Chapter IV (3)

The fad of false Bohemia in Greenwich Village has passed. The purple and orange brand of tearooms and of so-called gift shops where art lovers and artistic people from the Bronx and Flatbush assembled, have gone out of existence. The designers and manufacturers of astounding atrocities who called themselves “modern artists” have disappeared. True there are a few short-haired women left, who parade the streets in their unusual clothes, but they, too, will soon move to other parts of the city with the return of the soldiers, and will reassume their real calling in life.

Workers and ambitious strivers have taken possession, once more, of the sacred grounds, where memories and hopes are holy possessions, where so many have worked and toiled and spread an evangel, now accepted universally.

New places have sprung up where idlers find themselves isolated, where enthusiasm and sincerity is written on walls and faces. And people are doing things once more in Greenwich Village. Commercialism seems to have disappeared, and men are willing to help men.

The Paint Box

Mrs. Williams has opened an art gallery, the Paint Box, where anybody may exhibit, anybody who wishes to hang his or her pictures. Everybody is welcome to view the exhibits; who is willing to pay an obolus of ten cents. But it is worth it. And Mrs. Williams has to pay rent and light. Her idea is not new by any means. Five years ago I came to Washington Square and opened what was later called Bruno’s Garret. “Here are my walls,” I said. “Come and hang your pictures, if you are an artist. Here is my magazine, voice in it your opinion of any subject you may choose, if you are a writer. Here is an auditorium with comfortable chairs; come and recite your poems, face your critics, if you are a poet....”

I charged nothing for all of this, no admission fees, no wall space rates. I did not sell or try to sell anything. But I believe that Mrs. Williams’ plan is better. The small admission fee will not interfere with the number of visitors, and the altruistic motive therefore less evident, and more ready acceptance by the people. Her galleries are spacious, light, airy rooms in No. 44 Washington Square. The walls are hung with pictures. Pictures everywhere. Small and large. In oil and water. Miniatures and life-sized paintings; cubist and conventionals; foreign and familiar; so many pictures on each wall that there is not enough space for the proverbial pin to glide through and fall to the floor.

We met old acquaintances on the walls. There was Glen Coleman, in our estimation the best of the younger artists in America. He is painting in oil now. My readers will remember my frequent references to Coleman’s pen and ink sketches, to his street scenes, especially his sketches of Greenwich Village. There is so much peace and life in his work. His houses tell stories. His old lantern lighting the corner of a narrow street somewhere on the East Side becomes familiar and we grow really attached to it.

Coleman has a genius for depicting the eternal in the fleeting moments of life. He seems far above men and things. His brush is dipped in love. He is the only American artist who gives grandeur to the poverty of every day life on city streets.

Stuard Davis has some of his latest works there. A cemetery. I have forgotten where it is situated, very appealing with its crosses and stones, on a sloping hill bathed in sunrays. This cemetery is perhaps unique in the world. No remains of weary travelers repose beneath the crosses. They were erected by loving hands, while the loved one perished in some strange land or on the sea. And nothing but the sad news of their death has come as a last message to friends and relatives.

He has a musician there whose nose is bleeding. We sympathize with the stricken musician.

Bobby Edwards, the singer of the village, hung a few ukeleles and some very eye-fetching pictures.

Have you ever heard of that master of the lost art of wood engraving, Gustave Baumann, and his incomparable scenes of cities from all over the Union. “Gloomy Gus” he was called in the West, this untiring artist who wanders from city to city cutting his own wood blocks, printing them on his old hand press, always independent, always free, an eternal traveler. He struck New York and the Village and left his card in the shape of a few leaves that attract attention the very minute we enter the room.

Howard Heath’s pictures, which remind so very much of the work of Acton Davies during the cubist craze, are right near Ezra Winter’s “The Philosopher.” The Philosopher is a gentleman commonly called a bum. He is seated near a beach, taking a foot-bath in the splashing waves, and staring meditatively at a tiny daisy in his grisly, awkward hand.

And fifty other artists of whom the world will hear some day (or never) have accepted the invitation of Elvin Williams and have joined her happy family in the Paint Box. And she, herself? No, she has not short hair. She is not an old maid, not eccentric. Nothing wrong with her. A charming young woman, even dressed as any other one above Fourteenth Street. She had an idea, she said. The idea seems to work out all right.

1919

President Harding’s Favorite Book

President-elect Harding was, and is, a newspaper man. Thank God for that. He knows life as it is, and as it appears to be in the press. The man who knows how to read our newspapers has won half of the battle. And newspaper men are generous and excellent judges of men.

Harding smokes cigarettes. This puts him in a different class. Look out for the man who warns you against cigarettes. Who tells you (on offering him your case) with a superior smile: “Thanks, I don’t use them.”

Sometimes I will sing a song of hate against those black cigars of the sedate and of the respectable. I loathe the cigar of the habitual smoker, so justly characterized by Schopenhauer as a stimulant of thought for people who do not think. Not one smoker of cigarettes ever arrives at that low level of enjoyment.

To smoke a cigar is not much more than a hobby. The cigarette is a passion, a vice.

The cigarette is intoxicating. If one inhales the aromatic smoke, draws it deep into one’s lungs, into blood and nerves, one feels that this narcotic wonder-poison liberates the soul from a profane pressure, and one’s spirit is lured to lighter and brighter regions. Intoxication is the sweet magic of the cigarette, and, therefore, the cigarette is inseparable from all extravagant enjoyments. The cigarette is in the gambling den. It can be found always where they drink champagne. It is a part of frivolity, of sin, of the poetry of enjoyment. Its aromatic fragrance, the tender rings that vanish swiftly into grotesque figures.... The cigarette is the perfume of the boudoir.

The cigarette smoker never looks for a stronger brand, as the consumer of cigars, who methodically tans his tongue with his weed. The cigarette smoker increases his daily ration, and finally smokes between the courses of his meal, between his kisses.... In the green room of theatre and concert room, you can see him hungrily reaching for his silver case, the gift of his beloved. He awakens in the night and lights his cigarette, and what peace and joy after each long draught of the sweet redeeming bewilderment. That’s quite different from that brown, ill-smelling butt, chewed from one corner of the mouth to the other, lighted again and again, until it has happily dissolved itself into ashes. A bedroom filled with smoke: a long story of enlightenment to the one who knows. The cigarette fits in our nervous times. A nervous pleasure for a nervous people. We smoke cigarettes because we are nervous. We are nervous because we smoke cigarettes.

How beautiful they look, golden, tender threads enclosed in fragile rice paper, like a lovely woman’s beautiful hair, fragrant and tempting. Compare them with the most beautiful box of cigars. Those black, strong-smelling cigars, carcasses of leaves transformed into mummies. Think of the men who smoke them, and tell me isn’t there some similarity?

In some Sunday paper, I read that Mr. Harding’s favorite book was written by Edgar Saltus. You rack your brains? You don’t remember Saltus? Twenty years ago, he was hailed as the coming American novelist. At least twenty books of his appeared in short succession. Today he is known almost exclusively to the booklover. First (often the only) editions of some of his books are in demand and sell at fancy prices, while others can be found at the book bargain counters of Liggett’s Drug Stores at twenty-five cents a copy. His Magdalene appeared at the time of Oscar Wilde’s visit to America. Both men met here, in London and Paris. Critics contend that Wilde received from this book his inspiration for Salome. There are pages and pages of great similarity in both books. Saltus’ Magdalene is a fine contribution to the world’s literature of Magdalenes. In all his books there is a touch of the French eighties, and a resonance with the English nineties. If Saltus had not been a scholar, he would be another George Moore. Only a connoisseur can take a fancy to Saltus, a man who has a fine sense for literature and for life.

I love to think of the newspaper man with literary inclinations smoking his cigarette, while reading one of Saltus’ books, in his study in the White House.

1920

INDEX

Adams, John, 75, 85

Adams, John Quincy, 76

American News Co., 58

Anderson Galleries, 75

American Art Association, 26, 27

American Art News, 33

Ann Street, 39

A Kempis, Thomas, 64

Astor, 24

Astor Library, 39

Atherton, Gertrude, 50

Arens, Egmont, 52

Anderson, Zoe, 54

Adam, Villiers de L’Isle, 91

Albany, 109, 111

Baxterstreet, 12, 13

Botticelli, 31

Beauregarde, General, 34

Bingham, Mrs., 35

Beardsley, Aubrey, 43, 91

Breslow, Max, 44

Bender, Frank, 44, 45, 46

Bierce, Ambrose, 51

Benjamin, W. R., 71, 72, 73, 74

Burr, Aaron, 48

Boumann, Gustave, 122

Boni, Brothers, 52

Boni and Liveright, 52

Broadway, 56

Bowery, 63, 64

Brunswick Hotel, 71

Bruno’s Garret, 120

Benjamin, Park, 72

Buchanan, James, 76

Brentano, 82

Beethoven, 89

Brown, Cowley, 11

Baudelaire, 91

Boston, 101

Buffalo, 101

Burnham, Thomas, 102

Bay Psalm Book, 103

Blaine, James J., 103

Braithwaite, Stan, 104

Beckfort, Bertha, 104

Badger Publish. Co., 106

Balzac, 113

Canina, 46

Cezanne, 118

Chicago, 56, 87, 88

Chicago Chap Books, 91

Comstockery, 53

Corot, 26, 43

Clark, Aug., 27

Coady’s Gallery, 118

Chippendale, 33

Central Park, 39

Custer, E. A., 40, 41, 42, 43

Carnegie Libraries, 83

Casement, bookseller, 59

Casement, Roger, Sir, 59

Chambers, Robert, 62

Carter, Nick, 65

Corbett, bookseller, 67

Civil War, 72

Coleman, Glenn, 121

Collector, The, 73

Chesterton, G. K., 75

Cleveland, Grover, 76

Crane, Stephen, 81

Cadigan, Mr., 82

Clay, Henry, 85

Caine, Hall, 91

Chandler, George, 98

Colesworthy, 102

Cornhill, 102

Clarion Book Shop, 10

Daniel’s Gallery, 117

Darrow, General, 27

Dana, Editor, 72

Davies, Acton, 117

Davis, Stuart, 121

Davidson, John, 114

Degas, 26

Dickens, 41

Duke, Jerome, 47

Dreambooks, 60

Democratic Revue, 79

Davidson, John, 91

Dill Pickle, 98

Dan Martin Mission, 87

Duerer, Albrecht, 87, 95

Doerner Julius, 87, 88, 89, 90, 95

Dowson, Ernest, 91

Detroit, 100

Dodd, Mead & Co., 102

Duff Gordon, Lady, 104

Dutton’s, 114

Des, Forges, 109

Drake, J. F., 113

Dennen’s, 10

East Side, The 54

Eaton Bill, 92

Edwards, Bobby, 122

Ehrich’s Gallery, 118, 119

Engelke, George, 98

Emerson, Ralph W., 102

Fifth Ave. Auction Rooms, 26

Flatau’s Auction Rooms, 28

Fulton, Robert, 85

Field, Eugene, 91, 92, 93

Four Seas Co., 106

Gardenside Book Shop, 104

Garvice, Charles, 66

Goldsmith, Alfred, 49, 50, 51

Griswold, Rufus, 97

Garfield, James A., 76

Grant, Ulysses, 76

Greenwich Village, 52, 99, 120, 121, 122

Glebe Magazine, 52

Gerhardt, Christian, 54

Gillin, Jim, 69

Goose Quill, 91

Goethe, 96

Harding, Warren S., 123

Hartman, Auctioneer, 26

Harte, Bret, 60

Hartpence, W., 117

Harvey Alexander, 114

Holmes, Sherlock, 33

Heath, Howard, 122

Harris, Frank, 91, 97, 114

Haberson, D. L., 67

Healy’s Cabaret, 68

Hergesheimer, 114

Hamilton, Alexander, 85

Hill, Walter, 93

Hubbard, Elbert, 101

Heine, Heinrich, 101

Heineman, 114

Holmes, Oliver W., 102

Hurst, Bishop, 103

Howard, Alma, 105

Hugo, Victor, 113

Higgins, Bookseller, 9, 10