Turns about Town.

by Robert Cortes Holliday.

FOREWORD

More than half of these pieces were syndicated in a number of American newspapers by The Central Press a.s.sociation 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 s.e.xless 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.

TURNS ABOUT TOWN

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 sw.a.n.k 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 a.s.signments. Presto! Nothing further to detain you.

But suppose you have gone in for a little more cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstance. 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 b.u.t.tons. Lapse of time.

Boots (as d.i.c.kens 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 "b.u.t.tonhole"; advances into the room in the att.i.tude 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 aesthetic 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 b.u.t.ton. 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 b.u.t.tons 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 b.u.t.ton--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 circ.u.mstances. To wit: goblins (presumably) made away with the ticket attached to it; the hotel tailor fell indisposed with (I hope) leprosy; and his a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sistant 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 5:17-1/2 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 compa.s.sionate 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