Thomas Wolfe, page 234
“A society girl!”
“Yes.” She paused for a moment, not understanding the implication of surprise. Then as it came to her, she looked at him, her shoulders began to shake hysterically again, and she cried: “Can you beat it! Isn’t it wonderful! The poor kid with no soles in her shoes and her underwear in rags playing the part of Marcia Coventry!”
“What did the dress cost—do you know?”
“Yes,” again her face was serious and concerned, full of business, “I got the estimates this morning. I’ve tried to keep it down as much as possible—don’t believe anybody else could have done half so well. If I had taken her to Edith’s, I couldn’t have touched it under five hundred dollars. But I’ve kept it down to just under three hundred, doing it this way. And it’s a knock-out! I’ll bet every little Junior Leaguer in the world will copy it this Winter.”
“You’ve done a lot of work on it, haven’t you?”
“You’ve simply no idea!” cried Mrs. Jack, looking very earnest. “The work I’ve done on this kid’s clothes alone! She’s a regular clothes horse in the play! And it’s the damnedest tripe!” she said quite simply. Her face flushed, and her shoulders shook again with laughter: “We’ve got a name for it among ourselves. We call it—The Fall Showing.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, it’s a lot of junk someone has thrown together for that fellow Croswell.”
“Cecil Croswell?”
“Yes, you know—the Lady Killer. In all your life—you’ve no idea”—she went on with an air of incredulity—“it’s simply past belief!”
“What?”
“What these people—these actors—are like. They know simply nothing of what’s going on—outside. If you spoke to that fellow about Mussolini, he’d ask you what did he ever play in. That’s about as much as he knows about anything,” she said in a tone of disgust. “And of all the nerve! Of all the conceit! If you knew what that fellow thinks of himself”—suddenly she choked and shrieked hysterically—“God! This morning—” she began, and could not go on.
“What happened this morning?”
“When he came for his fitting—” said Mrs. Jack. “He wears evening clothes all through the play—that’s the kind of play it is. Well, I’ve designed a beautiful suit for him and he put it on. And then,” Mrs. Jack had a hysterical lilt in her voice, “he would strut back and forth before the mirror, to and fro and up and down, wiggling his shoulders, and fooling with his collar, and giving it a tug here and a tweak there, until he almost drove me out of my mind. And then he began to hem and to haw, and, well, you see it was this way, and, well, you see it was that way, and the upshot of it,” she cried indignantly, “was that the big ham didn’t think this beautiful suit I had designed was good enough for him. The nerve of him! I could’ve killed him! Well, he cleared his throat and began to orate—you’d have thought he was doing East Lynn in a road show. ‘On the whole,’ says he, ‘I think I like my own suit better.’ He’s got a fancy suit of evening clothes that he loves so much he wears it down to breakfast. ‘Well, Mr. Croswell,’ I said, ‘all I can say is that this is a suit that fits the part and the one you ought to wear.’ ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘but the lapels,’ he says—‘the lapels’—he cries out in his tragic tone—‘the lapels, dear lady, are not right’—with that he lets his voice drop down as if he was announcing the death of a child. The nerve of that guy!” she muttered angrily. “I knew more about lapels when I was six years old than he’ll ever know. ‘The lapels,’ he says, drawing himself up and tweaking at them with his fingers, as if he was addressing Parliament, ‘The lapels are too narrow!’—The ones he has, of course, on that fancy rig of his, are broad enough to drive a team of horses over. ‘Well, Mr. Croswell,’ I said, ‘all I can say is that the lapels may not be right for Croswell but they are right for the part he is playing—and Croswell is not playing Croswell, but the part that has been written for him in the play’—which is a big lie, of course,” she said disgustedly—“Croswell is playing Croswell—that’s all he can play, all he ever played! Of course, he couldn’t see this—these people have no quality!” she cried impatiently, in a kind of parenthesis. “You’ve simply no idea! You wouldn’t believe that it was possible! The fool kept talking of his ‘points.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ he says, as if he were speaking to a child, ‘I know. Still, all of us have our own points. And as for me—’ he cried, slapping himself on the chest like a big piece of ham”—and with these words, Mrs. Jack, her eyes dancing and her face rosy with laughter, suited the action to the words and slapped herself on the breast with her small hand—“‘As for me,’ he cried”—she uttered the words in a tone of sonorous burlesque—“‘As for me, I am noted for muh torso!’” She shook hysterically, with a last shriek faintly: “Can you beat it? Does it seem possible? Now, that will just give you an idea of what some of them are like!”
“And what else have you been doing? Is that all?”
“Oh, heavens no! I put in a full day’s work before I met you here today. First, well, let’s see—” she studied briefly, “Katy came in with coffee at seven-thirty. Then I bathed and took a cold shower. I take it so cold that it sends tingles all up and down my spine.” And, indeed, her face always had that glowing freshness as if she had just come from a cold shower. “I dressed and had my breakfast, talked to Cook, told her what to order, and how many were coming to the house tonight. I talked to Barney—he’s our driver—and told him where to come for me this afternoon. Then I read the mail and paid some bills and wrote some letters. I talked to Roberta on the phone about this new show I’m doing for the League. I saw Fritz for a moment, as he was leaving for the office. I looked in and talked to Edith for a moment in her room. And I was out of the house and on my way downtown before nine o’clock. Then I was at work at Stein and Rosen’s for an hour—then to Heck’s for costume fittings until twelve—then to the wig maker’s on 47th Street at twelve-fifteen—” she laughed: “The strangest thing happened! You know where the wig maker’s is—it’s in what used to be an old brownstone house, and you go up a flight of steps and there is a big front window on the first floor with wigs and hats in it. Well!” she exclaimed with accented and excited finality. “What do you suppose I did? I went up the stairs and thought that I was right, and saw a door and opened it, and just walked in. And what do you suppose I found? I walked right in upon a bar. It seemed to run the whole way back, and a whole lot of men were standing at the bar drinking, and there was a man behind the bar mixing drinks. Well!” she cried again, “I was so surprised! Honestly, it was the strangest thing. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I just stood there with my mouth wide open staring at them. And they were all so jolly. The man behind the bar called out: ‘Come right on in, lady. There’s always room for one more.’ Well, I was so confused—I just didn’t know what to say, and at last I said, ‘I thought this was the wig maker’s!’ Well, you should have heard them laugh! The bartender said, ‘No, lady, this ain’t the wig maker’s, but we’ve got some hair tonic here that’ll grow hair better than a wig!’ And another man said, ‘You’re in the wrong place. This ain’t the wig maker’s, it’s the Novelty Shop’—and then they all laughed again; I guess, because the place had a kind of fake window with some dirty old Christmas bells, and a few strips of red crêpe paper in it, and a sign that said, ‘United Novelties Supply Company,’ I guess as a kind of dodge—and that was the reason they laughed. They seemed awfully jolly. The bartender came out from behind the bar and took me to the door, and showed me where the wig maker’s was, which was just next door, and the reason I had got confused was that there are two flights of steps and I was in a hurry and wasn’t looking, and so I got mixed up—but isn’t New York wonderful!”
She had delivered all of this in a tone of excited and almost breathless rapidity, but seemed to translate the confusion of the moment perfectly in her own breathless and bewildered face.
“After that,” she went on, “I had to go and rummage through some old furniture shops up on Eighth Avenue. You simply have no idea the kind of junk that you can find. It’s fascinating just to poke around. I was looking for some things that would go into a setting for a room in a Victorian house in the Seventies. I found some marvelous things: a picture in a kind of gilt frame, a sort of lithograph, I guess, showing a lady with blonde hair playing a spinet, and a gentleman, with ruffles at the neck and lacy sleeves, leaning on the spinet with a gloomy look, and three little gold-haired children, all with high waists and ruffled sleeves and long skirts like the lady had, waltzing around in a sort of dance, and marble flags upon the floor and a tiger skin—it couldn’t have been more perfect for the kind of room I have in mind. I found some window hangings and some drapes of the kind that I was looking for—of an awful, faded, greeny plush—God! they looked as if all the germs and dust and microbes in the world had nested there—but they were just the things I wanted. And I would ask for other things as well, which it didn’t seem that any living, breathing, mortal man could possibly have—and the old fellow would go poking and rummaging around in those piles of junk, and finally bring out just what I was looking for! . . . Look!” She took out a tiny folded scrap of tinfoil wrapping paper, and she spread it out for him: it had a winy, brilliant, and exotic color, and she said, “Don’t you think that’s beautiful?”
“What is it?”
“It’s the wrapping off a piece of candy. I saw it this morning as I was passing by a little stationery shop. The color was so strange and beautiful that I went in and bought the candy, just to get this wrapping here. If I can, I’m going to see if I can match it somewhere with a piece of cloth—I’ve never seen this shade before, it would be beautiful.” She was silent for a moment, then continued: “God! I wish I could tell you everything I’ve seen today. I am bursting with it, I want to bring it all to you, and give it to you, but there is so much of it, it gets away. When I was a little girl, I was fascinated by all the different shapes of things, by all the beautiful designs there are. I would go and get all different kinds of leaves: the shape and form of each one was so different, and so delicate, so beautiful, I would draw all the different kinds of leaves, with all the delicate little lines and forms they had in them. Sometimes the other kids laughed at me for doing it, but it was like having found a new and wonderful world that is all around us, and that most people never see. And it keeps getting richer and more beautiful all the time. I see things every day now that I never saw before—things that people pass by all the time without ever seeing.”
She would meet him late at night sometimes, after she’d gone to a gay and brilliant dinner party, or had given one herself. And here, too, she would be flushed with happy energy, charged with gaiety and good spirits, full of news. And now the world she brought to him was no longer the world of morning work and business; it was the great world of the night, a golden world of pleasure, wealth, distinction, talent, and success. She was charged with it, still bubbling over with the bright champagne of all its heady gaiety, still sparkling with its brilliance and its joy.
This night world in which she moved and lived as a familiar and acknowledged denizen was a privileged world of high distinction. It included illustrious names and celebrated personalities that had long been famous through the length and breadth of the whole nation. It included great producers and famous actresses, well-known writers, painters, journalists, and musicians, and mighty financiers. And these great illuminati of the night seemed to move and live and breathe and have their being in a kind of golden colony that once, in the enchanted imaginings of his boyhood, had seemed impossibly far away, and that now, by the same enchantment, seemed miraculously near.
She brought it all to him, still warm with her recent contact, this magic world of fame, of beauty, wealth and power. She brought it to him with a casual touch of her own familiarity with it, and what was most incredible was the knowledge that she was herself a part of it.
God knows what he had expected to discover—to hear these creatures feasted on ambrosia, drank nectar from a golden cup, ate lampreys or strange foods the average man had never heard about. But it was somehow astounding to hear that this famous company went to bed, got up, and bathed and dressed, and ate and went about its business much the same as other people did, and that from the portals of these celebrated lips fell passages of speech not wholly different from his own.
The celebrated columnist whose winged jest, whose subtle wit, whose jabs and praises, whose graceful lyrics, and whose clever limericks had flashed forth for more than twenty years—this man whose daily chronicle of the city’s life he had so often feasted on in his own college years, reading into that diary of the day’s activity the whole glamorous pageantry of that distant Babylon, cloud-capped and rosy-hued there in the smoke of his imagination—this Aladdinlike enchanter who had so often rubbed his lamp and brought the magic of great Babylon to life for a hundred thousand boys like him—this magician alive and breathing in the flesh had been a guest at dinner on this very evening, had sat next to her, and talked to her, called her by her first name, as she called his, and would record that very date and day, the place, the person, and the time, in another portion of that endless diary, which other visionary youths in a thousand other little towns would read and feast upon, dreaming forever of great Babylon: “So, out and in a petrol waggon to Esther Jack’s, and found a merry company, and S. Levenson the designer there, and S. Hook, the scrivener, and a mighty handsome girl in a red dress whom I had never seen, and straightway gave a buss upon the cheek, and many others there, as well, and mighty fine, but none so fine, methought, as Esther was.”
Or she would bring to him the merry tidings of some glittering first night, some opening of a famous theatre, and the company of the famous and the beautiful who were there. The brilliant process of these happenings would babble from her lips with the gay, excited humor of a child. And, as if to give the whole thing naturalness—perhaps to put him more at ease, to make him feel that he, too, was a member of this favored group, himself initiate to all its privilege; or perhaps, just with a shade of affectation, to show she was herself of such a clear and simple spirit as not to be impressed or overawed by the resounding reputations of the great—she would preface her descriptions, qualify her golden calendar of names, with such modest phrases as “a man named ——.”
She would say: “I wonder if you ever heard of a man named Karl Fine? He’s a banker. I was talking to him at the play tonight. I have known him for years. And look!” here her manner changed to merry glee, “you’d never guess what he said to me when he came up and spoke. . . .”
Or: “I was seated tonight at dinner next to a man named Ernest Ross,” mentioning a famous criminal lawyer. “His wife and I used to go to school together.”
Or: “I wonder if you have ever heard of a man named Stephen Hook?” This was a writer who enjoyed a wide reputation as a critic and biographer. “Well, he was up to our house for dinner tonight, and I was telling him about you. He would like to meet you. He’s one of the finest people I have ever known. I’ve known him for years.”
Or, after an opening: “Guess who I saw tonight! Did you ever hear of a man named Andrew Cottswold?” mentioning the best-known dramatic critic of the time. “Well, he was there tonight, and he came up to me after the show and guess what he said!” With her eyes sparkling and her face flushed with laughter and happiness, she looked at him a moment, then said: “He told me that I was the best designer in America. That’s what he said!”
Or: “I wonder if you ever heard of a woman by the name of Roberta Heilprinn?” This was the director of a famous art theatre. “Well, she came to dinner tonight. We are very old friends,” said Mrs. Jack. “We grew up together.”
The number of celebrated people with whom she “had grown up together” or “had known all her life” was really astonishing. Was the name of a famous producer in the theatre mentioned? “Oh, Hugh—yes. We grew up together. He used to live in the house next door to us. He’s a very fine person,” said Mrs. Jack, looking very earnest. “Oh, a very fine person.” When she referred to someone as “a very fine person,” with an air of great seriousness and conviction, it was as if she not only meant just that, but also derived a virtuous self-satisfaction from the knowledge that the “very fine person” was very successful to boot, and that she was herself on such excellently intimate terms with both fine persons and success.
Mrs. Jack sometimes gleefully asserted that she was like her uncle “for whom the very best of everything was just about good enough.” And certainly her standard in men and women—as in foods, in work, in goods, construction, and material—was a very high one. The very best of everything, in men and women, did not include mere money grubbing, money getting, or social eminence. It is true that sometimes she would mention the names of great capitalists, friends of her husband, and their wives, and would even speak of their enormous wealth with a kind of satisfaction. “Fritz says there’s literally no end to what he’s worth! It’s simply fabulous!”
And she would speak of the glittering beauty of some of the women in the same way. There was the wife of “a man named” Rosen, the famous merchant for whom she worked, and in whose great shop her sister, Edith, was vice-president and second in command. Rosen’s wife had half a million dollars’ worth of jewels—“And she wears them all!” cried Mrs. Jack, looking at the young man with a bewildered and inquiring expression. “They were at the house last night for dinner—she had all of it on—it was unbelievable!” said Mrs. Jack. “That woman glittered like a piece of ice! And she is very beautiful! I could hardly eat my dinner I was so fascinated. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. I watched her, and I’m sure she was thinking about her jewelry all the time. The way she moved her hands and arms, the way she turned her neck—it wasn’t like a person wearing jewelry, but like jewelry wearing the person. Isn’t it strange?” said Mrs. Jack. And again the young man noticed that she had a troubled and inquiring look.
