TURNS ABOUT TOWN

BY ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY

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 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 5:17½ 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!

CHAPTER II A HUMORIST MISFITS AT A MURDER TRIAL

ARE you in on the great Crime Wave, brother? Almost everybody is, I guess, in one way or another. What's your particular line? Murderer, bandit, burglar, mortally wounded innocent bystander, juror, witness, or victim? The police are in on it, too; every once in awhile one of them gets blackjacked, or something like that.

I had the flu bad enough, when that was the big thing going; but somehow so far I myself have escaped being caught in the Crime Wave. This gives me the great advantage over most people of being a detached spectator of the rollicking game.

I have a friend, though, who was caught up just a few days ago. He has been telling me all about it. Murder case.

This fellow is a sort of author. He had served a time or two as a juror in the Supreme Court of New York County. In that building down by the City Hall. But he says those cases bored him terribly. They were chicken-feed sort of rows, generally concerned with the question of how many dollars and fractions thereof X had occasioned the loss of to Z by reason of his failure to deliver such and such a quantity of (say) beeswax before the drop in the market of 39.7¼ cents, as called for by telephone agreement, possibly. The "Court" (a nice, pink and grey old fellow) would go to sleep, with his mouth open, during the drone of the legal argument, and be awakened automatically (apparently by some change in atmospheric conditions) at the moment required for him to begin his charge to the jury. Occasionally, he would come semi-to for an instant before this, and indistinctly utter the words, "Objection sustained."

My friend's chief impression of these proceedings is his recollection of one phenomenon which he observed. Not long after the opening of the presentation of X's side of the case he saw very clearly that Z hadn't a leg to stand on. It was ridiculous that he had the face to come into court with an attempt to question the truth of facts which were as apparent to the naked eye as the Woolworth Building. My friend felt it needless to pay any further attention to the foolish formalities of the argument. If he had not had an uneasy feeling that he might get pinched for this, he would have gone to sleep, like the Judge.

But those were dull days in the jury business.

A little later my friend gets some sort of a ticket instructing him to call and talk things over with a gentleman having the university degree of Commissioner of Jurors. This gentleman asks my friend if he has ever been arrested on a criminal charge, if he is opposed to capital punishment, and if he has any prejudice against Episcopalians. My friend is a man of liberal mind, and replies that he would just as soon hang an Episcopalian as anybody else. "You're on," said the gentleman, reaching for a blotter; and signed him up. My friend didn't know exactly for what. But the gentleman said everything was all right, they might not call on my friend for a long time, and then perhaps it would be a short case.

Sometime back was all this. My friend had almost forgotten about his acquaintance with the Commissioner. Then all of a sudden the gong sounds and the great Crime Wave is on. Detectives dash madly about with shotguns. A jeweller is shot every day after lunch and a subway ticket-seller is robbed directly after every train starts. My friend hurries home early because everybody is fined who is caught on any paved street after dark, and there in his letter-box is the summons from his old friend the Commissioner, who apparently has borne him in mind all this while.

On the document is printed by a printing-press, "Jack Hammond vs. The People of the State of New York." And on it is written with a pen my friend's name, before the printed words "Special Juror." It very urgently invites my friend to appear at ten o'clock four days distant at the Criminal Courts Building and there "await further order of the Court."

You get off the subway at Brooklyn Bridge, you know, and go, past the Municipal Building, up Centre Street. A district around behind the "lanes" (as they say of steamship travel) of general traffic, and one infrequently traversed by my friend. He was much interested in the spectacle hereabout. Buildings labelled Public Health on this hand, buildings labelled Public Records on that. Then you come to that prison as gruesome in its name as the Tower of London is romantic in its connotation—the Tombs. The structure itself, a cluster of rather slender wings, rises from behind its dark walls with an element of grace, in contrast to that chill, squat, mouldering pile which begot and bequeathed the historic name. Ugh! though, those barred windows, row upon row, give a fellow such qualms as do the ugly symbols of our mortality. Even though you ain't done nothin', make you feel sorta faint like inside!

There in the south wall is a little door, like a rabbit burrow, with a little group about it, and quite a small bustle going on. Standing in this bit of a doorway, as though she had something to do in the way of belonging there, is a queer, oval body who looks much as though she might be what is called an "apple woman." Marked "Visitors' Entrance," this door. What is it all the people on this side of the street are pausing to look at over there?

A cab is drawn up. From this lightly steps (or flashes) a dizzy dream. "Floppy" hat, scant skirt awhirl, pink-hued stockings gleaming to the height of the full curve behind the knee, tall satin pump-heels dancing the wearer on her toes—she swirls through the dark doorway. "They all have their wimmin," remarks a blousy-looking loiterer to my friend.

At the north, three stories up, the prison connects with the courts building by that fabled structure the "bridge of sighs."

Lively scene before the main entrance to this edifice on Centre Street. Streams of figures hurrying up the broad front steps—on their way to a busy day at the height of the crime season. Taxis flying up and discharging chattering groups as at a theatre. Open pops a taxi door, out leap three. A couple of very hard-looking young men, of that sawed-off, stocky stature frequently observed in this type of very hard-looking young man. Elegantly dressed, these; between them one of "Oh!-you-beautiful-doll" type. Rapidly they make their way up the steps, as though very well acquainted with the place.

Regular jam inside. My friend learned from an attendant that his particular destination was two flights up. Great crush wedging into the elevator. Elevator man calls out merrily to an acquaintance he observes outside his door: "It's a great life if you don't weaken!"

Threads his way, my friend, around the balcony, so to say, upstairs. Centre of building open from ground floor to roof. Effect: spacious, beautiful, ornamented in the richness of a house of grand opera. Finds the right door. Card on the wall nearby. Several persons (tough-looking youths in caps and soft collars) reading it. It lists previous day's proceedings in this court room. Says: So-and-so; Murder; Indicted (or something like that). Then the names of attorneys for the defense given. Second line: So-and-so; Murder; etc. Third line: So-and-so; Murder. Fourth line: So-and-so; Grand Larceny. Next line: So-an-so; Rape. Next: Murder. And so on. Sure, my friend thinks, I've got to the real shop this time. He has a few moments yet, and so he strolls over to a door at the opposite side of the building. 'Nother card there. Same sort of thing: murder, murder, grand larceny, homicide, murder, murder. (If you don't believe it, go down there and look at those cards.) "Holy cat!" says my friend to himself, "comparatively little of this crime stuff

gets into the papers, after all, don't it? I never heard of any of these cases."