Mince Pie Part 9

"What's this?" he says. "Nonsense! When you've got a good job, the thing to do is to keep it. Stick to it, my boy. There's a great future for you here. Don't get any of those fool ideas about changing around from one thing to another."

"OWD BOB"

CHAPTER I

(INTRODUCES OUR HERO)

Loitering perchance on the western pavement of Madison avenue, between the streets numbered 38 and 39, and gazing with an observant eye upon the pedestrians pa.s.sing southward, you would be likely to see, about 8:40 o'clock of the morning, a gentleman of remarkable presence approaching with no bird-like tread. This creature, clad in a suit of subfuse respectable weave, bearing in his hand a cane of stout timber with a right-angled hornblende grip, and upon his head a hat of rich texture, would probably also carry in one hand (the left) a leather case filled with valuable papers, and in the other hand (the right, which also held the cane) a cigarette, lit upon leaving the Grand Central subway station. This cigarette the person of our tale would frequentatively apply to his lips, and then withdraw with a quick, swooping motion. With a rapid, somewhat sidelong gait (at first somehow clumsy, yet upon closer observation a mode of motion seen to embrace certain elements of harmony) this gentleman would converge upon the southwest corner of Madison avenue and 38th street; and the intent observer, noting the menacing contours of the face, would conclude that he was going to work.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

This gentleman, beneath his sober but excellently haberdashered surtout, was plainly a man of large frame, of a Sam Johnsonian mould, but, to the surprise of the calculating observer, it would be noted that his volume (or ma.s.s) was not what his bony structure implied. Spiritually, in deed, this interesting individual conveyed to the world a sensation of stoutness, of bulk and solidity, which (upon scrutiny) was not (or would not be) verified by measurement. Evidently, you will conclude, a stout man grown thin; or, at any rate, grown less stout. His molded depth, one might a.s.sess at 20 inches between the eaves; his longitude, say, five feet eleven; his registered tonnage, 170; his cargo, literary; and his destination, the editorial sancta of a well-known publishing house.

This gentleman, in brief, is Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday (but not the "stout Cortes" of the poet), the editor of _The Bookman_.

CHAPTER II

(OUR HERO BEGINS A CAREER)

"It would seem that whenever Nature had a man of letters up her sleeve, the first gift with which she has felt necessary to dower him has been a preacher sire."

R.C.H. of N.B. Tarkington.

Mr. Holliday was born in Indianapolis on July 18, 1880. It is evident that ink, piety and copious speech circulated in the veins of his clan, for at least two of his grandfathers were parsons, and one of them, Dr.

Ferdinand Cortez Holliday, was the author of a volume called "Indiana Methodism" in which he was the biographer of the Rev. Joseph Tarkington, the grandfather of Newton B. Tarkington, sometimes heard of as Booth Tarkington, a novelist. Thus the hand of Robert C. Holliday was linked by the manacle of destiny to the hand of Newton B. Tarkington, and it is a quaint satisfaction to note that Mr. Holliday's first book was that volume "Booth Tarkington," one of the liveliest and soundest critical memoirs it has been our fortune to enjoy.

Like all denizens of Indianapolis--"Tarkingtonapolis," Mr. Holliday calls it--our subject will discourse at considerable volume of his youth in that high-spirited city. His recollections, both sacred and profane, are, however, not in our present channel. After a reputable schooling young Robert proceeded to New York in 1899 to study art at the Art Students' League, and later became a pupil of Twachtman. The present commentator is not in a position to say how severely either art or Mr.

Holliday suffered in the mutual embrace. I have seen some of his black and white posters which seemed to me robust and considerably lively. At any rate, Mr. Holliday exhibited drawings on Fifth avenue and had ill.u.s.trative work published by _Scribner's Magazine_. He did commercial designs and comic pictures for juvenile readers. At this time he lived in a rural community of artists in Connecticut, and did his own cooking.

Also, he is proud of having lived in a garret on Broome street. This phase of his career is not to be slurred over, for it is a clue to much of his later work. His writing often displays the keen eye of the painter, and his familiarity with the technique of pencil and brush has much enriched his capacity to see and to make his reader see with him.

Such essays as "Going to Art Exhibitions," and the one-third dedication of "Walking-Stick Papers" to Royal Cortissoz are due to his interest in the world as pictures.

While we think of it, then, let us put down our first memorandum upon the art of Mr. Holliday:

First Memo--Mr. Holliday's stuff is distilled from life!

CHAPTER III

(IN WHICH OUR HERO DARTS OFF AT A TANGENT)

It is not said why our hero abandoned bristol board and india ink, and it is no duty of this inquirendo to offer surmise. The fact is that he disappeared from Broome street, and after the appropriate interval might have been observed (odd as it seems) on the campus of the University of Kansas. This vault into the petals of the sunflower seems so quaint that I once attempted to find out from Mr. Holliday just when it was that he attended courses at that inst.i.tution. He frankly said that he could not remember. Now he has no memory at all for dates, I will vouch; yet it seems odd (I say) that he did not even remember the numerals of the cla.s.s in which he was enrolled. A "queer feller," indeed, as Mr.

Tarkington has called him. So I cannot attest, with hand on Book, that he really was at Kansas University. He may have been a footpad during that period. I have often thought to write to the dean of the university and check the matter up. It may be that entertaining anecdotes of our hero's college career could be spaded up.

Just why this remote atheneum was sconce for Mr. Holliday's candle I do not hazard. It seems I have heard him say that his cousin, Professor Wilbur Cortez Abbott (of Yale) was then teaching at the Kansas college, and this was the reason. It doesn't matter now; fifty years hence it may be of considerable importance.

However, we must press on a little faster. From Kansas he returned to New York and became a salesman in the book store of Charles Scribner's Sons, then on Fifth avenue below Twenty-third street. Here he was employed for about five years. From this experience may he traced three of the most delightful of the "Walking-Stick Papers." It was while at Scribner's that he met Joyce Kilmer, who also served as a Scribner book-clerk for two weeks in 1909. This friendship meant more to Bob Holliday than any other. The two men were united by intimate adhesions of temperament and worldly situation. Those who know what friendship means among men who have stood on the bottom rung together will ask no further comment. Kilmer was Holliday's best man in 1913; Holliday stood G.o.dfather to Kilmer's daughter Rose. On Aug. 22, 1918, Mrs. Kilmer appointed Mr. Holliday her husband's literary executor. His memoir of Joyce Kilmer is a fitting token of the manly affection that sweetens life and enriches him who even sees it from a distance.

Just when Holliday's connection with the Scribner store ceased I do not know. My guess is, about 1911. He did some work for the New York Public Library (tucking away in his files the material for the essay "Human Munic.i.p.al Doc.u.ments") and also dabbled in eleemosynary science for the Russell Sage Foundation; though the details of the latter enterprise I cannot even conjecture. Somehow or other he fell into the most richly amusing post that a belletristic journalist ever adorned, as general factotum of _The Fishing Gazette_, a trade journal. This is laid bare for the world in "The Fish Reporter."

About 1911 he began to contribute humorous sketches to the Sat.u.r.day Magazine of the New York _Evening Post_. In 1912-13 he was writing signed reviews for the New York _Times_ Review of Books. 1913-14 he was a.s.sistant literary editor of the New York _Tribune_. His meditations on the reviewing job are embalmed in "That Reviewer Cuss." In 1914 the wear and tear of continual hard work on Grub Street rather got the better of him: he packed a bag and spent the summer in England. Four charming essays record his adventures there, where we may leave him for the moment while we warm up to another aspect of the problem. Let us just set down our second memorandum:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Second Memo--Mr. Holliday knows the Literary Game from All Angles!

CHAPTER IV

(OUR HERO'S BOOK AND HEART SHALL NEVER PART)

Perhaps I should apologize for treating Mr. Holliday's "Walking-Stick Papers" in this biographical fashion. And yet I cannot resist it for this book is Mr. Holliday himself. It is mellow, odd, aromatic and tender, just as he is. It is (as he said of something else) "saturated with a distinguished, humane tradition of letters."

The book is exciting reading because you can trace in it the growth and felicitous toughening of a very remarkable talent. Mr. Holliday has been through a lively and gruelling mill. Like every sensitive journalist, he has been mangled at Ephesus. Slight and debonair as some of his pieces are, there is not one that is not an authentic fiber from life. That is the beauty of this sort of writing--the personal essay--it admits us to the very pulse of the machine. We see this man: selling books at Scribner's, pacing New York streets at night gloating on the yellow windows and the random ring of words, fattening his spirit on hundreds of books, concocting his own theory of the niceties of prose. We see that volatile humor which is native in him flickering like burning brandy round the rich plum pudding of his theme. With all his playfulness, when he sets out to achieve a certain effect he builds cunningly, with sure and skillful art. See (for instance) in his "As to People," his superbly satisfying picture (how careless it seems!) of his scrubwoman, closing with the precis of Billy Henderson's wife, which drives the nail through and turns it on the under side--

Billy Henderson's wife is handsome; she is rich; she is an excellent cook; she loves Billy Henderson.

See "My friend the Policeman," or "On Going a Journey," or "The Deceased"--this last is perhaps the high-water mark of the book. To vary the figure, this essay dips its Plimsoll-mark full under. It is freighted with far more than a dozen pages might be expected to carry safely. So quietly, so quaintly told, what a wealth of humanity is in it! Am I wrong in thinking that those fellow-artists who know the thrill of a great thing greatly done will catch breath when they read this, of the minor obits in the press--

We go into the feature headed "Died," a department similar to that on the literary page headed "Books Received." ... We are set in small type, with lines following the name line indented. It is difficult for me to tell with certainty from the printed page, but I think we are set without leads.

In such pa.s.sages, where the easy sporting-tweed fabric of Mr. Holliday's merry and liberal style fits his theme as snugly as the burr its nut, one feels tempted to cry joyously (as he says in some other connection), "it seems as if it were a book you had written yourself in a dream."

And follow him, for sheer fun, in the "Going a Journey" essay. Granted that it would never have been written but for Hazlitt and Stevenson and Belloc. Yet it is fresh distilled, it has its own sparkle. Beginning with an even pace, how it falls into a swinging stride, drugs you with hilltops and blue air! Crisp, metrical, with a steady drum of feet, it lifts, purges and sustains. "This is the religious side" of reading an essay!

Mr. Holliday, then, gives us in generous measure the "certain jolly humors" which R.L.S. says we voyage to find. He throws off flashes of imaginative felicity--as where he says of canes, "They are the light to blind men." Where he describes Mr. Oliver Herford "listing to starboard, like a postman." Where he says of the English who use colloquially phrases known to us only in great literature--"There are primroses in their speech." And where he begins his "Memoirs of a Ma.n.u.script," "I was born in Indiana."

We are now ready to let fall our third memorandum:

Third Memo--Behind his colloquial, easygoing (apparently careless) utterance, Mr. Holliday conceals a high quality of literary art.

CHAPTER V

(FURTHER OSCILLATIONS OF OUR HERO)