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The Bloomsbury

Handbook of
Music Production

The Bloomsbury

Handbook of

Music Production

Edited by Andrew Bourbon and

Simon Zagorski-Thomas

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC

Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA

50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo

are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in the United States of America 2020

Volume Editors’ Part of the Work © Andrew Bourbon and

Simon Zagorski-Thomas, 2020

Each chapter © of Contributor

Cover design: Louise Dugdale

Cover image © Simon Zagorski-Thomas

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying,

recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without

prior

permission in writing from the publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or

responsibility for, any

third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses

given in

this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and
publisher

regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites

have

ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such

changes.

Whilst every effort has been made to locate copyright holders the
publishers

would be grateful to hear from any person(s) not here

acknowledged.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bourbon, Andrew, editor. | Zagorski-Thomas, Simon, editor.

Title: The Bloomsbury handbook of music production / edited by

Andrew
Bourbon and Simon Zagorski-Thomas.

Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. | Series:

Bloomsbury handbooks |

Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “A

summary of current research

on the production of stereo and mono recorded music”– Provided by

publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019035761 (print) | LCCN 2019035762 (ebook) |

ISBN 9781501334023

(hardback) | ISBN 9781501334030 (epub) | ISBN 9781501334047

(pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Sound recordings–Production and direction. |

Popular music–Production

and direction. | Sound–Recording and reproducing–History.

Classification: LCC ML3790 .B645 2020 (print) | LCC ML3790 (ebook)

| DDC 781.49–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019035761

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019035762

ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-3402-3

ePDF: 978-1-5013-3404-7

eBook: 978-1-5013-3403-0

Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

To find out more about our authors and books visit
www.bloomsbury.com

and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents

List of Figures ix

List of Tables x

Notes on Contributors xi

Introduction

Andrew Bourbon and Simon Zagorski-Thomas 1

Part I Background

1 Recorded Music

Simon Zagorski-Thomas 7

2 Authenticity in Music Production

Mike Alleyne 19

3 How to Study Record Production

Carlo Nardi 33

Part II Technology

4 From Tubes to Transistors: Developments in

Recording Technology up to 1970

Albin Zak III 53

5 Transitions: The History of Recording Technology

from 1970 to the Present

Paul Théberge 69

6 How Does Vintage Equipment Fit into a Modern

Working Process?

Anthony Meynell 89

vi

Contents

Part III Places

7 Recording Studios in the First Half of the

Twentieth Century

Susan Schmidt Horning 109

8 Recording Studios since 1970

Eliot Bates 125

Part IV Organizing the Production Process

9 Information, (Inter)action and Collaboration

in Record Production Environments

M. Nyssim Lefford 145

10 Creative Communities of Practice: Role Delineation

in Record Production in Different Eras and across

Different Genres and Production Settings

Tuomas Auvinen 161

11 Pre-Production

Mike Howlett 177

Part V Creating Recorded Music

12 Songwriting in the Studio

Simon Barber 189

13 The Influence of Recording on Performance:

Classical Perspectives

Amy Blier-Carruthers 205

14 Welcome to the Machine: Musicians, Technology and

Industry

Alan Williams 221

Contents

vii

15 Studying Recording Techniques

Kirk McNally and Toby Seay 233

16 Materializing Identity in the Recording Studio

Alexa Woloshyn 249

Part VI Creating Desktop Music

17 Desktop Production and Groove

Anne Danielsen 267

18 The Boom in the Box: Bass and Sub-Bass in

Desktop Production

Robert Fink 281

19 Maximum Sonic Impact: (Authenticity/

Commerciality) Fidelity-Dualism in

Contemporary Metal Music Production

Mark Mynett 293

20 Desktop Production and Commerciality

Phil Harding 303

21 Audio Processing

Michail Exarchos (aka Stereo Mike) and

Simon Zagorski-Thomas 317

Part VII Post-Production

22 Studying Mixing: Creating a Contemporary

Apprenticeship

Andrew Bourbon 337

viii

Contents
Part VIII Distribution

23 Producer Compensation in the Digital Age

Richard James Burgess 351

24 Evolving Technologies of Music Distribution:

Consumer Music Formats – Past, Present

and Future

Rob Toulson 367

25 Listening to Recorded Sound

Mark Katz 383

26 Interpreting the Materials of a Transmedia

Storyworld: Word-Music-Image in Steven Wilson’s

Hand. Cannot. Erase. (2015)

Lori A. Burns and Laura McLaren 393

Index 405

Figures

15.1

Publication dates of selected sound-recording textbooks 237

17.1

Amplitude graph and spectrogram of Snoop Dogg’s ‘Can I Get A Flicc

Witchu’ 273
17.2

Sidechain pumping example 276

18.1

The dbx Model 100 ‘Boom Box’ Sub harmonic Synthesizer 284

18.2

A kick drum enhancer using virtual mid/side filtering for dynamic

equalization 285

18.3

Complete signal path for the Brainworx bx_subsynth plug-in 286

18.4

Sonic Academy KICK 2 drum synthesizer, main control panel 289

20.1

Phil Harding commercial pop EQ guide 2018 311

21.1

The Antares Auto-Tune Realtime UAD plug-in window showing

settings

used by one of the authors on the lead rap voice for a recent Trap
remix 321

21.2

Flex Pitch mode enabled on a distorted bass guitar track in Logic Pro
X (10.4.1),
zooming in on both its Workspace and – the more detailed – Editor
views 322

21.3

Ableton Live’s Clip View illustrating a number of available Warp

modes and the

Transpose function 323

24.1

US music album sales from 1973 to 2018 (millions of units) 368

24.2

US music sales revenue from 1996 to 2018 (millions of dollars) 368

24.3

US music album and singles sales for CD and download from 2004 to
2018

(millions of units) 375

24.4

US vinyl sales between 1989 and 2018 378

Tables

15.1

List of texts 238

26.1

Release timeline of the Hand. Cannot. Erase. materials and tour 395
Contributors

Mike Alleyne is a professor in the Department of Recording

Industry at Middle Tennessee

State University (MTSU). He is the author of The Encyclopedia of

Reggae: The Golden Age

of Roots Reggae (2012) and a contributing editor of Rhythm

Revolution: A Chronological

Anthology of American Popular Music – 1960s to 1980s (2015). He

has lectured

internationally and has published in numerous journals, magazines

and essay collections.

He was also a consultant and expert witness for the estate of Marvin
Gaye in the 2015

copyright infringement trial involving the 2013 hit song ‘Blurred

Lines’. He is a writer and

publisher, member of ASCAP and PRS, and currently co-edits the

SAGE Business Case

Series in Music Marketing.

Tuomas Auvinen is a musicologist, musician and educator teaching

music production

and ethnographic methodology courses at the University of Turku,

among other places.

He completed his PhD in musicology at the University of Turku

(2019) and is currently
researching the relationship between music production and artificial
intelligence. He is

a songwriter, arranger, producer and live and studio musician

performing on the viola,

guitar, bass, percussion, keyboards and vocals primarily in his native

Finland. He is a board

member of the Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology and an editor of

its peer-reviewed

journal, the Finnish Yearbook of Ethnomusicology. His publications

have appeared in the

Journal on the Art of Record Production, the Finnish Yearbook of

Ethnomusicology and Musi kki.

Simon Barber is a research fellow in the Birmingham Centre for

Media and Cultural

Research at Birmingham City University. His work focuses primarily

on songwriting

and the relationships between creative workers and industry. He is

currently leading

the Songwriting Studies Research Network, a two-year project

funded by the Arts and

Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and has published on the

subject in journals such

as Popular Music and Society and The European Journal of Cultural

Studies. Simon is also the producer and co-presenter of the popular
Sodajerker podcast, which features interviews

with some of the most successful songwriters in the world.

Eliot Bates is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the
Graduate Center of the City

University of New York. He is an ethnomusicologist and technology

studies scholar whose

research examines recording production and the social lives of

musical instruments and

studio technologies. A graduate of UC Berkeley (2008) and ACLS

New Faculty Fellow

(2010), he previously taught at the University of Birmingham (UK),

Cornell University

xii

Contributors

and the University of Maryland, College Park. His publications include

Digital Tradition:

Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul’s Recording Studio Culture

(2016), Music in Turkey:

Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (2011), and Critical

Approaches to the Production of Music and Sound co-edited with
Samantha Bennett (2018). He is also a performer and

recording artist of the 11-stringed-oud.

Amy Blier-Carruthers is Lecturer in Postgraduate Studies at the

Royal Academy of Music,

and Teaching Fellow in Performance at King’s College London. She

read music at King’s
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
The cry was now taken up by other unfortunate gentlemen in the
stalls, who were placed in like situations but who had not had the
courage to begin the battle. The din, indeed, soon gained such a
degree of dynamic force that not one word of what was being said
on the stage, not one note of the music, could be distinguished.
Gesticulating figures stood up in every part of the theatre, shrieking
and frantically waving canes. The compère advanced to the
footlights and appeared to be addressing us, much in the manner of
an actor attempting to stem a fire stampede in a playhouse, but, of
course, he was inaudible. As he stepped back, a sudden lull
succeeded to the tumult. Peter took advantage of this happy quiet to
interject: Comme Mélisande, je ne suis pas heureux ici!
The spectators roared and screamed; the house rocked with their
mirth. Even the mimes were amused. Now, escorted by two of his
secretaries in elaborate coats decorated with much gold braid, the
manager of the theatre appeared, paraded solemnly down the aisle
to our seats and, with a bow, offered us a box, which we accepted
at once and in which we received homage for the remainder of the
evening. At last we could see the stage and enjoy the blond Idette
Bremonval, the brunette Jane Merville, the comic pranks of Vilbert
and Prince, and the Festival of the Déesse Raison.
The performance concluded, the pretty lady who had not removed
her hat, commissioned her reluctant escort to inquire if we would
not step out for a drink with them. The escort was not ungracious
but, obviously, he lacked enthusiasm. The lady, just as obviously,
had taken a great fancy to Peter. We went to the Rat Mort, where
we sat on the terrasse, the lady gazing steadily at her new hero and
laughing immoderately at his every sally. Peter, however, quickly
showed that he was restless and presently he rose, eager to seek
new diversions. We hailed a passing fiacre and jumped in, while the
lady waved us pathetic adieux. Her companion seemed distinctly
relieved by our departure. Peter was now in the highest animal
spirits. All traces of fatigue had fled from his face. The horse which
drew our fiacre was a poor, worn-out brute, like so many others in
Paris, and the cocher, unlike so many others in Paris, was kind-
hearted and made no effort to hasten his pace. We were crawling
down the hill.
I will race you! cried Peter, leaping out (he told me afterwards that
he had once undertaken a similar exploit with a Bavarian railway
train).
Meet me at the Olympia Bar! he cried, dashing on ahead.
The cocher grunted, shook his head, mumbled a few unintelligible
words to the horse, and we drove on more slowly than before. Peter,
indeed, was soon out of sight.
Ten minutes later, as we entered the café under the Olympia Music
Hall, we noted with some surprise that the stools in front of the bar,
on which the cocottes usually sat with their feet on the rungs, their
trains dragging the floor, were empty. The crowd had gathered at
the other end of the long hall and the centre of the crowd was Peter.
He was holding a reception, a reception of cocottes!
Ah! Good evening, Mademoiselle Rolandine de Maupreaux, he was
saying as he extended his hand, I am delighted to greet you here
tonight. And if this isn't dear little Mademoiselle Célestine Sainte-
Résistance and her charming friend, Mademoiselle Edmée Donnez-
Moi! And Camille! Camille la Grande! Quelle chance de vous voir! Et
Madame, votre mère, elle va bien? Et Gisèle la Belle! Mais vous avez
oublié de m'écrire! Do not, I pray you, neglect me again. And the
charming Hortense des Halles et de chez Maxim, and the particularly
adorable Abélardine de Belleville et de la Place d'Italie. Votre sœur
va mieux, j'espère. Then, drawing us in, Permettez-moi,
mesdemoiselles, de vous presenter mes amis, le Duc de Rochester
et le Comte de Cedar Rapids. Spécialement, mesdemoiselles,
permettez-moi de vous recommander le Comte de Cedar Rapids.
He had never, of course, seen any of them before, but they liked it.
Richards grumbled, It's bloody silly, but he was laughing harder than
I was.
I heard one of the girls say, Le jeune Américain est fou!
And the antiphony followed, Mais il est charmant.
Later, another remarked, Je crois que je vais lui demander de me
faire une politesse!
Overhearing which, Peter rejoined, Avec plaisir, Mademoiselle. Quel
genre?
It was all gay, irresponsible and meaningless, perhaps, but gay. We
sat at tables and drank and smoked and spun more fantasies and
quaint conceits until a late hour, and that night I learned that even
French cocottes will occasionally waste their time, provided they are
sufficiently diverted. Towards four o'clock in the morning, however, I
began to note a change in Peter's deportment and demeanour.
There were moments when he sat silent, a little aloof, seemingly the
prey of a melancholy regret, too well aware, perhaps, that the
atmosphere he had himself created would suck him into its merry
hurricane. I caught the lengthening shadows under his eyes and the
premonitory hollows in his cheeks. And this time, therefore, it was I
who suggested departure. Peter acceded, but with an air of
wistfulness as if even the effort of moving from an uncomfortable
situation were painful to him. Rising, we kissed our hands to the
band of sirens, who all pressed forward like the flower maidens of
Parsifal and with equal success. Three of the pretty ladies
accompanied us upstairs to the sidewalk and every one of the three
kissed Peter on the mouth, but not one of them offered to kiss
Richards or me.
We engaged another fiacre and drove up the Champs-Elysées. Now,
it was Richards and I who had become vibrant. Peter was silent and
old and apart. The dawn, the beautiful indigo dawn of Paris was
upon us. The cool trees were our only companions in the deserted
streets until, near the great grey arch, we began to encounter the
wagons laden with vegetables, bound for the Halles, wagons on
which carrots, parsnips, turnips, onions, radishes, and heads of
lettuce were stacked in orderly and intricate patterns. The horses,
the reins drooping loosely over their backs, familiar with the route,
marched slowly down the wide avenue, while the drivers in their
blue smocks, perched high on the fronts of their carts, slept. We
drove past them up the Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne into the
broadening daylight. On Peter Whiffle's countenance were painted
the harsh grey lines of misery and despair.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Since absinthe has come under the ban in Paris, I am
informed that the correct form of approach is to ask not for a
pernod, but for un distingué.
 Chapter V
Notwithstanding that Peter occupied an undue share of my waking
thoughts for the next few days, perhaps a week went by before I
found it convenient to seek him out again. One afternoon, I shook
myself free from other entertainments and made my way in a taxi-
auto to the apartment in the street near the Rue Blanche. The
concierge, who was knitting at a little window adjacent to the door,
informed me that to the best of her belief Monsieur Whiffle was at
home. Venturing to operate the ascenseur alone, I was somewhat
proud of my success in reaching the fourth floor without accident.
Standing before Peter's door, I could hear the sound of a woman's
voice, singing Manon's farewell to her little table:
Adieu, notre petite table,
Qui nous réunit si souvent!
Adieu, notre petite table,
Si grande pour nous cependant.

On tient, c'est inimaginable,

Si peu de place en se serrant.
The voice was a somewhat uncertain soprano with a too persistent
larmoyante quality. When it ceased, I pressed the button and the
door was opened by Peter, in violet and grey striped pyjamas and
Japanese straw sandals with purple velvet straps across his toes.
Van Vechten! he cried. It's you! We've been home all day. Clara's
been singing.
So the voice was Clara's. She sat, indeed, on the long piano bench—
the piano was an acquisition since my last visit—, also slightly clad.
She was wearing, to be exact, a crêpe de chine night-dress. Her feet
were bare and her hair was loose but, as the day was cool, she had
thrown across her shoulders a black Manila shawl, embroidered with
huge flowers of Chinese vermilion and magenta.
How are you, Mr. Van Vechten? she asked, extending her hand. I'll
get some tea. Her manner, I noted, was more ingratiating than it
had been the day we met at Martha's.
Nothing whatever was said about the situation, if there was a
situation. For my part, I may say that I was entirely unaccustomed
to walking into an apartment at five o'clock in the afternoon and
discovering the host in pyjamas, conversing intimately with a lightly-
clad lady, who, a week earlier, I had every reason to believe, had
been only a casual acquaintance. The room, too, had been altered.
The piano, a Pleyel baby grand, occupied a space near the window
and George Moore was sitting on it, finding it an excellent point of
vantage from which to scan the happenings in the outside world.
Naturally his back was turned and he did not get up, taking his air of
indifference from Peter and Clara or, perhaps, they had taken their
air from him. The note-books had disappeared, although a pile of
miscellaneous volumes, on top of which I spied Jean Lombard's
l'Agonie, still occupied the corner. The table was covered with a cloth
and the remains of a lunch, which had evidently consisted of veal
kidneys, toast, and coffee. I detected the odour of Cœur de
Jeannette and presently I descried a brûle-parfum, a tiny jade
dragon, valiantly functioning. A pair of long white suède gloves and
a black hat with a grey feather decorated the clock and candelabra
on the mantelshelf, and a black and white check skirt, a pair of black
silk stockings, and low patent-leather lady's shoes in trees were also
to be seen, lying over a chair and on the floor.
Peter, however, attempted no explanations. Indeed, none was
required, except perhaps for a catechumen. He began to talk
immediately, in an easy conversational tone, evidently trying to
cover my confusion. His manner reminded me that an intelligent
Negro, who had written many books and met many people, had
once told me that he was always obliged to spend at least ten
minutes putting new white acquaintances at their ease, making
them feel that it was unnecessary for them to put him at his ease. It
is a curious fact that the man in an embarrassing situation is seldom
as embarrassed as the man who breaks in upon it.
Peter asked many questions about what I had been doing, inquired
about Richards, whom he avowed he liked—they had not, I
afterwards recalled, exchanged more than three words—, and
concluded with a sort of rhapsody on Clara's voice, which he
pronounced magnificently suited to the new music.
Presently Clara herself came back into the room, bearing a tray with
a pot of tea, toast and petits fours. She placed her burden on the
piano bench while she quickly swept the débris from the table. Then
she transferred the tea service to the unoccupied space and we
drew up our chairs.
Where have you been? asked Clara. Martha says she hasn't seen
you. Will you have one lump or two?
Two. You know, when one comes to Paris for the first time—
I took Van Vechten about a bit the other night, Peter broke in. I
think I forgot to tell you. We've had so much to talk about....
Clara interrupted the shadow of an anserine smile to nibble a pink
cake. Her legs protruded at an odd angle and I caught myself
looking at her thick ankles.
You're looking at my legs! she exclaimed. You mustn't do that! I
have very ugly legs.
But they're very sympathetic! cried Peter. Don't you think they're
sympathetic, Van Vechten?
I assured him that I did and we went on talking, a little
constrainedly, I thought, about nothing in particular, until, at length,
Peter asked Clara if she would sing again. Without waiting for a
reply, he seated himself before the piano and began the prelude to
Manon's air in the Cours la Reine scene and Clara, without rising,
sang:
 Je marche sur tous les chemins
Aussi bien qu'une souveraine;
On s'incline, on baise mes mains,
Car par la beauté je suis reine!
Now her voice had lost the larmoyante quality, which evidently was a
part of her bag of tricks for more emotional song, but it had
acquired a hard brilliancy which was even more disagreeable to the
ear. She had also, I remarked, no great regard for the pitch and
little, if any, expressiveness. Nevertheless, Peter wheeled around,
after an accompaniment which was even less sympathetic to me
than Clara's legs, to exclaim:
Superb! I want her to study Isolde.
Peter doesn't understand, explained Clara, that you must begin with
the lighter parts. If I sang Isolde now I would have no voice in five
years. Isolde will come later. I can sing Isolde after I have lost my
voice. My first rôles will be Manon, Violetta, and Juliette. It's old
stuff, perhaps, but it doesn't injure the voice, and the voice is my
first consideration. Now I wouldn't sing Salome if they offered me
500 francs a night.
Did you hear about Adelina Patti? asked Peter. She is a good
Catholic. She went to a performance of Salome at the Châtelet and
while Destinn was osculating the head of Jochanaan she dropped to
her knees in her loge and began to pray!
I don't blame her, said Clara. It's rotten and immoral, Salome—not
the play, I don't mean that, but the music, rotten, immoral music,
ruinous to the voice. Patti was probably praying God for another
Rossini. Strauss's music will steal ten years from Destinn's career.
Peter eyed her with adoration. After a few more remarks, I made my
departure, both of them urging me to come again at any time. Peter
had not said one word about his writing, I reflected, as I walked
down the stairs, and he had been very exaggerated in his praise of
Clara's meagre talents.
And I did not go back. I did not see Peter again that summer; I did
not see him again, in fact, for nearly six years. My further
adventures, which included a trip to London, to Munich, where I
attended the Wagner and Mozart festivals, to Holland and Belgium,
were sufficiently diverting but, as they have no bearing on Peter's
history, I shall not relate them now. They will fall into their proper
chapters in my autobiography, which Alfred A. Knopf will publish in
two volumes in the fall of 1936.
Although I did not learn the facts I am about to catalogue until a
much later date—some of them, indeed, not until after Peter's death
—this seems as good a place as any to tell what I know of his early
life. He was born June 5, 1885, in Toledo, Ohio. He never told his
age to any one and I only discovered it after his death. If an inquiry
were made concerning it, it was his custom to counter with another
question: How old do you think I am? and then to add one year to
the reply, thus insuring credence. So I have heard him give himself
ages varying from eighteen to forty-five, but he was only thirty-four
when he died in 1919.
His father was cashier in a bank, a straight, serious, plain sort of
man, of the kind that is a prop to a small town, looked up to and
respected, asked whether an election will have an effect on stock
values, and whether it is better to illuminate one's house with gas or
electricity. His mother was a small woman with a pleasant face and
red hair which she parted in the centre. Kindliness she occasionally
carried almost to the point of silliness. She was somewhat garrulous,
too, but she was well-read, not at all ignorant, and at surprising
moments gave evidence of possessing a small stock of common
sense. I think Peter inherited a good deal of his quality from his
mother, who was a Fotheringay of West Chester, Pennsylvania. I met
her for the first time soon after her husband's death. She was
wearing, in addition to a suitable mourning garment, five chains of
Chinese beads and seemed moderately depressed.
Peter's resemblance to Buridan's donkey (it will be remembered that
the poor beast wavered between the hay and the water until he
starved to death) began with his very birth. He could not, indeed,
decide whether he would be born or not. The family physician, by
the aid of science and the knife, decided the matter for him. Soon
thereafter he often hesitated between the milk-bottle and the breast.
There was, doubtless, a certain element of restlessness and curiosity
connected with this vacillation, a desire to miss nothing in life. It is
possible that the root of this aggressive instinct might have been
deracinated but Mrs. Whiffle, with a foresense of the decrees of the
most modern motherhood, held no brief for suppressed desires.
Baby Peter was always permitted to choose, at least nearly always,
and so, as he grew older, his mania developed accordingly. A
decision actually caused him physical pain, often made him definitely
ill. He would pause interminably before two toys in a shop, or at any
rate until his mother bought both of them for him. He could never
decide whether to go in or go out, whether to play horse or to cut
out pictures. His mother has told me that on one occasion she
discovered this precocious child (at the age of twelve) in the library
of a Toledo bibliophile (she was in the house as a luncheon guest)
with the Sonnets of Pietro Aretino in one hand and Fanny Hill in the
other. He could not make up his mind from which he would derive
the most pleasure. In this instance, his maternal parent intervened
and took both books away from him.
Otherwise, aside from various slight illnesses, his childhood was
singularly devoid of incident. Because he hummed bits of tune while
at play, his mother decided that he must be musical and sent him to
an instructor of the piano. The first six months were drudgery for
Peter but as soon as he began to read music easily the skies cleared
for him. He never became a great player but he played easily and
well, much better than I imagined after hearing his rather bombastic
accompaniments to Clara's singing. Of books he was an omnivorous
reader. He read every volume—some of them two or three times—in
the family library, which included, of course, the works of Dickens,
Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, and Sir Walter Scott,
Emerson's Essays, Bulwer-Lytton, Owen Meredith's Lucile, that long
narrative poem called Nothing to Wear, Artemus Ward's Panorama,
Washington Irving, Longfellow, Whittier, Thoreau, Lowell, and
Hawthorne, and among the moderns, Mark Twain, William Dean
Howells, F. Hopkinson Smith, F. Marion Crawford, Richard Harding
Davis, George W. Cable, Frank Stockton, H.C. Bunner, and Thomas
Nelson Page. Peter once told me that his favourite books when he
was fourteen or fifteen years old were Sarah Grand's The Heavenly
Twins and H.B. Fuller's The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani. The latter
made a remarkable impression on him, when he first discovered it at
the age of fifteen, not that he fully appreciated its ironic raillery but
it seemed to point out the pleasure to be apprehended from
pleasant places. He named a cat of the period, a regal yellow short-
haired tom, after the Prorege of Arcopia. The house library
exhausted, the public library offered further opportunities for
browsing and it was there that he made the acquaintance of Gautier,
in translation, of course. He also found it possible to procure—
though not at the public library—and he devoured with avidity—he
has asserted that they had an extraordinary effect in awakening his
imagination—Nick Carter, Bertha M. Clay, and Golden Days. For a
period of four or five years, in spite of all protests, although he had
never heard of the vegetarians, he subsisted entirely on a diet of
cookies soaked in hot milk. He had a curious inherent dislike for
spinach and it was characteristic of his father that he ordered the
dish to appear on the table every day until the boy tasted a morsel.
In after life, Peter could never even look at a dish of spinach. He
cared nothing at all for outdoor sports. Games of any kind, card or
osculatory, he considered nuisances. At a party, while the other
children were engaged in the pleasing pastime of post office, he was
usually to be found in a corner, reading some book. The
companionship of boys and girls of his own age meant very little to
him. He liked to talk to older people and found special pleasure in
the company of the Reverend Horatio Wallace, a clergyman of the
Dutch Reformed Church, who had visited New York. This reverend
doctor was violently opposed to art museums, novels, and symphony
orchestras, but he talked about them and he was the only person
Peter knew in Toledo who did. He railed against the sins of New York
and the vices of Paris but, also, he described them.
In the matter of a university education, his mother took a high hand,
precluding all discussion and indecision by sending him willy-nilly to
Williams. Her brother had been a Williams man and she prayed that
Peter might like to be one too. The experiment was not
unsuccessful. The charm in Peter's nature began to expand at
college and he even made a few friends, the names of most of which
he could no longer remember, when he spoke to me of his college
days some years afterwards. He realized that the reason he had
made so few in Toledo was that the people of Toledo were not his
kind of people. They lived in a world which did not exist for him.
They lived in the world of Toledo while he lived in the world of
books. At college, he began to take an interest in personalities; he
began to take an interest in life itself. He studied French—it was the
only course he thoroughly enjoyed—and he began to read Gautier in
the original. Then, at the instigation of a particularly intelligent
professor, he passed on to Barbey d'Aurevilly, to Huysmans, to
Laforgue, and to Mallarmé.
His holidays were always a torture for the boy. Should he accept one
of several invitations to visit his lad friends or should he go home?
One Easter vacation, Monkey Rollins had asked him to visit him in
Providence while Teddy Quartermouse had bidden him to enjoy
himself in New York. Peter pondered. He liked Monkey's sisters but a
week in Providence meant, he knew, dancing, bridge, and golf, all of
which he hated. Teddy was not as companionable as Monkey and he
had no sisters, but in New York both indoor and outdoor sports could
be avoided. Peter helplessly examined both sides of the shield until
Monkey settled the question by coming after him, helping him pack,
and carrying him triumphantly to the railway station.
No sooner, however, had he arrived in Providence than he knew that
it would be impossible for him to remain there. He did not find
Monkey's mother very agreeable, rather she was too agreeable. The
vegetables were cooked in milk—the Rollins family had previously
lived in Missouri. This, of course, was not to be borne. Worst of all,
there was a parrot, a great, shrieking, feathered beast, with
koprolagniac tastes. Nevertheless, he exerted himself at dinner,
giving a lengthy and apocryphal description to Mrs. Rollins of his
performance of a concerto for kettle-drum with the college band,
and doubtless made a distinctly favourable impression on the entire
family. Even the parrot volunteered: Hurrah for you, kid, you're some
guy! as the procession trooped into the library, which one of the girls
referred to as "the carnegie," for coffee. While Caruso negotiated
Celeste Aida on the phonograph, Peter, after whispering an
appropriate excuse to Monkey, contrived to slip upstairs. He looked
about on the landing in the upper hallway for a telephone but,
naturally, it wasn't there. Then he reconnoitred and discovered that
by climbing out over the porch and making a ten foot jump he would
land very neatly in a bed of crocuses. This he did and, scrambling to
his feet, made straight for an apothecary's coloured lights, which he
saw in the distance. The sequel is simple. In fifteen minutes, by way
of the kitchen, he was back in the library; in thirty minutes, he had
the family in roars of laughter; in forty-five minutes, Papa Rollins
began to yawn and guessed it was bed-time; Mama Rollins called in
the maid to cover the parrot and arrange the fire. Monkey said he
thought he would play a game of something or other with Peter. The
girls giggled. In exactly an hour, there was a ring at the door and the
maid reappeared in the library, with a yellow envelope addressed to
Peter. He hastily tore it open, trying to look portentous. Everybody
else did look portentous. Peter handed the telegram to Monkey, who
read it aloud: Your mother would like to shake your hand before she
takes the ether tomorrow morning. The message was dated from
New York and the signature was that of a famous surgeon. Mrs.
Rollins was the first to break a moment of appalling silence: There's
a train in fifteen minutes. It's the last. Quick, Monkey, the motor!
Peter cried, Send my things to the Manhattan, as he jerked on his
coat. He caught the train and some hours later he and Teddy
Quartermouse might have been observed amusing themselves with
highballs and a couple of girls at Rector's.
In time, college days passed. Peter confessed to me that the last
two years were an awful strain but he stuck them out, chiefly
because he could not think of anything else he wanted to do. His
real mental agony began with his release. He dreaded life and most
of all he dreaded work. His father, although well-to-do, had a sharply
defined notion that a boy who would not work never amounted to
anything. His peculiar nature sometimes asserted itself in ludicrous
and fantastically exaggerated demonstrations of this theory. Once,
for example, during a summer vacation spent in the country, he
insisted that Peter skin a pig. You have an opportunity to learn now
and you never can tell when you may have to skin another pig.
When the time comes you will be prepared. His father, Peter
returned from college discovered, was in no mood to tolerate
vacillation or dawdling. But Peter seemed to feel no urge of any
kind. I not only did not want to do anything, he explained, there was
nothing that I wanted to do. Here his father, with whom the boy had
never been particularly sympathetic (motive of the Œdipus complex
by the flutes in the orchestra), asserted his authority and put him in
the bank. Peter loathed the bank. He hated his work, cutting open
envelopes early in the morning, sorting out bills for collection, and
then, on his bicycle, making the collections. In the afternoon, an
endless task at the adding machine seemed Dantesque and, at
night, the sealing of envelopes was even more tiresome than
opening them in the morning. There was, however, one mitigating
circumstance in connection with the last job of the day, the pleasure
afforded by the rich odour of the hot sealing-wax. His pay was $9 a
week; he has told me that probably he was not worth it! Fortunately
he lived at home and was not asked to pay board. He bought books
with the $9 and "silly things." When I asked him what he meant by
silly things, he replied: O! Rookwood pottery, and alligators, and
tulip bulbs: I don't remember, things like that! One day, he promised
his father that he would give up smoking if that one would present
him with a gold cigarette-case!
There came a morning when he could not make up his mind to get
up. His mother called him several times in vain. He arrived at the
bank half an hour late and was reprimanded. His father spoke about
his tardiness at lunch. At this period he was inclined to be sulky. He
started off on his bicycle in the afternoon but he did not go to the
bank. He rode along by the river, stopping at a low saloon in the
outlying districts, where the workmen of some factory were wont to
congregate in the evening, and drank a great many glasses of beer.
Cheered somewhat thereby, the thought of facing his father no
longer exasperated him. The big scene took place before dinner. Had
it not been for the beer, he would have been obliged to act his part
on an empty stomach.
Are you no good at all? Thus his father's baritone aria began. Are
you worthless? I'm not going to support you. Suppose you had to
pay your own board. I can't keep a son of mine in the bank because
he is a son of mine unless he does some work. Certainly not. How
long are you going to dawdle? What are you going to do? Et cetera,
et cetera, with a magnificent cadenza and a high E to top off with.
Sustained by the beer, Peter reported to me that he rather enjoyed
the tune. He said nothing. Dinner was eaten in complete silence and
then the paternal parent went to bed, a discouraged and broken
man. He seemed senescent, although he was not yet fifty. After
dinner, Peter's mother spoke to him more gently but she also was
full of warning and gloomy foreboding: What is it you want to do,
my son?... I don't know. I'm not sure that I want to do anything....
But you must do something. You wouldn't be manly if you didn't do
something. It is manly to work. A day will come when my son will
want to marry and then he will need money to support his dear wife.
Etc. Etc. Peter reported to me that he seemed to have heard this
music before. He had not yet read The Way of All Flesh; I doubt if it
were published at this time, but Ernest Pontifex would have been a
sympathetic figure to him. Peter knew the meaning of the word
cliché, although the sound and the spelling of it were yet strange to
him.
When he got to his room certain words his mother had spoken rang
in his ears. Why, he asked himself, should men support women? Art
is the only attraction in life and women never do good work in art.
They are useless in the world aside from their functions of sex and
propagation. Why should they not work so that the males could be
free to think and dream? Then it occurred to him that he would be
furious if any woman supported his father; that could not be borne,
to have his father at home all day while his mother was away at
work!
Nevertheless, he went to sleep quite happy, he has assured me, and
slept soundly through the night, although he dreamed of a pair of
alligators, one of which was pulling at his head and the other at his
feet, while a man with an ax rained blows on his stomach. In the
morning his affairs seemed to be in a desperate state. He could not
bear the idea of getting up and going to the bank and yet there was
nothing else he wanted to do. Of one thing only he was sure: he did
not want to support himself. He did not, so far as he was able to
make out, want to do anything! He wanted his family to stop
bothering him. Was no provision made in this world for such as he?
Certainly, no provision was made for him in Toledo, Ohio. The word
temperament was still undiscovered there. His negative kind of
desire was alien to American sympathy. Of so much, he was aware.
Adding machines and collections awaited him. He went to the bank
where the paying teller again reprimanded him. So did one of the
clerks. So did one of the directors, a friend of his father. He
staggered through another day, which he helped along a little by
returning at noon with all his notes uncollected. Nobody wants to
pay today, he explained.... But it's your business to make them
pay.... There was cold ham, cold slaw, and rice pudding for lunch.
His mother had been crying. His father was stern.
During the rice pudding, he made a resolution, which he kept. From
that day on he worked as he had never worked before. Everybody in
the bank was astonished. His father was delighted. His mother said,
I told you so. I know my son.... He stopped buying books and silly
things and, when he had saved enough money, he took a train to
New York without bidding the bank officials or his family good-bye.
Once there, his resolution again failed him. He had no desires, or if
he had, one counteracted another. His money was almost gone and
he was forced to seek for work but everywhere he went he was
refused. He lived at a Mills Hotel. He retained a strange fondness for
his mother and began to write her, asking her to address him care of
general delivery.
At last he secured a position at a soda fountain in a drug-store. He
worked there about a week. One night the place got on his nerves to
such an extent that he wanted to break the glasses and squirt fizz at
every customer. To amuse himself, therefore, he contrived to inject a
good dose of castor oil or cantharides into every drink he served.
The proprietor of the shop was snoopy, Peter told me, and after
watching me out of the corner of his eye for some time, he gave me
a good kick, which landed me in the middle of the street. He tossed
six dollars, the remainder of my wages, after me. It may appear
strange to you but I have never been happier in my life than I was
that night with six dollars in my possession and the satisfactory
knowledge that I would never see that store again.
During the next three weeks, Peter did not find any work. I doubt if
he tried to find any. He often slept in Madison Square or Bryant Park
with a couple of newspapers over him and a couple under him. He
lived on the most meagre rations, some of which he collected in
bread lines. He even begged at the kitchen doors of the large hotels
and asked for money on the street. He has told me, however, that
he was neither discouraged nor unhappy. He felt the most curious
sense of uplift, as if he were suffering martyrdom, as, indeed, he
was. Life seemed to have left him out of its accounting, to have
made no arrangements for his nature. He had no desire to work, in
fact his repugnance for work was his strongest feeling, and yet, it
seemed, he could procure no money without working. He was
willing, however, to go without the things he wanted, really to suffer,
rather than work. I just did not want to do anything, he has said. It
was a fixed idea. It was my greatest joy to talk about the social
unrest, the rights of the poor, the wicked capitalist, and the ideas of
Karl Marx with the man in the street, the real man in the street, the
man who never went anywhere else. During this period, he
continued to write his mother what she afterwards described as
"bright, clever letters." I have seen a few of them, full of the most
astounding energy and enthusiasm, and a vague philosophy of
quietism. She wrote back, gently chiding him, letters of resignation
but still letters of advice, breathing the hope that he might grow into
a respected citizen of Toledo, Ohio. She did not understand Peter but
she loved him and would have gone to New York to see him, had not
a restraining hand burked her. Mr. Whiffle was determined to hold no
more traffic with his son. He refused, indeed, to allow Peter's name
to be mentioned in his presence. Toledo talked with intensity behind
his back but Mr. Whiffle did not know that. Hard as he tried not to
show it, he was disappointed: it was impossible for him to reconcile
his idea of a son with the actuality. Mrs. Whiffle's first mild
suggestion that she might visit Peter was received with a terrible
hurricane of resentment. She did not mention the subject again. She
would have gone anyway if Peter had asked her to come but he
never did.
Through an Italian, whom he met one day in Bryant Park, Peter next
secured a position as a member of the claque at the Opera. Every
night, with instructions when to applaud, he received either a seat in
the dress circle or a general admission ticket. There was also a small
salary attached to the office. He did not care about the salary but he
enjoyed going to the Opera which he had never before attended. He
heard Manon Lescaut, La Damnation de Faust, Tristan, Lohengrin,
Tosca, Roméo et Juliette, and Fedora. But his favourite nights were
the nights when Olive Fremstad sang. He heard her as Venus in
Tannhäuser, as Selika in L'Africaine, as Carmen, and he heard her in
that unique performance of Salome on January 22, 1907. One night
he became so interested in watching her that he forgot to applaud
the singer who had paid the claque. His delinquency was reported
by one of his colleagues and the next evening, when he went to the
bar on Seventh Avenue where the claque gathered to receive its
orders, he was informed that his services would no longer be
required.
After another three weeks of vagrancy, he found another job, again
through a park acquaintance. He has told me that it was the only
work he ever enjoyed. He became a "professor" in a house of pretty
ladies. His duty was to play the piano. Play us another tune,
professor, the customers would say, as they ordered beer at a dollar
a bottle, and Peter would play a tune. Occasionally one of the
customers would ask him to take a drink and he would order a sloe
gin fizz, which Alonzo, the sick-looking waiter, a consumptive with a
wife and five children to support, would bring in a sticky glass, which
he deposited with his long dirty fingers on the ledge of the piano.
Occasionally some man, waiting for a girl, was left alone with him,
and would talk with him about the suspender business or the base-
ball game, subjects which perhaps might not have interested him
elsewhere but which glowed with an enthralling fire in that
incongruous environment. The men preferred tunes like Lucia, the
current Hippodrome success from Neptune's Daughter, or songs
from The Red Mill, in which Montgomery and Stone were appearing
at the Knickerbocker, or I don't care. This last was always demanded
when a certain girl, who imitated Eva Tanguay, was in the room. But
the women, when they were alone in the house, just before dinner
in the late afternoon, or on a dull evening, always asked him to play
Hearts and Flowers, Massenet's Elégie, or the garden scene from
Faust, and then they would drink whisky and cry and tell him lies
about their innocent girlhood. There was even some literary
conversation. One of the girls read Georges Ohnet and another
admired the work of Harris Merton Lyon and talked about it. Peter
found it very easy to remain pure.
He received two dollars a night from the house, and, occasionally,
tips. Out of this he managed to rent a hall bedroom on West Thirty-
ninth Street and to pay for his lunches. The Madame provided him
with his dinner. Breakfast he never ate. He passed his mornings in
bed and his afternoons in the park, usually with a book.
A French girl named Blanche, whom he liked particularly, died one
night. She was taken to a funeral chapel the next morning. The
other girls went about the house snivelling and most of them sent
flowers to the chapel. Blanche's coffin was well banked with
carnations and tube-roses. The Madame sent a magnificent standing
floral-piece, a cross of white roses and, on a ribbon, the inscription,
May our darling rest in peace. Blanche wore a white lace dress and
looked very beautiful and very innocent as she lay dead, Peter
thought. Her mother came from a distant city and there was a
priest. The two days preceding Blanche's burial, the girls passed in
tears and prayers and sentimental remarks about how good she
was. At night they worked as usual and Peter played the piano. It
was very much like the Maison Tellier, he reflected.
With Peter, change was automatic and axiomatic, but he might have
remained in the house a very long time, as he has assured me that
he was perfectly contented, but for one of those accidents that
never happen in realistic novels but which constantly happen in life.
Mrs. Whiffle's brother, the graduate of Williams, erstwhile
mentioned, a quaint person, who lived at Rochester, was a rich
bachelor. He was also a collector, not of anything special, just a
collector. He collected old andirons and doorknobs and knockers. He
also collected postmarks and homespun coverlets and obsolete
musical instruments. Occasionally he even collected books and in
this respect his taste was unique. He collected first editions of Ouida,
J.T. Trowbridge, Horatio Alger, Jr., G.A. Henty, and Oliver Optic. He
had complete sets of first editions of all these authors and, unlike
most book collectors, he read them with a great deal of pleasure. He
especially enjoyed Cudjo's Cave, a novel he had devoured so many
times that he had found it necessary to have the volume rebound,
thus subtracting from its value if it ever comes up at an auction sale.
This uncle had always been prejudiced against Peter's father and, of
late years, this prejudice had swollen into a first-rate aversion. Visits
were never exchanged. He considered himself an amateur of parts
and Peter's father, a sordid business grub. Mrs. Whiffle, however,
whose whole nature was conciliatory, continued to write long letters
to her brother. Recently she had turned to him for sympathy and had
found a well of it. Mr. Fotheringay was ready to sympathize with
anybody who had fled from old man Whiffle's tyranny. For the first
time he began to take an interest in the boy whom he had never
seen. His imagination fed on his sister's letters until it seemed to him
that this boy was the only living being he had ever loved. Peter had
been working among the daughters of joy about two months when
Mr. Fotheringay died. When his will, made only a few weeks before
his death, was read, it was discovered that he had left his collections
to Williams College with the proviso that they be suitably housed,
kept intact, and called the John Alden Fotheringay Collection.
Williams College, I believe, was unable to meet the terms of the
bequest and, as a result, through a contingent clause, they were
sold. Not long ago, I ran across one of the books in Alfred F.
Goldsmith's shop on Lexington Avenue in New York. It was a copy of
J.T. Trowbridge's The Satin-Wood Box and it was easily identified by
Mr. Fotheringay's bookplate, which represented an old man counting
his gold, with the motto, In hoc signo vinces. After this department
of the estate had been provided for in the will, a very considerable
sum of money, well invested, remained. This was left to Peter
without proviso.
As he never expected letters from any one except his mother, he
seldom visited the post office and this particular communication from
Mr. Fotheringay's lawyers, forwarded by Mrs. Whiffle, lay in a general
delivery box for nearly a week before he called. He answered by
telegraph and the next morning he received a substantial check at
his hall bedroom address. The first thing he bought, he has told me,
was a book, an extra-illustrated copy of Mademoiselle de Maupin,
from Brentano's in Union Square. Then he went to a tailor and was
measured for clothes. Next he visited Brooks Brothers, on Twenty-
second Street and Broadway, and purchased a ready-made suit, a
hat, shoes and stockings, shirts, and neckties. He took a bath,
shaved, had his hair cut, and, dressed in his new finery, embarked
for the Knickerbocker in a taxi. He walked into the bar under
Maxfield Parrish's King Cole and ordered a Martini cocktail. Then he
ate a dinner, consisting of terrapin, roast canvas-back, an alligator
pear, and a quart or two of Pontet Canet. It was during the course of
this dinner that it occurred to him, for the first time in his life, that
he would become an author. Four days later he sailed for Paris.
 Chapter VI
There is a considerable period in the life of George Borrow for which
his biographers have been absolutely unable to account. To this day
where Borrow spent those lost years is either unknown or untold.
There is a similar period in the life of Peter Whiffle, the period
including the years 1907-1913. In the summer of the former year I
left him at Paris in the arms of Clara Barnes, so to speak, and I did
not see him again until February, 1913. Subsequently, when I knew
him better, I inquired about these phantom years but I never elicited
a satisfactory reply. He answered me, to be sure, but his answer
consisted of two words, I lived.
Our next meeting took place in New York, where I was a musical
reporter on the New York Times, the assistant to Mr. Richard Aldrich.
One night, having dropped Fania Marinoff at the theatre where she
was playing, I walked south-east until I came to the Bowery. I
strolled down that decaying thoroughfare, which has lost much of its
ancient glory—even the thugs and the belles of Avenue A have
deserted it—to Canal Street, where the Manhattan Bridge invites the
East Side to adventure through its splendid portal, but the East Side
ignores the invitation and stays at home. It is the upper West Side
that accepts the invitation and regiments of motor-cars from
Riverside Drive, in continuous procession, pass over the bridge. For a
time I stood and watched the ugly black scarabs with their acetylene
eyes crawl up the approach and disappear through the great arch
and then, walking a few steps, I stopped before the Thalia Theatre,
as I have stopped so many times, to admire the noble façade with
its flight of steps and its tall columns, for this is one of my dream
theatres. Often have I sat in the first row of the dress circle, which is
really a circle, leaning over the balustrade, gazing into the pit a few
feet below, and imagining the horseshoe as it might appear were it
again frequented by the fashion of the town. This is a theatre, in
which, and before which, it has often amused me to fancy myself a
man of wealth, when my first diversion would be a complete
renovation—without any reconstruction or vandalism—of this
playhouse, and the production of some play by Shakespeare, for to
me, no other theatre in New York, unless it be the Academy of
Music, lends itself so readily to a production of Shakespeare as the
Thalia. As I write these lines, I recall that the old New York theatres
are fast disappearing: Wallack's is gone; Daly's is no more; even
Weber and Fields's has been demolished. Cannot something be done
to save the Thalia, which is much older than any of these? Cannot
this proud auditorium be reconsecrated to the best in the drama? On
this night I paused for a moment, musing before the portal,
somewhat after this manner—for I have always found that things
rather than people awaken any latent sentiment and sympathy in my
heart—and then again I passed on.
Soon I came to a tiny Chinese shop, although I was still several
blocks above Chinatown. The window was stacked with curious crisp
waffles or wafers in the shape of lotus flowers, for the religious and
sexual symbolism of the Chinese extends even to their culinary
functions, and a Chinaman, just inside, was dexterously transferring
the rice batter to the irons, which were placed over the fire, turned a
few moments, and a wafer removed and sprinkled with dry rice
powder, as Richelieu, lacking a blotter, sprinkled pounce on his wet
signature. But the shop was not consecrated solely to the
manufacture of waffles; there were tea-sets and puppy-cats, all the
paraphernalia of a Chinese shop in New York—on the shelves and
tables. It was the waffles, and the peanut cakes, however, which
tempted me to enter.
Once inside, I became aware of the presence of a Chinese woman at
the back of the shop, holding in her arms an exquisite Chinese baby,
for all Chinese babies, with their flat porcelain faces, their straight
black hair, and their ivory hands, are exquisite. This baby, in green-
blue trousers fashioned of some soft silk brocade, a pink jacket of
the same material, and a head-dress prankt with ribbons into which
ornaments of scarlet worsted and blue-bird feathers were twisted,
was smiling silently and gracefully waving her tiny ivory hands
towards the face of an outcast of the streets who stood beside her
mother. I caught the rough workman's suit, the soiled, torn boots,
the filthy cap, and the unkempt hair in my glance, which reverted to
the baby. Then, as I approached the odd group, and spoke to the
mother, the derelict turned.
Carl! he ejaculated, for, of course, it was Peter.
I was too much astonished to speak at all, as I stared at this ragged
figure without a collar or a tie, with several days growth of beard on
his usually glabrous cheeks, and dirty finger-nails. I had only wit
enough left to shake his hand. At this time I knew nothing of his
early life, nothing of the fortune he had inherited, and the man in
front of me, save for something curiously inconsistent in the
expression of the face, was a tramp. Certainly the face was puzzling:
it positively exuded happiness. Perhaps, I thought, it was because
he was glad to see me. I was glad to see him, even in this guise.
Carl, he repeated, dear old Carl! How silly of me not to remember
that you would be in New York. He caught my glance. Somewhat of
a change, eh? No more ruffles and frills. That life, and everything
connected with it, is finished. Luckily, you've caught me near home.
Come with me; there's liquor there.
So we walked out. I had not yet spoken a word. I was choking with
an emotion I usually reserve for old theatres, but Peter did not
appear to be aware of it. He chattered on gaily.
Have you been to Paris recently? Where have you been? What have
you been doing? Are you writing? Isn't New York lovely? Don't you
think Chinese babies are the kind to have, if you are going to
become a father at all? Wasn't that an adorable one? He waited for
no answers. Look at the lights on the bridge. I live in the shadow of
the span. I think I live somewhere near the old Five Points that used
to turn up in all the old melodramas; you know, The Streets of New
York. It's a wonderful neighbourhood. Everybody, absolutely
everybody, is interesting. There's nobody you can't talk to, and very
few that can't talk. They all have something to say. They are all
either disappointed and discouraged or hopeful. They all have
emotions and they are not afraid to show them. They all talk about
the REVOLUTION. It may come this winter. No, I don't mean the
Russian revolution. Nobody expects a revolution in Russia. Nobody
down here is interested in Russia; the Russian Jews especially are
not. They have forgotten Russia. I mean the American
REVOLUTION. The Second American REVOLUTION, I suppose it will
be called. Labour against Capital. The Workman against the Leisure
Class. The Proletariat against the Idler. Did you ever hear of Piet
Vlag? Do you read The Masses? I go to meetings, union meetings,
Socialist meetings, I.W.W. meetings, Syndicalist meetings, Anarchist
meetings. I egg them on. It may come this winter, I tell you! There
will be barricades on Fifth Avenue. Vanderbilt and Rockefeller will be
besieged in their houses with the windows shuttered and the doors
barred and the butler standing guard with a machine-gun at some
gazebo or turret. It will be a real siege, lasting, perhaps, months.
How long will the food hold out? In the end, they'll have to eat the
canary and the Pekinese, and, no, not the cat, I hope. The cat will
be clever and escape, go over to the enemy where he can get his
meals. But boots, boot soup! Just like the siege of Paris; each robber
baron locked up in his stronghold. Sometimes, the housemaid will
desert; sometimes, the cook. The millionaires will be obliged to
make their own beds and cook their own dogs and, at last, to man
their own machine-guns!
The mob will be barricaded, too, behind barriers hastily thrown up in
the street, formed of old moving-vans, Rolls-Royces and Steinway
grands, covered with Gobelin tapestries and Lilihan, Mosul, Sarouk,
and Khorassan rugs, the spoils of the denuded houses. With a red
handkerchief bound around my brow, I will wave a red flag and
shriek on the top of such a barricade. My face will be streaked with
blood. We will all yell and if we don't sing the Ça Ira and the
Carmagnole, we will at least sing Alexander's Ragtime Band and My
Wife's Gone to the Country.
Eventually, Fifth Avenue will fall and the Astors and the Goulds will
be brought before the Tribunal of the People, and if you know any
better spot for a guillotine than the very square in which we stood
just now, in that vast open space before the Manhattan Bridge, over
which they all drive off for Long Island, I wish you'd tell me. There
are those who would like to see the killing done in Washington or
Madison Square, or the Plaza or Columbus Circle, which, of course,
has a sentimental interest for the Italians, but think of the joy it
would give the East Side mothers, suckling their babies, and the
pushcart vendors, and all the others who never find time to go up
town to have the show right here. Right here it shall be, if I have my
way, and just now I have a good deal of influence.
We had stopped before one of those charming old brick houses with
marble steps and ancient hand-wrought iron railings which still
remain on East Broadway to remind us of the day when stately
landaus drove up to deposit crinolined ladies before their portals. We
ascended the steps and Peter opened the door with his key. The
hallway was dark but Peter struck matches to light us up the stairs
and we only ceased climbing when we reached the top landing. He
unlocked another door which opened on a spacious chamber, a
lovely old room with a chaste marble fire-place in the Dorian mode,
and faded wall-paper of rose and grey, depicting Victorian Greek
females, taller than the damsels drawn by Du Maurier and C.D.
Gibson, languishing in the shadows of broken columns and weeping
willow trees. Upon this paper were fastened with pins a number of
covers from radical periodicals, native and foreign, some in vivid
colours, the cover of The Masses for March, 1912, Charles A.
Winter's Enlightenment versus Violence, the handsome head of a
workman, his right hand bearing a torch, printed in green, several
cartoons by Art Young, usually depicting the rich man as an octopus
or hog, and posters announcing meetings of various radical groups.
Gigantic letters, cut from sheets of newspaper, formed the legend,
I.W.W., over the door.
The room was almost devoid of furniture. There was an iron bed,
with tossed bed-clothing, a table on which lay a few books,
including, I noted, one by Karl Marx, another by English Walling,
Frank Harris's The Bomb, together with a number of copies of Piet
Vlag's new journal, The Masses, and Jack Marinoff's Yiddish comic
weekly, The Big Stick. There was also a pail on the table, such a pail
as that in which a workman carries his mid-day meal. There were
exactly two chairs and a wardrobe of polished oak in the best Grand
Rapids manner stood in one corner. All this was sufficiently
bewildering but I must confess that the appearance of the lovely
head of a Persian cat, issuing from under the bed-covers, made me
doubt my reason. I recognized George Moore. Presently I made out
another puss, sitting beside a basket full of kittens in the corner near
the wardrobe.
I must introduce you, explained Peter, to the mother of George
Moore's progeny. This is George Sand.
By this time I was a fit subject for the asylum. Even the Persian cats
did not set me right. Happy or not, the man was evidently poor.
I suppose I would insult you if I offered you a job, I stuttered at last.
A job! Carl, don't you know that I simply will not work?
Well, and I found this even more difficult than my first proposal, I
hope you won't misunderstand.... I haven't much ... but you must
permit me to give you some money.
Money! What for?
Why, for you....
Comprehending at last, Peter threw back his head and began to
laugh.
But I don't need money.... I never had so little use for it. Do you
realize what it costs me to live here? About $15 a week. That
includes every item, even fresh beef for my cats, I was about to tell
you, if you had given me time—you always interrupt—that I simply
don't know what to do with my money. Stocks have gone up. The
labourers in the factories at Little Falls are working overtime to make
me more prosperous. Indeed, one of the reasons I was so glad to
see you was that I thought, perhaps, you could help me to spend
some money.
The line about the interruptions, I should explain, was simply a
fabrication of Peter's. If I have set our conversations down as
monologues on his part, that is just how they occurred. Aside from
Philip Moeller and Arnold Daly, I have never known any one to talk
so much, and my rôle with Peter, as with them, was that of listener.
To continue, I should have known enough, even so early in our
acquaintance, not to be astonished by anything he might do, but if
there had been a mirror in the room, which there was not, I fancy I
might have looked into the most exasperatingly astonished face I
had ever seen up to that time. I managed, however, to laugh. Peter
laughed, too, and sat down. George Moore leaped to his knee and
George Sand to his shoulder, rubbing her magnificent orange brush
across his face.
And how about your book? I asked.
It's coming ... coming fast.
Are you still collecting notes?
Notes?... O! you are remembering what I was doing in Paris. That
was only an experiment.... I was on the wrong track.... I threw them
all away! I couldn't do anything with that.... I'm done with such
nonsense.
I couldn't be astonished any more.
What are you doing now?
I've told you. I'm living. O! I'm full of it: I know what art is now; I
know what real literature is. It has nothing to do with style or form
or manner. George Moore, not my cat but the other one, has said
that Christianity is not a stranger religion than the cult of the
inevitable word. The matter is what counts. I think it was Theodore
Dreiser....
Here I did interrupt:
I know him. When I first came to New York in 1906, I wrote a paper
about Richard Strauss's Salome for the Broadway Magazine. He was
the editor.
You know Theodore Dreiser!
There was awe in his tone.
Very slightly. I saw something of him then. Principally, I remember
his habit, when he was talking, of folding his handkerchief into small
squares, then unfolding it. He repeated this process indefinitely.
Show me.
I showed him.
Well, I'm glad I met you tonight.... It was Sister Carrie that set me
right; at least I think it was Sister Carrie. What a book! What a
masterpiece! No style, no form, just subject. The devils flogged St.
Jerome in the fifth century because he was rather a Ciceronian than
a Christian in his beautiful writing, but they never will flog Theodore
Dreiser! He had an idea, he knew life, and he just wrote what he
felt. He wasn't thinking of how to write it; he had something to
write. Have you read Sister Carrie?
I explained that Edna Kenton had given me the book to read when it
first appeared.
Strange as it may appear to you, for my way is not, perhaps,
Dreiser's, that book explains why I am here and why I dress in this
manner. It explains why I wander about the streets and talk with the
people. It explains why I am hoping for the REVOLUTION (Peter on
this occasion invariably pronounced this word in capitals). It explains
why I am an I.W.W. I would even join the Elks, if necessary. I think
Dreiser at one time must have been an Elk; else how could he
describe Hurstwood so perfectly?
It is amusing, however, that you who won't work should become an
international worker!
I dare say it is, drawled Peter, stroking George Moore's back, as the
superb cat lay purring on his knee. I dare say it is but I'd go a good
deal farther to get what I want; I'd even seek employment in a
department store or a Chinese laundry. However, it's coming without
that, it's coming fast. I found my heroine the other day, a little
Jewish girl, who works in a sweat-shop. She has one blue eye and
one black one. She has a club-foot, a hare-lip, and she is a hunch-
back. I nearly cried for joy when I discovered her. I met her on
Rivington Street walking with a stack of men's overcoats three feet
high poised on her head. She was limping under her burden. I
followed her to the shop and made some inquiries. Her name is
Rosie Levenstein. I shall leave in the deformities, but I shall change
her name.
Isn't she just a trifle unpleasant, a little unsympathetic, for a
heroine?
My book, replied Peter, is going to be very unpleasant. It is about life
and because you and I enjoy life is little enough reason for us to
consider it other than a dirty business. Life for the average person,
for Rosie, for instance, simply will not do. It's bloody awful and, if
anything, I shall make it worse than it is. Now, if the comrades
succeed in starting the REVOLUTION, I am going through with it,
straight through, breaking into drawing-rooms with the others. I'm
going to pound up a Steinway grand with a hammer. Here Peter,
with a suitable gesture, brought his hand down rather heavily on
George Moore's head and that one, indignant, immediately rose and
jumped down from his lap, subsequently stretched himself on the
floor, catching his claws in the carpet, and after yawning once or
twice, retreated under the bed. George Sand now left Peter's
shoulder to fill the vacant place on his knee. As I told you, I'm going
to wear a red handkerchief round my brow and my face will be
bloody. Then, all I have to do is to transfer the whole experience,
everything I have done and felt, the thrill, the BOOM, to Rosie. Can't
you see the picture in my last chapter of the little, lame, hare-lipped
hunch-back, with one blue eye and one black one, marching up Fifth
Avenue with the comrades, wrapped in the red flag, her face stained