Part 9 (1/2)
Upon the windows you are informed that ”restoring,” ”artistic framing,”
”regilding,” and ”resilvering” are done within. And, in some cases, that ”miniatures” are painted there. There are, too, a number of ”j.a.panese art stores” along the way, containing vast stocks of j.a.panese lilies living in j.a.panese pans, other exotic blossoming plants, pink and yellow slippers from the Orient, and striking flowered garments like a scene from a ”Mikado” opera.
In this part of town photography, too, is made one of the fine arts.
You do not here have your photograph taken; you have, it seems, your ”portrait” made. ”Home portraiture” is ingratiatingly suggested on lettered cards, and, further, you are invited to indulge in ”art posing in photographs.” The ”studios” of the photographers display about an equal number of portraits of children and dogs. The people of this community take joy not only in the savour of art, and in taking part in its professional production, but they would themselves produce it, as amateurs. The sign ”Kodaks” is everywhere about, and ”enlarging” is done, and ”developing and printing for amateurs” every few rods. So we come to the subject of music.
Caruso, Melba, Paderewski, Mischa Elman, Harry Lauder, Sousa, Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Brahms, Grieg, Moszkowsky, the ”latest song hit” from anything you please. Ask and you will find along this thoroughfare. There are no more prosperous looking bazaars on this street than those consecrated to the sale of ”musical phonographs” of every make. And if the name of these places is not exactly legion, it is something very like that. Besides every species of Victophone and Olagraph, the music lover may muse upon the wonders and the variety of ”mechanical piano players.” All of de luxe ”tone quality.”
As for the drama. The brightest word at night in this galaxy of ultra signs is the gracious word ”Photo Play House.” Deep beyond plummet's sound is the interest of this part of town in the human story, as revealed upon the ”screen.” Grief and mirth, good and evil, danger and daring, and the horizon from Hatteras to Matapan may be scanned upon the poster boards before the entrances of these showy temples of the mighty film. Here one is invited to witness ”Carmen,” and also a ”drama of life,” ”Tricked by a Victim,” and also ”a comedy drama full of pep” ent.i.tled ”Good Old Pop,” productions of the ”Premier Picture Corporation.” Announcements of scenes of tornadoes, the Great War, of ”Paris fas.h.i.+ons,” and, ah, yes! of ”beauty films” line the way.
To turn to the home. The people of this part of town dwell, according to their shops, entirely amid ”period and art furniture.” And it would seem, by the remarkable number of places in this quarter where this is displayed for sale, that they dwell amid a most amazing amount of it.
These marts of household G.o.ds are of two kinds: ones of imposing size, with long windows stretching far down the cross street, and dealing in s.h.i.+ning ”reproductions,” and the tiny, quaint, intimate, delightful kind of thing, where it is said on a sign on a gilded chair that ”artistic picture hanging by the hour” is done.
The fascinating places are the more alluring. Herein rich jumbles are, of tapestries, clocks of all periods--including a harvest of those of the ”grandfather” era--fire-screens, bra.s.s kettles, andirons, stained-gla.s.s, artistic lamps in endless variety, the latest things in pillow cus.h.i.+ons, book racks, wall papers, wall ”decorations” and ”hangings,” draperies, curtains, cretonnes. The ”decorators” deal, too, in ”parquet floors,” and flourish and increase in their kind in response, evidently, to the volume of demand for ”upholstering” and ”cabinet work.” And the floors of this part of town must hold rich stores of Oriental rugs, as importers of these are frequent on our way.
The higher civilisations turn, naturally, to refinements of religious thought. What the Salvation Army is to Fourteenth Street, what the Rescue Mission is to the Bowery, the Christian Science Reading Room is to this stretch of Broadway, and there is no trimmer place to be seen on your stroll. Then, one of the marks of our culture to-day is the aesthetic cultivation of the primitive. Our neighbourhood is invited, on placards in windows, to a.s.semble ”every Sunday evening” to enjoy the ”love stories of the Bible.”
For the rest, you would see on your stroll, for man cannot live by taste and the spirit alone, sundry places of business concerned with real estate, electrical accoutrement, automobile accessories, toys, the investment and safeguarding of treasure, and so on, and particularly with ales, wines, liquors, and cigars. Each and all of these, however, are affirmed to be ”places of quality.”
Now, the social customs of this part of town, as they may be abundantly viewed on our thoroughfare, are agreeable to observe. At night our boulevard twinkles with lights like a fairyland. The view of across the way through the gardens, as they should be called, down the middle of the street, is enchanting. All aglow our spic-and-span trolley cars--all our trolley cars are spic-and-span--ride down the way like ”floats” in a nocturnal parade. Upon the sidewalks are happy throngs, and a hum of cheery sound. The throngs of our neighbourhood are touched with an indescribable character of place; they are not the throngs of anywhere else. They are not exactly Fifth Avenue; they are not the Great White Way. They are nice throngs, healthy throngs, care-free throngs, modish throngs in the modes of magazine advertis.e.m.e.nts. And all their members are young.
You will notice as you go and come that you pa.s.s the same laughing groups in precisely the same spot, hour after hour. Those who compose these groups seem to be calling upon one another. Apparently, on pleasant evenings, it is the form here for you to receive your guests in this way, in the open air. And you jest, and converse, and while the time amiably away, just as many people do at home. ”Well,” says my wife, ”the rooms in the apartments in this part of town are so small that n.o.body can bring anybody into them.”
XII
A CLERK MAY LOOK AT A CELEBRITY
A clerk may look at a celebrity. For a number of years, we, being diligent in our business, stood and waited before kings in a celebrated book shop. Now (like Casanova, retired from the world of our triumphs and adventures) we compose our memoirs. ”We know from personal experience that a slight tale, a string of gossip, will often alter our entire conception of a personality,”--from a contemporary book review.
This, the high office of t.i.ttle-tattle, is what we have in our eye. We are Walpolian, Pepysian.
”These Memoirs, Confessions, Recollections, Impressions (as the t.i.tle happens) are extremely valuable in the pictures they contain of the time. Especially happy are they in the intimate glimpses they give us of the distinguished people, particularly the men of letters, of the day. The writer was an attache of the court,” the writer was this, the writer was that, but always the writer had peculiar facilities for observing intimately--and so forth. So it was with the writer here.
We remember with especial entertainment, we begin, the first time we saw F. Hopkinson Smith. (We are ashamed to say that he was known among our confrere, the salesmen, as ”Hop” Smith.) He introduced himself to us by his moustache. Looming rapidly and breezily upon us--”Do you know me?” he said, swelling out his ”genial” chest (so it seemed) and pointing, with a militarish gesture, to this decoration. We looked a moment at this sea gull adornment, somehow not unfamiliar to us, and said, ”We do.” Mr. Hopkinson Smith, we perceived, regards this literary monument, so to say, as a household word (to put it so) in every home in the land. Mr. Smith, a very robust man, wore yellow, sulphur-coloured gloves, a high hat, a flower in his b.u.t.tonhole, white piping to his vest. A debonair figure, Chanticleerian. Fresh complexion. Exhaling a breeze of vigour. Though not short in stature, he is less tall than, from the air of his photographs, we had been led to expect. A surprise conveying a curious effect, reminded one of that subconscious sensation experienced in the presence of a one-time tall chair which has been lowered a little by having had a section of its legs sawed off.
Mr. Smith's conversation with book clerks we found to be confined to inquiries (iterated upon each reappearance) concerning the sale of his own books. We appreciate that this may not be the expression of an irrestrainable vanity, or obsessing greed, realising that very probably his professional insight into human character informs him that the subject of the sales of books is the range of the book clerk's mind.
He expressed a frank and hearty pride (engaging in aspect, we felt) in the long-sustained life of ”Peter,” which remarkably selling book survived on the front fiction table all its contemporaries, and in full vigour lived on to see a new generation grow up around it there. In a full-blooded, sporting spirit Mr. Smith asked us if his new book was ”selling faster than John Fox's.” Heartiness and geniality is his role. A man built to win and to relish popularity. With a breezy salute of the sulphur-gloved hand, he is gone. Immediately we feel much less electric.
Alas, what an awful thing! Oliver Herford, with heavily dipped pen poised, is about to autograph a copy of his ”Pen and Ink Puppet,” when, lo! a monstrous ink blot spills upon the fair page. Hideous! Mr.
Herford is nonplused. The book is ruined. No! Mr. Herford is not Mr.
Herford for nothing. The book is enriched in value. Sesame! With his pen Mr. Herford deftly touches the ink blot, and it is a most amusing human silhouette. How characteristic an autograph, his delighted friend will say.
We were quite satisfied in the introduction given us in our sojourn as a book clerk with Mr. Herford. That is to say, our early education was received largely from the pages of _St. Nicholas Magazine_; and when grown to man's estate and brought to mingle with the great we might easily have suffered a sentimental disappointment in Mr. Herford. But no, he is as mad as a March hare. He never, we should say, has any idea where he is. An absolutely blank face. Mind far, far away.
Doesn't act as though he had any mind. A smallish, clean-shaven man, light sack suit, somewhat crumpled. A fine shock of greyish-hair.
Cane hooked over crooked arm. List to starboard, like a postman.
Approaches directly toward us. We prepare to render our service.
Perceives something in his path (us) just in time to avert a collision, swerves to one side. Takes an oblique tack. But speaks (always particular to avoid seeming to slight us) in a very friendly fas.h.i.+on.
Though gives you the impression that he thinks you are some one else.
A pleasant, unaffected man to talk to. Somewhat dazed, however, in effect. Curious manner of speech, of which evidently he is unconscious, partly native English accent, partly temperamental idiosyncrasy. A very simple eccentric, what in the eighteenth century was called ”an original.” Reads popular novels.
It was given to us to see the launching throes of a nouveau novelist.