A Miscellany (Revised) Read online

  Faithfully yours,

  N. G. BAXTER

  P.S. My wife, whose knowledge of such matters is irrefutable, informs me that your valued periodical has been on our parlour table for a number of years, and I look forward to perusing it in the near future.

  A lady dentist says:

  Quidnick, Rhode Island

  To the Editor of Vanity Fair

  Dear Sir, or Madam,

  as a bibliophile of standing I naturally resent your unnecessary illusions to authors of undying reputation which, from time to time, you permit a superficial mind to incur. Life is not a mere flicker of the butterfly’s wing, as you seem to think. It is (as the hymn says) Earnest: then why slight the more sober and enlightening aspects of humanity at large? Despite all your limitations you do well to feature Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford each month. I would also criticize (since you demand a candid judgment) the preference for a scantily, over the normally, clad Human Form Divine, symptom of the neurotic industrialism which has run rampant amongst our era. What the Creator designed is, truly, too beautiful to be lightly dealt with. Witness the Venus de Milo, etc. (The Greeks knew this better than we.) I merely suggest, in the hopes that you will take seriously what I have felt called upon to say.

  (DR.) GERTRUDE L. CONLY

  Refreshing:

  Big Lump, Texas

  Go 2 it!

  WILLIE MERANGUE, Y BAR O RANCH

  P.S. the fellows out at Chew, Bobo, and Big Paint, all say the same.

  With which brilliant specimen of vers libre should be immediately compared a prose poem, the voluptuous simplification of whose spelling and the luxurious paucity of whose syntax (not to mention the small eye) would indicate that E. E. Cummings, the modernist poet and orthographer, is writing to us, under an olfactory pseudonym, from the scented quietude of

  Sugar, Idaho

  i will not be apt too like yr pichurs butt the articels is grate ps my aunt rote this as i do not rede neither right inglich ownly frensh

  very truely,

  JACQUE ROQUEFORT

  And while we are on the subject of modern art—the inobvious obscurity of the following synthetic ecstasy makes Ulysses, by James Joyce, seem nearly intelligible:

  Oxketzcab (sic) Yucatan

  dear sir:

  never possible to enjoy more of pure spectacle high life wine with real bouquet of New World you are read hear in english school by Lovingly,

  PEDRO MANYANA

  Written in lead pencil on birch-bark:

  Ishawoo via Cody, Wyoming

  dear gents

  i was only once in n. y. with the 101 ranch wild West and no what i am saying. That was enuf! out here the flyz is fierce & I don’t hardly reckon the boys could stick it out without Vanity Fair. Wel, a 1000 pardons for this intrueshun. bye bye

  JO SMITH

  Here let us pause a moment. So far, we have inspected responses whose principal interest unquestionably lies in certain formal peculiarities: a second class now claims our attention—viz., communications from subscribers to Vanity Fair who are also world-renowned names. It is indeed a tragedy that spatial limitations (before referred to) inhibit the reproducing of more than a trio of these Gracious Missives From Great Minds—but let us, instead of reviling the unavoidable, get down to business and decide which masterpiece shall have the honour of appearing on this page. It may as well be this brief but stirring tribute. Translated from the German by Kenneth Burke.

  Gentlemen—

  The manifold activity of the second dream system, tentatively sending forth and retracting energy, must on the one hand have full command over all memory material, but on the other hand it would be a superfluous expenditure for it to send the individual mental paths large quantities of energy which would flow off to no purpose, diminishing the quantity available for the ululation of the sex cells.

  SIGMUND FREUD, L.L.D.

  Other more or less celebrated personages, who responded with enthusiasm to our invitation are: Lloyd George, Edna St. Vincent Millay, H. R. H. The Queen of the Belgians, Zip (the What-is-it?), Ma Ferguson, Paul Painlevé, Paul Manship, Paul Rosenfeld, Paul Morand, The Grand Duchess Cyril, Al Jolson, Einstein, Trotsky, Governor Charles W. Bryan, Jack Dempsey, Charles Chaplin, Dorothy Dix, Tristan Tzara, King Haakon of Norway, Barbara La Marr, Henry Ford, Cholly Knickerbocker, General Ludendorff, Lita Gray, Aunt Prudence Heckleberry, William Wrigley, Thelma Morgan Converse, Ezra Pound, The Answer Man, Paavo Nurmi, Texas Guinan, Ring Lardner, C. Bascom Slemp, Lionel Strongfort, Elizabeth Arden, the Four Marxes, Frank Crane, Gilda Gray, Edsel Ford, Mathilde McCormick Oser, Paul Swan, Joe Leblang, and everyone who has ever contributed, in any way, shape or manner, to Vanity Fair, including a tousle-headed mite of a sub-errand boy inappropriately entitled Albert Rose.

  From Vanity Fair, February 1925. The author’s only anonymous appearance.

  AN EX-MULTIMILLIONAIRE’S RULES FOR SUCCESS IN LIFE

  How a modern Midas sank, by his own efforts, to the lowest rung of the social ladder

  By C. E. Niltse, Success Editor of Vanity Fair

  One evening, ten years ago, while along the Bowery haggard-faced men were wandering by thousands toward their twenty-five cent beds, a high powered Rolls Royce slithered noiselessly from its glittering garage and tiptoed softly to the portals of a mansion situated in New York’s ultrafashionable residential district. As the machine stopped, a gorgeously liveried footman leaned toward a similarly attired chauffeur: “What’s on for tonight, Gaston?” he whispered. “Eat ease hease birt’-day,” Gaston, the chauffeur, replied.

  Scarcely had the words been pronounced when a lacquey in cloth-of-gold threw open the immense doors, from which an immaculately (albeit unostentatiously) apparelled individual gracefully emerged to view—descending with the elastic tread of youth a flight of marble steps; entered his perfectly appointed limousine—and, with a sheerest sigh of ennui, fled smoothly toward an exclusive haunt of pleasure.

  That youth in that limousine was one of the outstanding social figures of the America of ten years ago: everywhere people on the street stopped to stare at him, very little children knew him by sight and greeted his appearance with an admiring “dah-dah,” his life and wealth were on the front page of a thousand newspapers, wherever he moved men and women made way in awe, and a million voices whispered simultaneously, “It’s Bugg!”

  Small wonder!

  In addition to a hundred million dollars which his dying father, Herman Bugg (internationally loved as the white vaseline king) had bequeathed to Charles, his only child, outright at the latter’s birth, baby Bugg inherited from his mother (Emily Bugg, nee House)’s grandmother a series of railroads and steamship lines too numerous to mention, plus a controlling share in half a dozen of the largest corporations in the world, three of which his maternal uncle, the far-famed financier William Knutt House, had created in the late fifties for his own private emolument. Born into such truly unheard of luxury, it goes without saying that nothing was denied little Charles, until, at twenty-one, we see him perhaps the most brilliant figure in New York’s most exclusive social set—a demigod: frank, charming, endowed with that natural and carefree buoyancy which only wealth and culture can bring, lapped in splendor and riches, encircled by influential friends, adored by beautiful women—the perfect apotheosis of gilded youth.

  To ask of the ordinary person, who has suffered and struggled in terms of crude everyday reality, that she or he form a definite mental picture of the life of twenty-one year old Charles would be worse than ridiculous. And yet, a fleeting sensation of what it must feel like to be born and to grow up a Bugg, comes over all of us occasionally. I myself enjoyed such a feeling only the other afternoon, while more than doubtfully standing before one of those decayed, dismal, dilapidated, decrepit, ultra-squalid edifices known—by some bitter irony—as “hotels,” with whose miserable exteriors and unhygienic interiors the word “Bowery” is inevitably associated. Again and again I had assured myself that this was the right addre
ss, a thousand times I had started to enter the reeling doorway, from which a rickety flight of stairs lifted itself . . . each time, the vision of a groomed youth gracefully descending a flight of marble steps had paralysed my every motion. Panting, awestruck, I whispered: “It cannot be!”

  A voice, spontaneous and shaggy, growled at my elbow: “Wot’s de chances uv gettin’ uh cup uv coffee?”

  I turned abruptly—to find myself surrounded by “bums” of various kinds, but unanimous in considering my lack of uncouthness as a personal affront. Hastily choosing the lesser of two evils, I fled through the doorway and up the stairs, at the top of which I encountered a large, untidy, ill-smelling room filled with such a motley collection of vagrants, ragamuffins and down-and-outers as baffles all description. “Out of the frying pan into the fire!” flashed through my disordered mind; but since there was nothing for it now but to go through with the business, I made straight for the nearest group of loafers and, buttonholing what looked to be a peculiarly unpromising specimen of depravity, asked politely but firmly: “Can you tell me where I can find a Mr. Bugg?”

  The person addressed—a true “hobo” if ever one existed, his costume being a threadbare stiff-bosomed shirt, plus one violet polka-dot suspender, plus unbelievably ancient misfit, ninetyish pantaloons—regarded me with a look of infantile astonishment, which contrasted agreeably with the expression assumed by his associates’ faces, viz. a solemnity suggestive of hibernating woodchucks.

  “Charles A. Bugg,” I expanded boldly.

  My vis-à-vis reacted to the once compelling and still sumptuous cognomen by making a circular gesture in his ear. Thinking that this might be a purely personal method of indicating deafness, I proceeded more loudly: “I am the Success Editor of Vanity Fair,” I explained in a shout. “The magazine wants me to interview Mr. Bugg. Do you know where I can find him?”

  The unwashed visage of my silent interlocutor registered something like anguish as he murmured: “Come with me.” Considerably puzzled, I followed him into a little alcove which, with great difficulty, contained an ancient bed, a broken chair, and a twisted washstand. “Sit,” my guide directed in a gentle but resonant voice. I did so, cautiously, on the bed. “I,” he stated, appropriating the chair, “am that man.”

  Stupefaction seized me—could this—this mere tramp—shoeless—unshaven—filthy—illclad—ever have been the elegant creature who sank back nightly amid the scented pillows of New York’s most exclusive resorts? Was this spectre, seated before me, in reality Charles A. Bugg Himself? Might such a thing be possible in this era of miracles?—Almost fainting, I produced a package of cheap cigarettes and offered them to him.

  “I’ll tell you how it all happened,” he unconcernedly murmured, extracting a cigarette with great eagerness and immediately striking a match on the hornlike sole of one bare foot.

  “Thank you,” I managed to articulate, as my cigarette was lighted.

  “Father,” he continued, lighting his own and tossing away the match, “was no bally nitwit—and mother,” he paused then spoke proudly, “mother was a House.” I bowed. “I had everything,” he resumed, “wealth, power, riches, influence. I looked like Lawford Davidson, the screen star. And yet,” he paused, “somehow I felt something was wrong somewhere.” This penetrating analysis was followed by the modest statement: “I only guessed dimly, at first.” He puffed speculatively. “Then one night—morning, rather—when a party of us were celebrating my birthday in Jack’s Underground Attic, it came to me like a thunderbolt: I knew, for the first time, what was wrong.” He regarded me sternly. “As you will never guess, I shall tell you.”

  His eyes—small, acute, dark—hypnotized the very core of my being.

  “I was unhappy,” he stated, scratching himself.

  “Unhappy,” I breathed.

  “There was only one thing to do that night, and I did it. I got up from the table in the middle of the festivities and walked home without paying the check. It was the turning point in my life. I resolved from that moment on, whatever sacrifices it might involve, that I would BE MYSELF.

  “Early next morning, I sold my two yachts and three of my railroads, and, with the proceeds, started a company in Rhode Island to exploit the dried pansy industry. Do you read Henley?”

  “Invictus?” I hazarded.

  “Correct,” he beamed. “And Edna Millay? You are familiar with her Renascence? Excellent. Where were we?”

  “Among the pansies—”

  “Of course. The company, after a highly dramatic career of some weeks, failed for ninety millions. Never, never can I begin to tell you, or anyone else, what that failure meant to me! It was as if my spirit had been reborn: as if new and wider vistas were opening on every hand.

  “After that first, unforgettable disaster, you may believe that failure followed failure in rapid succession. Meanwhile, my relatives were either committing suicide or suing to have me committed to an institution. At all the best clubs on Fifth Avenue—the Union, the Knickerbocker—I was refused admittance by my fellow members—my main office included a group of specially trained private secretaries, not a few of whom became afflicted with dementia praecox while attempting to answer a daily average of slightly over three hundred telegrams, letters and postcards, from every nook and cranny of the civilized globe imploring, pleading, begging me to return to my senses.

  “It is no small thing to feel that you are fighting a lonely fight against stupendous odds—but to know that you are going to win that fight, no matter what happens or who loses, is a wonderful thing. It makes you stand up straighter and look every man woman and child in the eye. It gives you an honest feeling in your heart, that makes troubles turn tail.

  “I kept right on, in spite of everything, failing and failing; until one day I found I had nothing left but my biggest steamship line. The end of my endeavours, the goal of my ambitions, was in sight! Almost delirious with joy, I pawned the company, and, with the cash, established a full-fledged group of model factories, in Arkansas, capable of turning out five hundred and thirty million ping-pong balls per day—I need scarcely tell you that there proved to be no market for my product. Imagine (if you can) my ecstasy when, shortly afterwards, the business exploded to the tune of one hundred and fifty millions, leaving me (at last!) a free man—.”

  As I regarded this face, the nameless beggar, the bleary nondescript, whom a few moments before I had accosted, faded gradually from my mind—before me I beheld, poised with easy grace upon the ruined chair, a figure in the full heyday of disaster, whose firm simplicity and quiet dignity proclaimed to all the world Hamlet’s apostrophe to Horatio: “This was a man!” I stared, fascinated.

  Then, restraining with difficulty a wild impulse to fall on my knees, I produced a package of slightly more costly cigarettes, and, trembling, handed it to him without a word. As his fingers closed upon my gift, he smiled: a little child’s smile. His eyes lowered themselves slowly. Down the grimy cheek a tear of pleasure stole from beneath a tired eyelid. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  We cleared our throats together. “That isn’t all,” he explained, taking a half smoked cigarette from behind his ear, and lighting it again. “I was a free man—yes: a happy man—but still I was not perfectly happy,” he went on. “Not until something, as beautiful as it was unexpected, occurred . . .” and his virile visage emitted a mysterious smile.

  Conscious of the pounding of my heart: “May I ask,” I ventured, timidly, “who . . . ?”

  The smile narrowed to a threadlike line. “A woman,” he murmured, leaning toward me. “She was all the world to me . . . we believed entirely in each . . . two hearts which beat as . . . ah, the bliss! . . . and then, one night—as I was leaving her apartment—her maid handed me a derby which didn’t fit me in the least . . .”

  There was a pause. I did not breathe.

  “After that,” he murmured, “my illusions shattered, my faith in women annihilated, I became a bum. . . .” He straightened, proudly. “I’m ju
st thirty-one,” he vouchsafed modestly. “At twenty-one I started out to live my own life, to be true to myself: I am now thirty-one: one from one leaves nothing, two from three leaves one. Ten. Is that correct?”

  I nodded, spellbound. The flexibility of his intellect was baffling.

  “That makes ten years in which I struggled, through thin and thick, with but a single end in view: TO BECOME A SELF-MADE MAN.” He smiled, quietly. “And I have achieved that end.”

  Quite overcome by this burst of frankness, I rose to go: but he detained me with a glance. “The readers,” he said, huskily, “of your magazine—I want you to tell them how I did it.”

  “If you will be so kind—” I stammered, blushing.

  “The secret of my failure is contained in three precepts.”

  “Three little precepts,” he crooned. “The first is nothing more nor less than a very practical bit of advice—Never hit a woman with a child: always use something else. The second has proved helpful to all sorts of people—In case of fire, lie down: do not walk to the nearest, if any, exit. The third really sums up, in a few words, all that the poets, philosophers, and teachers have tried, since the beginning of time, to tell us—” he paused: then in a deep, rich, velvet whisper, distinct with passion, he spoke: “Any man who will be unkind to his mother, a horse will bite.”

  Speechless with emotion, dizzy with a realization of the man’s invincible sincerity and unimpeachable happiness, I gropingly put out my hand—and found Bugg’s.

  From Vanity Fair, March 1925.