Mince Pie Part 6

I left the subway at Pennsylvania Station. Just to appease my conscience, I stopped in at the agreeable Cadmus bookshop on Thirty-third street to see if by any chance they might have a second-hand copy of Kenko. But I know they wouldn't; it is not the kind of book at all likely to be found second-hand. I tarried here long enough to smoke one cigarette and pay my devoirs to the n.o.ble profession of second-hand bookselling. I even thought, a little wildly, of buying a copy of "The Monk" by M.G. Lewis, which I saw there. So does the frenzy rage when once you unleash it. But I decided to be content with paying my devoirs to the proprietor, a friend of mine, and not go on (as the soldier does in Hood's lovely pun) to devour my pay. I hurried off to the office of the Oxford University Press, Kenko's publishers.

It should be stated, however, that owing to some confusion of doors I got by mistake into the reception room of the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Billiard Table Company, which is on the same corridor as the salesroom of the Oxford Press. It was a pleasant reception room, not very bookish in aspect, but in my agitation I was too eager to feel surprised by the large billiard table in the offing. I somewhat startled a young man at an adding machine by demanding, in a husky voice, a copy of "The Miscellanies of a j.a.panese Priest." I was rather nervous by this time, lest for some reason I should not be able to buy a copy of Kenko. I feared the publishers might be angry with me for not having made a round of the bookstores first. The young man saw that I was chalking the wrong cue, and forwarded me.

In the office of the Oxford Press I met a very genial reception. I had been, as I say, apprehensive lest they should refuse to sell me the book; or perhaps they might not have a copy. I wondered what credentials I could offer to override their scruples. I had made up my mind to tell them, if they demurred, that I had once published an essay to prove that the best book for reading in bed is the General Catalogue of the Oxford University Press. This is quite true. It is a delightful compilation of several thousand pages, on India paper. But to my pleasant surprise the Oxonians seemed not at all surprised at the sudden appearance of one asking, in a voice a little shaken with emotion, for a copy of the "Miscellanies." Mr. Campion and Mr. Krause, who greeted me, were kindness itself.

"Oh, yes," they said, "we have a copy." And in a minute it lay before me. One of those little green and gold volumes in the Oxford Library of Prose and Poetry. "How much?" I said. "A dollar forty." I paid it joyfully. It is a good price for a book. Once I wrote a book myself that sells (when it does sell) at that figure. When I was at Oxford I used to buy the O.L.P.P. books for (I think) half a crown. In 1917 they were listed at a dollar. Now $1.40. But I fear Kenko's estate doesn't get the advantage of increased royalties.

The first thing to do was to find a place to read the book. My club was fifteen blocks away. The smoking room of the Pennsylvania Station, where I have done much reading, was three long blocks. But I must dip into Kenko immediately. Down in the hallway I found a shoe-shining stand, with a bowl of indirect light above it. The artist was busy in the barber shop near-by. Admirable opportunity. I mounted the throne and fell to. The first thing I saw was a quaint j.a.panese woodcut of a buxom maiden washing garments in a rapidly purling stream. She was treading out a petticoat with her bare feet, presumably on a flat stone. In a black storm-cloud above a willow tree a bearded supernatural being, with hands spread in humorous deprecation, gazes down half pleased, half horrified. And the caption is, "Did not the fairy k.u.me lose his supernatural powers when he saw the white legs of a girl washing clothes?" Yet be not dismayed. Kenko is no George Moore.

By and bye the shoeshiner came out and found me reading. He was apologetic. "I didn't know you were here," he said. "Sorry to keep you waiting." Fortunately my shoes needed shining, as they generally do. He shined them, and I still sat reading. He was puzzled, and tried to make out the t.i.tle of the book. At that moment I was reading:

One morning after a beautiful snowfall I sent a letter to a friend's house about something I wished to say, but said nothing at all about the snow. And in his reply he wrote: "How can I listen to a man so base that his pen in writing did not make the least reference to the snow!

Your honorable way of expressing yourself I exceedingly regret." How amusing was this answer!

The shoeshiner was now asking me whether anything was wrong with the polish he had put on my boots, so I thought it best to leave.

In the earlier pages of Kenko's book there are a number of allusions to the agreeableness of intercourse with friends, so I went into a nearby restaurant to telephone to a man whom I wished to know better. He said that he would be happy to meet me at ten minutes after twelve. That left over half an hour. I felt an immediate necessity to tell some one about Kenko, so I made my way to Mr. Nichols's delightful bookshop (which has an open fire) on Thirty-third Street. I showed the book to Mr. Nichols, and we had a pleasant talk, in the course of which she showed me the five facsimile volumes of d.i.c.kens's Christmas books, which he had issued. In particular, he read aloud to me the magnificent description of the boiling kettle in the first "Chirp" of "The Cricket on the Hearth," and pointed out to me how d.i.c.kens fell into rhyme in describing the song of the kettle. This pa.s.sage Mr. Nichols read to me, standing in front of his fire, in a very musical and sympathetic tone of voice which pleased me exceedingly. I was strongly tempted to buy the five little books, and wished I had known of them before Christmas. With a brutal effort at last I pulled out my watch, and found it was a quarter after twelve.

I met my friend at his office, and we walked up Fourth Avenue in a flush of sunshine. From Twenty-fourth to Forty-second Street we discussed the habits of English poets visiting this country. At the club we got onto Bolshevism, and he told me how a bookseller on Lexington Avenue, whose shop is frequented by very outspoken radicals, had told him that one of these had said, "The time is coming, and not far away, when the gutters in front of your shop will run with blood as they did in Petrograd." I thought of some recent bomb outrages in Philadelphia and did not laugh.

With such current problems before us, I felt a little embarra.s.sed about turning the talk back to so many centuries to Kenko, but finally I got it there. My friend ate chicken hash and tea; I had kidneys and bacon, and cocoa with whipped cream. We both had a coffee eclair. We parted with mutual regret, and I went back to the Hallbedroom street, intending to do some work.

Of course you know that I didn't do it. I lit the gas stove, and sat down to read Kenko. I wished I were a recluse, living somewhere near a plum tree and a clear running water, leisurely penning maxims for posterity. I read about his frugality, his love of the moon and a little music, his somewhat embittered complaints against the folly of men who spend their lives in rushing about swamped in petty affairs, and the sad story of the old priest who was attacked by a goblin-cat when he came home late at night from a pleasant evening spent in capping verses. I read with special pleasure his seven Self-Congratulations, in which he records seven occasions when he felt that he had really done himself justice. The first of these was when he watched a man riding horseback in a reckless fashion; he predicted that the man would come a cropper, and he did so. The next four self-congratulations refer to times when his knowledge of literary and artistic matters enabled him to place an unfamiliar quotation or a.s.sign a painted tablet to the right artist. One tells how he was able to find a man in a crowd when everyone else had failed. And the last and most amusing is an anecdote of a court lady who tried to inveigle him into a flirtation with her maid by sending the latter, richly dressed and perfumed, to sit very close to him when he was at the temple. Kenko congratulates himself on having been adamant.

He was no Pepys.

I thought of trying to set down a similar list of self-congratulations for myself. Alas, the only two I could think of were having remembered a telephone number, the memorandum of which I had lost; and having persuaded a publisher to issue a novel which was a great success. (Not written by me, let me add.)

I found my friend Kenko a rather disturbing companion. His condemnation of our busy, racketing life is so d.a.m.ned conclusive! Having recently added to my family, I was distressed by his section "Against Leaving Any Descendants." He seems to be devoid of the sentiment of ancestor worship and sacredness of family continuity which we have been taught to a.s.sociate with the Oriental. And yet there is always a current of suspicion in one's mind that he is not really revealing his inmost heart. When a bachelor in his late fifties tells us how glad he is never to have had a son, we begin to taste sour grapes.

I went out about six o'clock, and was thrilled by a shaving of shining new moon in the cold blue winter sky--"the sky with its terribly cold clear moon, which none care to watch, is simply heart-breaking," says Kenko. As I walked up Broadway I turned back for another look at the moon, and found it hidden by the vast bulk of a hotel. Kenko would have had some caustic remark for that. I went into the Milwaukee Lunch for supper. They had just baked some of their delicious fresh bran m.u.f.fins, still hot from the oven. I had two of them, sliced and b.u.t.tered, with a pot of tea. Kenko lay on the table, and the red-headed philosopher who runs the lunchroom spotted him. I have always noticed that "plain men"

are vastly curious about books. They seem to suspect that there is some occult power in them, some mystery that they would like to grasp. My friend, who has the bearing of a prizefighter, but the heart of an amiable child, came over and picked up the book. He sat down at the table with me and looked at it. I was a little doubtful how to explain matters, for I felt that it was the kind of book he would not be likely to care for. He began spelling it out loud, rather laboriously--

Section 1. Well! Being born into this world there are, I suppose, many aims which we may strive to attain.

To my surprise he showed the greatest enthusiasm. So much so that I ordered another pair of bran m.u.f.fins, which I did not really want, so that he might have more time for reading Kenko.

"Who was this fellow?" he asked.

"He was a j.a.p," I said, "lived a long time ago. He was mighty thick with the Emperor, and after the Emperor died he went to live by himself in the country, and became a priest, and wrote down his thoughts."

"I see," said my friend. "Just put down whatever came into his head, eh?"

"That's it. All his ideas about the queer things a fellow runs into in life, you know, little bits of philosophy."

I was a little afraid of using that word "philosophy," but I couldn't think of anything else to say. It struck my friend very pleasantly.

"That's it," he said, "philosophy. Just as you say, now, he went off by himself and put things down the way they come to him. Philosophy. Sure.

Say, that's a good kind of book. I like that kind of thing. I have a lot of books at home, you know. I get home about nine o'clock, and I most always read a bit before I go to bed."

How I yearned to know what books they were, but it seemed rude to question him.

He dipped into Kenko again, and I wondered whether courtesy demanded that I should order another pot of tea.

"Say, would you like to do me a favor?"

"Sure thing," I said.

"When you get through with that book, pa.s.s it over, will you? That's the kind of thing I've been wanting. Just some little thoughts, you know, something short. I've got a lot of books at home."

His big florid face gleamed with friendly earnestness.

"Sure thing," I said. "Just as soon as I've finished it you shall have it." I wanted to ask whether he would reciprocate by lending me one of his own books, which would give me some clue to his tastes; but again I felt obscurely that he would not understand my curiosity.

As I went out he called to me again from where he stood by the shining coffee boiler. "Don't forget, will you?" he said. "When you're through, just pa.s.s it over."

I promised faithfully, and tomorrow evening I shall take the book in to him. I honestly hope he'll enjoy it. I walked up the bright wintry street, and wondered what Kenko would have said to the endless flow of taxicabs, the elevators and subways, the telephones, and telegraph offices, the newsstands and especially the plate-gla.s.s windows of florists. He would have had some urbane, cynical and delightfully disillusioning remarks to offer. And, as Mr. Weaver so shrewdly says, how he would enjoy "The Way of All Flesh!"

I came back to Hallbedroom street, and set down these few meditations.

There is much more I would like to say, but the part.i.tions in hall bedrooms are thin, and the lady in the next room thumps on the wall if I keep the typewriter going after ten o'clock.

TWO DAYS WE CELEBRATE

[Ill.u.s.tration]

If we were asked (we have not been asked) to name a day the world ought to celebrate and does not, we would name the 16th of May. For on that day, in the year 1763, James Boswell first met Dr. Samuel Johnson.

This great event, which enriched the world with one of the most vivid panoramas of human nature known to man, happened in Tom Davies's bookshop in Covent Garden. Mr. and Mrs. Davies were friends of the Doctor, who frequently visited their shop. Of them Boswell remarks quaintly that though they had been on the stage for many years, they "maintained an uniform decency of character." The shop seems to have been a charming place: one went there not merely to buy books, but also to have a cup of tea in the back parlor. It is sad to think that though we have been hanging round bookshops for a number of years, we have never yet met a bookseller who invited us into the private office for a quiet cup. Wait a moment, though, we are forgetting Dr. Rosenbach, the famous bookseller of Philadelphia. But his collations, held in amazed memory by many editioneers, rarely descend to anything so humble as tea.

One recalls a confused glamor of ortolans, trussed guinea-hens, strawberries reclining in a bowl carved out of solid ice, and what used to be known as vintages. It is a pity that Dr. Johnson died too soon to take lunch with Dr. Rosenbach.

"At last, on Monday, the 16th of May," says Boswell, "when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's back parlor, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs.

Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies, having perceived him through the gla.s.s door, announced his awful approach to me. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him.

I was much agitated." The volatile Boswell may be forgiven his agitation. We also would have trembled not a little. Boswell was only twenty-two, and probably felt that his whole life and career hung upon the great man's mood. But embarra.s.sment is a comely emotion for a young man in the face of greatness; and the Doctor was speedily put in a good humor by an opportunity to utter his favorite pleasantry at the expense of the Scotch. "I do, indeed, come from Scotland," cried Boswell, after Davies had let the cat out of the bag; "but I cannot help it." "That, sir," said Doctor Johnson, "is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help."

The great book that dated from that meeting in Davies's back parlor has become one of the most intimately cherished possessions of the race. One finds its admirers and students scattered over the globe. No man who loves human nature in all its quirks and pangs, seasoned with bluff honesty and the genuineness of a cliff or a tree, can afford to step into a hea.r.s.e until he has made it his own. And it is a noteworthy ill.u.s.tration of the biblical saying that whosoever will rule, let him be a servant. Boswell made himself the servant of Johnson, and became one of the masters of English literature.

It used to annoy us to hear Karl Rosner referred to as "the Kaiser's Boswell." For to _boswellize_ (which is a verb that has gone into our dictionaries) means not merely to transcribe faithfully the acts and moods and import of a man's life; it implies also that the man so delineated be a good man and a great. Horace Traubel was perhaps a Boswell; but Rosner never.

It is pleasant to know that Boswell was not merely a kind of animated note-book. He was a droll, vain, erring, bibulous, warm-hearted creature, a good deal of a Pepys, in fact, with all the Pepysian vices and virtues. Mr. A. Edward Newton's "Amenities of Book Collecting" makes Boswell very human to us. How jolly it is to learn that Jamie (like many lesser fry since) wrote press notices about himself. Here is one of his own blurbs, which we quote from Mr. Newton's book:

Boswell, the author, is a most excellent man: he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness. His parts are bright, and his education has been good. He has traveled in post chaises miles without number. He is fond of seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, especially apple pie. He drinks Old Hock. He has a very fine temper. He is somewhat of a humorist and a little tinctured with pride. He has a good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous. He has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast. He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old. His shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles.

This brings the excellent Boswell very close to us indeed: he might almost be a member of the Authors' League. "Especially apple pie, bless his heart!"

When we said that Boswell was a kind of Pepys, we fell by chance into a happy comparison. Not only by his volatile errors was he of the tribe of Samuel, but in his outstanding character by which he becomes of importance to posterity--that of one of the great diarists. Now there is no human failing upon which we look with more affectionate lenience than that of keeping a diary. All of us, in our pilgrimage through the difficult thickets of this world, have moods and moments when we have to fall back on ourselves for the only complete understanding and absolution we will ever find. In such times, how pleasant it is to record our emotions and misgivings in the sure and secret pages of some privy notebook; and how entertaining to read them again in later years!

Dr. Johnson himself advised Bozzy to keep a journal, though he little suspected to what use it would be put. The cynical will say that he did so in order that Bozzy would have less time to pester him, but we believe his advice was sincere. It must have been, for the Doctor kept one himself, of which more in a moment.