennett, for instance—to put forth in a few months whole novels in the monkish hand of an illuminated missal? (I have seen the original manuscript of "The Old Wives' Tale," every page like a copper-plate engraving, and hardly a correction throughout.) And why is that it seems to me most natural to write some things with a pen, others with a pencil, most things on a typewriter, and yet again mix the use of all three implements in one composition? I cannot tell you.
Some authors, if they are going to write about a slum, have to go and live in a slum while they are writing about a slum. Other authors, if they are going to write about life in an Ohio town, go to Italy to write about life in an Ohio town. In his excellent book "On the Trail of Stevenson" Clayton Hamilton says:
Throughout his lifelong wanderings, Stevenson rarely or never attempted to describe a place so long as he was in it. For his selection of descriptive detail he relied always on the subconscious artistry of memory. He trusted his own mind to forget the non-essential; and he seized upon whatever he remembered as, by that token, the most essential features of a scene—the features, therefore, that cried out to be selected as the focal points of the picture to be suggested to the mind's eye of his readers.
The author of the thirteen volumes known as "The Chronicles of Barsetshire," a detailed picture of the English clergy of his time, had never associated with bishops, deans, and arch-deacons; he built them up (to use his own expression) out of his "moral consciousness."
But round to rooms again. Often has it been told how Anthony Trollope worked. How he accomplished so much—thirty-odd novels besides as many tales—by a method he recommended to all who wish to pursue successfully the literary career. In the drawing room of the Athenæum Club, in a railway carriage, or on the ocean, wherever he might be he seated himself for three hours as a limit, with his watch before him; and regularly as it marked the quarter hour he turned off two hundred and fifty words, undisturbed by any distraction about him. We know that the unlettered man of genius, John Bunyan, wrote his immortal allegory "The Pilgrim's Progress" in Bedford jail. And there is being advertised now a book recently written in an American prison. And much writing has been done in garrets. Then here's our old friend George Moore. Again and again he has told of exactly the places it was necessary for him to live in while he wrote certain books. I open at random "Ave"; and I find this:
I descended the hillside towards the loveliest prospect that ever greeted mortal eyes.... And I walked thinking if there were one among my friends who would restore Mount Venus sufficiently for the summer months, long enough for me to write my book.
Now, to be quite frank with you, I didn't intend to write this paper at all. You may remember that when I set out I was merely in disagreement with Mr. Lucas concerning the matter of writing in a hotel room. One thing (as it will) led to another; and the upshot has been all this pother. However, there are, I hope, no bones broken—and that's saying a good deal for any kind of a discussion in these unsettled times.
What I am coming to is (the fashionable thing to come to nowadays) the psychic. A fellow I know was much puzzled. He recently got back to 16 Gramercy Park from a trip around the world. I saw him there having some toast and a pot of tea. He told me these interesting circumstances. He would be at a superbly appointed hotel in some city. Beautiful suite of rooms. Commodious bath-room with lovely bay-window. Everything to make for perfect mental and physical well-being. Impotent to write there. Later runs into some terrible dump of a lodging house. Horrible din of low noises all about. One dirty window looks out on scene of squalor. So cold at night has to put chair on bed and sit there to be nearer gas jet. Gets on wonderfully with writing. Strikes another place, handsomest of all; writes pretty well. Comes to most fearful place yet; can't write at all.
Couldn't make head nor tail of the matter, this fellow. Discussed the thing with many people. Finally found young woman who gave convincing explanation. It's like this: Undoubtedly you are, in any room, affected by something of the spirit which lingers there of former occupants. Maybe they were persons, whatever their station in life, sympathetic to your spirit—maybe not.
A few days ago, in the warm and brilliant winter sunlight there, I was strolling along the Embarcadero. Now all my life I have been very fond of roving the streets....
And that confession reminds me:
I one time heard a minister (a clergyman of considerable force of eloquence) preach a sermon against streets. His idea seemed to be that streets were not good for one—that they were very bad places. He admonished mothers to keep their children "off the streets." He regarded it as very reprehensible in a wife for her to "gad the streets." The footpad (he said) plied the street at night, while the righteous were at home in bed. What so sad as "a child of the streets"? If we wished to describe a worthless canine we called it a "street dog." The outcast has his home in the streets. The drunkard makes his bed in the street. It was painful (I gathered) for a civilized being to hear the "language of the street." And so on.
But I very much fear that the eloquence of this gentleman was greater than his Christianity. If we are to love our neighbors as we do ourselves, we will find him in greatest variety in the streets. If we are to give away our cloak, the beneficiary, I should think, would be a citizen much accustomed to the streets. And, as far as I can make out, there is more rejoicing in heaven over the arrival of a sister who has "walked the streets" than attends the reception of a nun.
Certainly I admit that roaming the streets (like everything else) can doubtless be overdone. Nevertheless, to most people, people of ordinary ways of life (like myself), I highly recommend the practice, as a most healthful exercise, as a pleasant course of profitable education, as a source of endless amusement, and as a Christian virtue. The trouble, I think, with most of us is not that we see too much of the streets but that we do not see as well as we might the streets we happen to be on. We do not read as we run.
So I would write an article In Praise of Streets.
As I was saying (when that minister switched me off), I was strolling along the Embarcadero. Among all the different sorts of streets there are none I think more beguiling than those which lie along the water front of a town or a city. The water-front streets of all seaport cities, of course, partake very much of the same character. Particularly in the picturesque aspect of the shop windows.
Here along the rim of San Francisco Bay you pass the sparkling pier buildings (now and then of Spanish mission architecture) of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha Oriental S. S. Co., of the American Hawaiian S. S. Co., the Kosmos Line, and the Pacific-Alaska Navigation Co., among others. While on New York's West Street you see the structures of the White Star Line, the Cunard Line, the Red Star Line, erected in masonry of a sort of mammoth and glorified garage architecture, funnels and masts peeping over the top; and further down the frame sheds of the Morgan Line, the Clyde Steam Ship Company, Savannah Line, Lackawanna Rail Road, Hoboken Ferry, and so on. But the tastes of the sailor man as a shopper appear to be very much the same whether he is along the London docks, on West Street, by Boston piers or here on the Embarcadero. In this the West and the East do meet.
The æsthetic taste of the water front inclines, very decidedly, to the ornate. As (presumably) a present to a lady and a decoration for the home the favorite object seems to be a heavy china plate. A romantic landscape, or a moonlight scene, or perhaps a still life study of portly roses is "hand painted" in very thick pigment on its face. Its rim is plaited in effect, like the edge of a fancy pie, and through numerous openings in this rim is run a heavy ribbon by which to hang it on the wall.
Next in prominence in the window displays of water-front bazaars is the set of bleary-colored glass ware (upper edges bound in gold) which I take to be designed for the purpose of serving punch, or perhaps lemonade—a large bowl of warty surface, with a number of cups to match hanging from hooks at its brim.
The water front obviously is strong for the amenities, the arts and the refinements of life. Bottles of perfume (with huge bows of ribbon at their necks) are in great abundance in its shop windows; as also are packets of boudoir soap (Dawn Lilac seems to be the favorite), toilet powders, silk initial handkerchiefs, opera glasses, ladies' garters of very fluffy design, feminine combs ornamented with birds in gilt, exceedingly high stand-up collars for gentlemen, banjos, guitars, mandolins, accordions (of a great variety of sizes), harmonicas, playing cards, dice and poker chips.
As for the rest of the display, it is a multifarious collection: rubber hip-boots, hair clippers, money belts, brogans, bandana handkerchiefs, binoculars, tobacco pouches, spools of thread, pitch-black plug tobacco, hand searchlights, heavy underwear, woolen sox, razor strops, tin watches, shaving brushes, elaborately carved pipes, trays of heavy rings, and here and there some quaint curiosity, such as a little model of a sailing ship in a bottle which it could not have entered through the mouth, or some such oddity as that.
One old friend of mine on West Street I missed on the Embarcadero. And that is (very battered and worn are the specimens of him which remain as the last of his noble race) the cigar-store wooden Indian.
And (I much regret) neither on the Embarcadero nor on any other water front in America do we have the rich costume ball effects that you find about the docks of London. There (as you remember) about the East India and the West India docks may be observed tall, dark visaged figures in loosely flowing robes and brilliant turbans solemnly pushing along high laden trucks and, high above on the decks of ships, hauling away at ropes.
But on the shore side of the San Francisco water front, my fancy was much taken by the salt sea savor of the signs of the houses of entertainment—signs reminiscent of the jovial days of briny romance, echoed in the chantey in "Treasure Island," which has as its refrain:
Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum.
I passed, among others, the Marine Café, the Navy Café, the Admiral Café, the Harbor Bar, and the Ferry Café.
I did not turn up Market Street, but went on around the nose of the peninsula, which is the foundation of San Francisco. I passed a three-masted ship, the Lizzie Vance, lying by her wharf, with men aloft in her rigging. Then I clambered up endless relays of rickety wooden stairs mounting Telegraph Hill. On either side of the ladder-like steps, ramshackle cabins bedecked with lines of fluttering "wash." Like the celebrated editor of Puck, H. C. Bunner, I might say that in my travels I've missed many a cathedral but I never missed a slum.
I went along through the Latin Quarter, slid down the steep slope of Kearny Street, and found myself wandering into that quaint little park, Portsmouth Square, where R. L. S. in his most stressful days lounged in the sun and listened to the tales of the vagabonds of the Seven Seas. Somewhat bigger than tiny Gramercy Park, hardly as large as little Madison Square, this park. In the center of the bit of rolling lawn, before a towering screen of rustling trees, the graceful little stone ship, buoyant on its curling stone wave, rides atop its tall stone pedestal graved "To Remember Robert Louis Stevenson," and on the face of which is cut that most fragrant of creeds, which (as everyone knows) begins: "To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence" ...
Behind the bench on which I rested was the establishment, so proclaimed the legend printed on its front, of Wing Sun, Funeral Director. For, as you know, Portsmouth Square is embraced on one side by prosperous Chinatown, and on the other by the Italian quarter of San Francisco. And the races, Latin and Oriental, mingle in the little park to take the air.
What here is still more colorful and picturesque, frequently there is a striking and amusing mixture of races in the costume of an individual figure. A Manchu lady, it may be, of waxen, enigmatic features, draped in flowing black silken trousers, hobbles along on high-heeled, pearl-colored American shoes. And there a slim reed of an Oriental maiden, with a complexion like a California orange, whisks by in the smartest of tailored suits—without a hat, her gleaming black hair done in Chinese fashion, long ornamented rods thrust through it, a vivid pendant of bright blossoms at one side of the head.
Sitting there, I thought of the nature of public parks and what pleasant places they are.
Splendid thing, elaborate park "systems," whereby you may go for miles through a grimy city, and move among groves and meadows and bosky dells, with inspiriting glimpses of mirror-like ponds and flashing streams all the way. And of course I enjoy the great parks of a great city.
But more appealing to me than the gorgeous spectacle of Hyde Park, or Van Cortlandt, or Fairmont, or Jackson, or Forest Park are the little places tucked here and there in the seething caldron of the town. These are a lovely department of the streets—they are the little parlors of the streets. Here calls are made, and infants sun themselves—they have, these parklets, their social and their domestic life, under the democratic heavens.
Now soon is a time to watch with joy these plots of open space in the city's rushing life. Spring is more winsome on Boston Common and at Union Square than in the country. A tuft of green shoots seen against canyon walls of steel and stone—one must be in the city to savor the tenderness of spring.
And when summer comes and (in our eastern climate) all the town swelters under a blanket of gritty dust and heavy heat, then one comes upon one of these small areas of greenery with the refreshment of spirit with which at the meal hour one greets the appearance of a nice, cool, green salad.
I arose from my seat in Portsmouth Square and wandered off for the rest of the day through the Streets.
THE note, which came altogether as a surprise, read: "My husband suggests that if you have nothing better to do perhaps you would look in upon us on Wednesday evening at about eight-thirty." Mrs. Chesterton further said, in giving the address, that they had a little apartment lent to them for the last week of their stay here. She had asked Mr. Woollcott to come, too, and Gerald Stanley Lee.... "We can only promise you smokes and talk."
I wondered, as I hurried for the 'bus, whether I'd have time to get my shoes polished. It was precisely the hour appointed when I reached what I took to be the door. The hall-man declared that he had "gone out." I insisted that the hall-man telephone up. "No answer," he said, after a bit, and hung up. Now what do you think of that! Well, I'd take a walk and return a little later.
As I was rounding the corner coming back I saw an agile, rotund figure, with a gleam of white shirt-front in the half darkness, mounting the dusky steps instead of descending into the lighted areaway. Looked kinda like Mr. Woollcott. If so, the gentleman was going wrong, so I called to him.
"He has not come back," the hall-man asserted, but assented to our demands to ring up again. No response. "It was about an hour ago he went out," he replied to our question. Standing there, Mr. Woollcott and I contrived several theories. One was that Mr. Chesterton had intended to return by now but had lost track of the time. Another was that possibly Mrs. Chesterton had invited us on her own hook and had overlooked notifying Mr. Chesterton of the matter. "Has a third gentleman been here?" we asked, meaning Mr. Lee. No. We went for a stroll.
It was nine o'clock. And Mr. Woollcott's manner indicated that he was inclined to take some sort of revenge on the hall-man. Was he, the hall-man, certain that he had everything straight? "Sure," he nodded; "it's Mr. Cushman's apartment." Mr. Cushman's apartment! Had we, then, been blundering in the wrong place all this time! "Mr. Chesterton!" roared Mr. Woollcott. Yes, yes; he understood that ... the gentleman had come in yesterday. That was right according to the note I had had from Mrs. Chesterton; so we demanded that the man make another effort at the telephone. Ah!... he heard something. "It's all right," he mumbled; "they are there."
As we got out of the car Mr. Chesterton was cramming the tiny hall. He was in an attitude which I took to be that of a bow, but I later discovered, as he shuffled back and forth about the apartment, that he walks that way all the time now when in the privacy of his own quarters. Mrs. Chesterton greeted us as we entered the room, Mr. Chesterton trailing in behind us and continuing a welcoming murmur which had somewhat the sound of a playful brook. Mrs. Chesterton ensconced herself behind a tea table. Mr. Chesterton lumbered about with cigars. He disclaimed the great easy chair by the electric table lamp in which it was unmistakable that he had been sitting, but was prevailed upon to return to it.
In apology for the lateness of our arrival we mentioned our difficulties in discovering that he was in. Mr. Chesterton seemed bewildered by the circumstance. He shook his head and (evidently referring to the hall-man) said he was not able to understand "that foreigner" at all. "That foreigner?" we smiled at the Englishman. I think it most likely that the explanation of his not having heard our earlier rings was that he was not familiar with the system of bells in the apartment. They had not been out, he declared; oh, yes! they had been out, too, a good while ago, to get something to eat. "We are camping here," he said, "in a rather Bohemian fashion." Didn't they enjoy that as a change from life in fashionable hotels? Oh, yes! Very much.
They wondered if Mr. Lee were not coming. Yes; he had assured me that he was, when I had seen him that afternoon at the club. In fact, we had discussed what we would wear, and had agreed on dinner jackets. Mr. Chesterton was wearing a braid-bound cutaway coat of felt-like material (very much wrinkled in the skirt) and dark striped trousers of stiffish quality, but not recently pressed. His bat-wing collar had a sharp crease extending outward at one side as though it were broken. Though it was a very warm night for early spring—a hot night, indeed—he wore uncommonly heavy woolen sox, which were very much "coming down" about his ankles. His comically small English eye-glasses, with a straight rod joining them across the top, were perpetually coming off his nose. On one finger he wore a rather large ring. I noticed that for so large a man his hands were somewhat small, and were delicately made. At one side of him were three ashtrays (one of them a huge brass bowl well filled with tobacco ash) and at the other side of him one tray.
Well, what sort of a time had he been having? How far west had he got? He had been as far as (I think) Omaha. "Halfway across," he said. He had been much mystified by a curious character he had run into there: a strange being whose waistcoat and coat front were covered by symbolic emblems, crescents, full moons and stars. This person had accosted him in the street saying, "And so you are a lecturer." The man had then informed him that he also was a lecturer. He lectured, he said, on astronomy. "Indeed, in my country," Mr. Chesterton had said, "it is not the custom for astronomers to display on their person devices symbolic of the science in which they are engaged." Next, the man had opened his coat and exhibited the badge of a sheriff, or some sort of officer of the peace. Mr. Chesterton had been astounded to discover the functions of a man of science, a lecturer and a policeman united in one and the same person. It was quite evident that this (as I assume he was) harmless lunatic had made a most decided impression upon Mr. Chesterton's mind; he took the eccentric individual with much seriousness, apparently as some kind of a type; indeed, I feared that we would never get him switched off from talking about him; and I have no doubt that, in the course of time, this ridiculous astronomer will appear as a bizarre character in some fantastic tale, a personage perhaps related to Father Brown, or something like that.
Mr. Chesterton observed that he had enjoyed the opportunity of seeing various grades of American life, that he had been in the homes of very humble people as well as in houses of persons of wealth and social and intellectual position. In a former article I noted how Mr. Chesterton had been greatly startled to find (what he then called) "wooden houses" in this country, and such multitudes of them. He now returned to this phenomenon. What was his one outstanding impression of the United States? Well, he remarked that he had said it before, but he continued to be chiefly struck by the vast number of "frame houses" here.
Mr. Lee arrived. A gentleman who looks very much as though you were looking at his reflection in one of those trick mirrors (such as they have at Coney Island) which humorously attenuate and elongate the figures before them. Or, again, perhaps more justly still, a gentleman who looks as though Daumier had drawn him as an illustration for "Don Quixote." In his evening clothes (to put it still another way), a gentleman who looks much like a very lengthened shadow dancing on a wall. Mr. Whistler would have made something very striking indeed out of Mr. Lee in a dinner coat, something beautifully strange. I do not know that I have ever seen anything finer, in its own exceedingly peculiar way, than Mr. Lee, thus attired, with a cup of tea in his hand.
"Do you like wine?" Mr. Woollcott asked Mr. Chesterton, and told him of a restaurant nearby where this could be obtained. Our prohibition, Mr. Chesterton said, did not bother him so much as might be thought, as for reasons having to do with his health he was (as you or I would say) "off the stuff" at present.
One of us, Mr. Woollcott I think, commented upon the sweep of Mr. Chesterton's fame in the United States. The opinion was advanced that the evening of the day he landed his arrival was known in every literate home in New York. Mr. Chesterton was inclined to think that his "notoriety" in large measure came from his "appearance," his "avoirdupois." Knowledge of him had spread through the notion that he was a "popular curiosity." It was contended that his writing had been well-known over here ten years before his pictures became familiar to us. (Though, of course, I myself do think that the pictorial quality of his corporeal being has been very effective publicity for him.)
Then there was another thing which Mr. Chesterton thought might to a considerable degree account for his American celebrity. That was this "tag" of "paradox." People loved "easy handles" like that, and they went a long way. Somehow or other we let this point pass, or it got lost in the shuffle, and the discussion turned to the question of whether there was an American writer living whose arrival in England would command anything like the general attention occasioned by Mr. Chesterton's entrance into the United States. We could not think of anyone.
Mark Twain, of course; yes. O. Henry, doubtless, too. And, indeed, in the matter of years O. Henry might very well be living now. Mr. Chesterton quite agreed as to the English welcome of Mark Twain or of O. Henry. Tom Sawyer and Huck, he said musingly, certainly were "universal." Then, ponderingly, he observed that English and American literature seemed to be getting farther and farther apart, or more and more distinct each from the other. That is, he remembered that when he was a boy his father and his uncles simply spoke of a new book having come out whether it had been written in England or in the United States. As in the case of the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table": when it appeared it was enjoyed and talked about by everybody in England; but not spoken of there as a new American book: it was a new book, that's all. Now, however, with Englishmen impressed by the "Spoon River Anthology," "and rightly so," or by "Main Street," "it would not be that way."
He had much liking for O. Henry. But he had begun by not liking him. He had been puzzled by the "queer commercial deals" on which so many of the stories turned—"buying towns, selling rivers." He had, even now, to re-read much of the slang to get the meaning. And so we talked awhile of slang.
"You have an expression here," said Mr. Chesterton, shaking his head as though that were something very remarkable indeed, "a bad actor" Much mirth from Woollcott, Lee and Holliday. "Now in England," Mr. Chesterton continued, "we mean by that one who has mistaken his vocation as to the stage. But I discovered that here it has nothing to do with the theatrical profession." Then, it developed, some reporter in the West had referred to him as "a regular guy." At first Mr. Chesterton had been for going after the fellow with a stick.... Certainly a topsy-turvy land, the United States, where you can't tell opprobrium from flattering compliment.
Then one of us told Mr. Chesterton a story of a prize line of American slang. He (the teller of the story) had got a letter in which a friend of his had been spoken of in a highly eulogistic fashion. Thinking this opinion of him would please his friend this man showed the letter to him. The gentleman so much praised in it read the letter and remarked: "Well, whenever I get the hand I always see the red light." Mr. Chesterton looked dazed. "You'll have to translate that to me," he said. It was explained to him that the meaning of this was that whenever this person heard applause of himself he always scented danger. "Oh, oh! I see!" crowed Mr. Chesterton, "the hand, the hand," and he began clapping his hands in illustration of the figure with much glee.
"Glee," yes. And "crowed," also. They are the words, some of the words, to describe Mr. Chesterton's sounds. His utterance was rapid, melodious. The modulations of his softly flowing voice had curiously somewhat the effect of a very cheerful music-box. His easy and very natural command of a great multitude of words was striking. And yet there was something decidedly boyish about the effect of his talk. I think the cause of this was, for one thing, the rather gurgling enjoyment with which he spoke, and for another thing, in his impulsive concern for the point of his idea he frequently did not trouble to begin nor end sentences. He just let 'er go. But the fundamental source of this boyishness of spirit I think was this: I do not believe I have ever seen a man who had borne the brunt of life for some forty-five years and still retained such complete, abounding, unaffected and infectious good humor as Mr. Chesterton.
"As I believe I have said somewhere before," Mr. Chesterton was saying, "it seems to me that the best known character in literature is Sherlock Holmes." Mr. Woollcott was inclined to consider Svengali. Dear me! Svengali may have been in the running at one time, but it strikes me that today he has pretty much gone by the board, somewhat to mix the figure.
As to detective stories: "They are essentially domestic," declares Mr. Chesterton. "Intimate, all in the household, or ought to be. The children's nurse should murder the Bishop. These things where the Foreign Office becomes involved and" (chuckling) "Indian rajahs and military forces come in are never right. They are too big. The detective story is a fireside story."
Had Mr. Chesterton been much to the theatre while here? No; the only thing he had seen was "The Bat." Something like anguish on the face of the dramatic critic of the New York Times. Why, he, Mr. Chesterton, had liked "The Bat," a good deal. Speaking of plays, the American presentation of "Magic" came into the conversation. It was remarked that the extremely mystical character of the setting rather crushed the mysticism of the play itself. The idea was advanced that a very simple, matter-of-fact, even bleak setting, would have been the thing to act as an effective foil to this play. Mr. Chesterton seemed to be not the slightest interested in stage-settings. And he knew next to nothing at all about the career of "Magic." He wasn't even sure whether or not he held any proprietary rights in the play. There was, he said as though fumbling around in his mind, something involved about the matter. Friend of his wanted a play. Necessary to finish it in a hurry. He didn't really know, answering a question to this purpose, whether or not he received any royalties from it.
Mrs. Chesterton again handed about some fudge. The collection of ash-trays and bowls surrounding Mr. Chesterton had become jovially freighted with tobacco ash and cigar ends. He smoked his cigars in an economical fashion, down as far as they could comfortably be held.
There was one thing (the talk had turned to his lecturing) Mr. Chesterton "wished you wouldn't do in this country, or that we didn't do in England, either." That was for the gentleman who "introduced" a lecturer to refer to his "message." In his own case, for instance, how ridiculously was this term misapplied. The word "message" conveyed something "quite the opposite of personality." Or, that is, before its popular corruption it had meant something very different. It meant that something was carried. One with a message was a messenger, a vessel, an envelope. It was hard to think of a figure who could rightly be said to have a message. The Old Testament prophets, Mohammed, perhaps. Whitman, now certainly you couldn't say that Whitman had a message.
A ring; and Mr. Cushman came in. Youthfully cropped grey hair. A gentleman who looked like a habitual first-nighter.
Yes, Mr. Chesterton was telling us, it was a curious thing. He had always heard that Americans worshipped machines. A machine everywhere here, and a machine brought to an amazing state of mechanical perfection, was the elevator, as we called it. When he had first got into an American elevator he had been arrested by the fact that the men entering it took off their hats and stood silently with bared heads as it ascended. It is so, he had said to himself, they are at worship, at prayer, this is some religious rite, mystic ceremony, the elevator is their temple.
Had he been in our subway? was asked. No; he had been down in a station one time, but he had not ridden on one of the trains. I wish now that I had thought to cut into the rapid battledore and shuttlecock of the conversation to learn why he had not been. Was he scared of 'em?
What were the things which Mr. Chesterton particularly liked in the United States? Well, for one thing, he very much liked the "elevated." He thought it was grand up in the air that way.
And what had be especially disliked? Mr. Lee apparently had knowledge of a memorandum book kept by Mrs. Chesterton, known to their ultimate little circle as her "Book of Likes and Dislikes." She was, with some difficulty, prevailed upon to read from this—which she did very guardedly, clutching the book very firmly before her. Among the things put down in it as not liked were ice cream, ice water, "American boots" (by which was meant women's high-heeled shoes), and interviewers, reporters and camera men. Things especially liked included parlor-car seats. Mr. Chesterton: "I don't dislike it, now. I've got the evil habit of ice water."
"Lift," it was generally agreed, was a happier word than "elevator." Mrs. Chesterton thought that the scientific, technical, correct, or whatever you call them, words for things always took all the feeling of life out of them. "Aviator," for example, had no color at all. But how fine in the spirit of the thing was the popular term "flying-man," or "fly-man"!
The conversation had got momentarily divided into groups. Mr. Chesterton was heard saying to Mr. Woollcott, "The time I mean was when Yeats was young—when mysticism was jazz."
Just how he got started in on them I do not recall. He began with Belloc's most entertaining and highly vivacious ballad which has the refrain, "And Mrs. James will entertain the king"; a kind of a piece among friends, which unfortunately is not in any book. He recited with a kind of joyous unction, nodding his head forward and back from side to side, thus keeping time to the music of the verse, punctuating the close of each stanza with bubble of chuckles. On and on and on and on he went through goodness knows how many bits of rollicking literary fooling.
It was half past eleven. I saw Mr. Chesterton, when someone else was speaking, yawn slightly now and then. The four callers arose to go. Some one of us asked Mr. Chesterton if he expected to be back in America soon. Through a wreath of smiles he replied that he was not getting a return ticket on the boat.
The two of them were framed in their doorway as we got into the "foreigner's" car. Mrs. Chesterton called to us that she hoped to see us all in England, "singly or together." As the car dropped from their floor both were beaming a merry, friendly farewell.
Suddenly it struck me that they were very like a pair of children—they were so happy, so natural, so innocent of guile, and obviously so fond of one another.
I THINK I'll tell you about myself. Maybe it's the same way with you. Anyhow, it's a mighty queer thing. And we ought to try to get some light on the matter—why there is, apparently, no reason or logic at all about our systems.
You see, I go along a pretty fair amount of the time feeling all right; nothing wrong with my system; nothing, at any rate, that I can notice. Everybody says: "How well you're looking! Great color, you've got." And so on.
Then, maybe, I see in the paper that there is an epidemic scheduled to devastate the city pretty soon. This news lays hold of me right off. The paper goes on to say that it behooves all citizens to take thought to fortify their systems against the ravages of this terrible disease which is rapidly approaching.
Or I read, say, that Thrift Week was such an enormous success (for everybody else) that a campaign is under way to inaugurate a Health Week, which (I read) will greatly reduce the mortality in the community. The way to reduce my own mortality (I read with considerable attention) is for me to Stop, Look and Listen in the matter of my health. And To Do It Now! I don't like those profane words, like mortality. They disturb me. And occasionally get me into no end of trouble—as you'll see.
Or, perhaps, I notice around in cars and places an unusual number of advertisements instructing you what firm to consult in order to "safeguard the interests of your heirs." A died (one of these cards may say) and left his estate to B, his widow, naming C as executor. C died suddenly shortly afterward. B (the widow) met E, with oil lands in Hawaii—and so on. The advertisement winds up: Are you A?
Not yet; I'm not! But I'd better watch out. I know this is a good advertisement because it gets into my mind the way it does.
Or, again, perhaps there are just a number of little things that I come across. A gentleman one day tells me at luncheon, we'll say, that he can't drink tea because it gives him uric acid so bad. Good gracious! And I (maybe) subject to uric acid!
An octogenarian (we'll suppose) is interviewed. He attributes his longevity to abstemiousness in the use of inexpensive cigarettes. (I at once put mine out.)
A chemist (very likely) gets a lot of publicity by declaring that you are to Look Before You Leap in the matter of drinking water. (And but the night before I drank from the spout in the kitchen!) And so on. Well, things such as these set one to thinking.
I say to myself when I get that way (to thinking, I mean) a stitch in time saves nine; there's no loss so bad as the loss of your health, because if you have that you can obtain aught else; a word to the wise is sufficient; make hay while the sun shines; little drops of water wear away the stone; take heed for the morrow while it is yet May; be not like unto the foolish virgin who spilt the beans. And many other things of this kind, which (doubtless in wise measure) are both good and true.
Well, in short, I determine to "build up," to get myself in thoroughly "good shape."
I swear off smoking. I put away the home brew. I do not eat fresh bread. I procure myself overshoes against the rain. I rise with the lark. I (religiously eating an apple first) go to bed betimes. I walk so many miles a day—also skip a rope. I shun all delicacies of the table. I take those horrid extra cold baths, for the circulation. I do "deep breathing." I "relax" for twelve minutes each day. I shun the death-dealing demon "worry." I "fix my mind on cheerful thoughts." I "take up a hobby," philately, or something like that. I eat the skins of potatoes. I watch the thermometer at the office, and monkey continually with the steam radiator. Everything like that.
When you undertake a thing (even if it's only shelling peas) be thorough in it, that's my motto. I don't, indeed, in this regimen get much work done, but it's better to be slow and sure.
Well, what happens?
When I set out to build up this is what happens to me: First thing, maybe, I get pimples. No; no maybe about it. I sure get pimples. Then, very likely, I get a carbuncle. (I have just asked my assistant how you spell that word. She inquires if I mean the gem, or—or the other. I have told her I mean the other.)
Next, very probably, I "contract" (as they say) a cough. This cough "develops" into a cold.... You have (I trust) had that sort of cold which hangs on for months. Nothing recommended is of any help to you. You become resigned (more or less) to the idea—just as a man who has lost a leg (or his mind) must resolve to do the best he can with the rest of his life without his leg (or his mind), so must you adapt yourself to the stern condition imposed by Fate of always having a cold. That's the kind of a cold I mean that I get. (Only worse!)
My cold branches out into several little side lines, such as acute neuralgia and inflammatory rheumatism. Stiff joints impede my agility in getting down the hill to my morning train to the city. I slip on the ice and break my glasses.
Not having my glasses causes me at the office to greet Mr. Sloover as Mr. Rundle, and this sort of error breathes a chill upon the nice nuances of business.
Or in my personal correspondence (if I were that kind of a person) I might put my letter for Penelope into the envelope for Pauline. This, when I had discovered the calamity, would doubtless perturb my thoughts. My thoughts being perturbed, I might walk out of the restaurant without my change of three dollars and eighty cents. Thoroughly upset by now, I walk under a ladder. Realizing that I have done this, my nervousness is the occasion of my dropping my watch. Enough! I recognize that there is no use in my going back to the office that afternoon. I telephone in that I have gone home to bed with my cold.
On coming out of the cigar store where the telephone booth is, I see Christopher Morley, Don Marquis and Franklin P. Adams walking down the street arm in arm. (I can see very little without my glasses, but well enough to recognize such a spectacle as that.) Something, I say, must be on. And I cheer up considerably. Some cheering up certainly is just what I need. I overhaul the company. And I ask it (the company) where it is bound. It says: "For 'Mecca.' Come along." Don hands me a pocket flask (largely empty), Chris presents me with a large green cigar, and Frank gives me a match. It is agreed that we roll a little pool for a few hours while waiting for the cab.
Well, you see, I've been led to abandon the idea of building up my health—but I don't care, one may as well die happy.
I have a great time at that show. (My cold is immensely better.) I fix on one eye-glass so as to see something desirable. And I cut up a lot.
But—when we turn to leave I discover the president of my company going out just ahead of me. Well, I suppose I'll have to take what is coming to me tomorrow.
That one good meal, anyhow (after the pool), has strengthened my spirit immensely. I plan to have a regular, genuine breakfast in the morning. The kind I used to enjoy before I started in to get myself in fine shape. A breakfast of sliced pineapple, eggs, steak, fried potatoes, cottage-cheese, hot rolls, and two pots of good strong coffee. A pipe afterward.
When I get out to the house I find that my uncle (from whom I had been estranged for years) has died, and left me his fine, ninety carat, forty jewel, repeater watch.
I wake up bursting with joyous life. The girl tells me that those especially handsome glasses I lost last New Year's Eve have been found. Down at the station the station-master comes out to greet me. He says so many people have slipped on our hill that next week the railroad is going to install a free coach service. I see by the morning paper that the horse I took a twelve to one shot on in the Buenos Aires derby came out the length of the stretch to the good. On the train into town I smoke a couple of packages of cigarettes—as I become a bit bothered about the situation at the office.
A girder, or something, had fallen across the track. The train is held up. For a couple of hours it stands there. I become more than decidedly nervous. Now this is awful bad doings. Everything had been coming so right again. It seems as if there is no reward in this world for anything. Here for a whole month or so I had been subjecting myself to the most rigorous and unpleasant kind of discipline solely in order to make myself more efficient in my work, and so more valuable to the house. Nothing else. Then by an accident I am kept away from the office one afternoon, and this has to go and happen just to keep me away probably the whole of the forenoon. Everything will, of course, be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Instead of getting just credit for what I've done, I'll probably get bounced. If anyone wants to have the moral of this story pointed out to him: it is that there is not much use in trying, you can see that.
When I do get to the office my secretary is in quite a flurry. She tells me that Mr. Equity, the president, has been inquiring for me. In fact—she hesitates—wants me to step in to see him as soon as I arrive.
So, there you are!
Mr. Equity (a most unusual thing in any circumstances) shakes my hand with great cordiality. He smiles, not benignantly but rather deferentially. Says that he has recognized for some little time that I have not had a salary commensurate with my services. Times, however, are not of the best. Would I be willing to continue with the firm at—a pause—well, double my present salary? Everything, he adds, would be made as pleasant for me as possible.
His secretary whispers to me in an outer office: "He has been so flustered. He was scared you weren't ever coming back."
I discussed this matter of the strange workings of the human system with a friend of mine outside the office. "Ah!" he said, "you didn't persevere long enough in looking after yourself. If you had kept it up for a year instead of only a month, you'd be a well man today. And," he added seriously, "a successful man, too."
"WHAT a lot of things they put in the papers!" Hilaire Belloc observes somewhere in one of his essays. Indeed, it is so!
I fear, however, that one of the features "they" put in the papers does not have anything like as popular a reading as it deserves to have. Those of the governing class, personages who employ people, probably consult fragments of this department of the newspaper now and then. But, it may fairly be claimed, nobody reads, with the delicious pleasure and the abundant profit he might read, that part of the paper fullest of all of, so to say, meat and gravy.
The story it tells is probably the deepest grounding in life to be found in print. There as it stands in today's paper Shakespeare (I fancy) could not have written it, nor Balzac, nor Dickens, nor Arnold Bennett, nor O. Henry, nor Sinclair Lewis. This newspaper feature is called "Situations Wanted." It might just as accurately be called "The Human Scene," or "The Heart of the World," or "The Cry of the Soul." Its tale is of what all men are seeking (and have ever sought), each in his own degree, and after his fashion—bread, a place in the sun, a level higher than that of today.
Let us, briefly, survey this Page of Life.
The most conspicuous figure in the vast and motley throng is the Bold and Confident Man. He that knows his superior worth and does not propose to hide his light, he that has the spirit to attack the conqueror. His method is to fling a large and arresting headline across his "ad." "I AM THE MAN YOU WANT!" he begins. Or, "PAR-EXCELLENCE," he announces in big type. Or, "Mr. Busy Manufacturer," he says in good sized "caps"; in smaller letters asks: "Are you in need of a competent manager?" If Mr. B. M. is in such need, it is squarely put up to him: he "will do well to address X." To the employer who hesitates this vital opportunity is lost. The ad says: "Write now—Right Now!" Undoubtedly this is the horse to put your money on; the hero to marry your daughter to. He will not want.
Our bold, aggressive friend frequently writes, barring a bit of "bounce," an admirable, clean-cut account of himself. He has, he declares, acted for some of the leading concerns in the country; he has never yet failed to give satisfaction; every employer he ever had will testify to his ability and character. He invites the closest investigation of his record, and he is open for any engagement where faithful work, absolute integrity and devotion to his employer's interests will be productive of "a fair living salary." It is, indeed, difficult to avoid the impression that this man "has the goods."
Akin to him in his method of a bill-board-like headline is another, of whom one is not so sure. He does not so much command attention as seek to beguile it. His particular "lay" is the Ingenious. Here is one example of his style: