Just the same the book made a great impression on me! It gave me a great respect for Hazard, made me really fond of him. And it fixed my mind definitely on this matter of writing—not a novel, curiously, but a play, a form which from the first seemed easier for me and which I still consider so, one in which I work with greater ease than I do in the novel. I mentioned to Wood and McCord that Hazard and another man had written a novel and that I had read it. I must have enthused over it for both were impressed, and I myself seemed to gain standing, especially with Wood. It was generally admitted then that Hazard was one of the best reporters in the city, and my being taken into his confidence in this fashion seemed to Wood to be a significant thing.
And not long after that I had something else to tell these two which carried great weight. There was at that time on the editorial page of the paper a column entitled “Heard in the Corridors,” which was nothing more than a series of imaginary interviews with passing guests at the various hotels, or interviews condensed into short tales, about six to the column, one at least being accredited to a guest at each of the three principal hotels, the others standing accredited as things heard at the union Station or upon the street somewhere. Previous to my arrival this column had been written by various men, the last one having been the already famous W. C. Brann, then editor of the brilliant Iconoclast. By the time I arrived, however, Brann had departed, and the column had sagged. Hazard was doing a part of it, Bellairs another, but both were tired of it. At first when I considered it (a little extra work added to my daily reporting) I was not so pleased; indeed it seemed an all but impossible thing to do. Later, however, after a trial, I discovered that it gave free rein to my wildest imaginings, which was exactly what I wanted. I could write any sort of story I pleased, romantic, realistic or lunatic, and credit it to some imaginary guest at one of the hotels, and if it was not too improbable it was passed without comment. At any rate, when this was assigned to me I went forth to get names of personages stopping at the hotels. I inquired for celebrities. As a rule, the clerks could give me no information or were indifferent, and seemed to take very little interest in having the hotel advertised. I returned and racked my brain, decided that I could manufacture names as well as stories, and forthwith scribbled six marvels, attaching such names as came into my mind. The next day these were all duly published and I was told to do the column regularly as well as my regular assignments. My asinine ebullience had won me a new task without any increase in pay.
However, it seemed an honor to have a whole column assigned to me, and this honor I communicated to McCord and Wood. It was then that either Wood or McCord informed me that Brann had done it previously and had written snake stories for the paper into the bargain. This flattered me, for they pictured him for what he was, a rare soul, and I felt myself growing. Peter had illustrated some of these tales for him, for, as he said with mock dignity: “I am the official snake artist of this paper.” That very night, as a reward for my efficiency I was invited by Dick to come to his room—the room, the studio—where he inflicted about nine of his horrible masterpieces upon me.
I would not make so much of this great honor if it were not for what it meant to me then. The room was large and dark, on Broadway between Market and Walnut, with the cars jangling below. It contained one great white bed, a long table covered with the papers and literary compositions of Mr. Richard Wood, and was decorated and reinforced with that gentleman’s conception of what constituted literary insignia. On the walls hung dusty engravings representing the death of Hamlet and the tempting of Faust. In one corner, over a chest of drawers, was the jagged blade of a sword-fish, and in another a most curious display of oriental coins. The top of the wardrobe was surmounted by a gruesome papier-mâché head representing that somewhat demented creature known in England as Ally Sloper. A clear space at one corner of the table held a tin pail for carrying beer, and the floor, like the walls, was covered with some dusty brown material which might once have been a carpet. Owing to the darkness of the furnishings and the brightness of the fire, the room had a very cheery look.
“Say, Dick, did you see where one of ——’s plays had made a great hit in New York?” asked McCord. “He’s made a strike this time.”
“No,” replied Dick solemnly, poking among the coals of the grate and drawing up a chair. “Sit down, Dreiser. Pull up a chair, Peter. This confounded grate smokes whenever the wind’s from the South. Still there’s nothing like a grate fire.”
We drew up chairs. I was revolving in my mind the charm of the room and a vision of greatness in play-writing. These two men seemed subtly involved with the perfection of the arts. In this atmosphere, with such companions, I felt that I could accomplish anything, and soon.
“I’ll tell you how it is with the game of play-writing,” observed Dick sententiously. “You have to have imagination and feeling and all that, but what’s more important than anything is a little business sense, to know how to get in with those fellows. You might have the finest play in the world in your pocket, but if you didn’t know how to dispose of it what good would it do you? None at all. You got to know that end first.”
He reached over and pulled the coal-scuttle into position as a footrest and then looked introspectively at the ceiling.
“The play’s the thing,” put in Peter. “If you could write a real good play you wouldn’t need to worry about getting it staged.”
“Aw, wouldn’t I? Listen to that now!” commented Dick irascibly. “I tell you, Peter, you don’t know anything about it. You only think you do; that’s all. Say, did Campbell have a good play in his pocket or didn’t he? You betcher neck he did. Did he get it staged? No, you betcher boots he didn’t. Don’t talk to me; I know.”
By his manner you would have thought he had a standing bone to pick with Peter, but this was only his way. It made me laugh.
“Well, the play’s the first thing to worry about anyhow,” I observed. “I wish I were in a position to write one.”
“Why don’t you try?” suggested McCord. “You ought to be able to do something in that line. I bet you could write a good one.”
We fell to discussing dramatists. Peter, with his eye for gorgeous effects, costuming and the like, immediately began to describe the ballet effects and scenery of a comic opera laid in Algeria which was then playing in St. Louis.
“You ought to go and see that, Dreiser,” he urged. “It’s something wonderful. The effect of the balconies in the first act, with the muezzins crying the prayers from the towers in the distance, is great. Then the harmony of the color work in the stones of the buildings is something exquisite. You want to see it.”
I felt myself glowing. This intimate conversation with men of such marked artistic ability, in a room, too, which was the reflection of an artist’s personality, raised my sense of latent ability to the highest point. Not that I felt I was not fit to associate with these people—I felt that I was more than fit, their equal at every point, conceal it as I might—but it was something to come in touch with your own, to find real friends to the manner born who were your equals and able to sympathize with you and appreciate your every mood. A man who had found such friends as these so quickly surely need never worry.
“I’ll tell you what I propose to do, Peter, while you people are talking,” observed Dick. “I propose to go over to Frank’s and get a can of beer. Then I’ll read you that story.”
This proposal to read a story was new to me; I had not heard Wood had written one before. I looked at him more keenly, and a little flame of envy leaped to life in me. To be able to write a short story—or any kind of a story!
He went to his wardrobe, whence he extracted a medium-length black cape of broadcloth, which he threw about his shoulders, and a soft hat which he drew rakishly over his eyes, then took the tin pail and a piece of money from a plate, after the best fashion of the artistic romances of the day, and went out. I gazed admiringly after him, touched by the romance of it all. That face, waxen, drawn, sensitive, with deep burning eyes, and that frail body! That cape! That hat! That plate of coins! Yes, this was Bohemia! I was now a part of that happy middle world which was superior to wealth and poverty. I was in that serene realm where moved freely talent, artistic ability, noble thought, ingenious action, unhampered by conventional thought and conduct. A great man should so live, an artist certainly. These two could and did do as they pleased. They were not as others, but wise, sensitive, delicately responsive to all that was best in life; and as yet the great world was not aware of their existence!
Wood came back with the beer and then Peter insisted that he read us the story. I noticed that there was something impish in his manner. He assured me that all of Dick’s stories were masterpieces, every one; that time alone was required for world-wide recognition.
Dick picked up a single manuscript from a heap. “I don’t want to inflict this on you, Dreiser,” he said sweetly and apologetically. “We had planned to do this before I knew you were coming.”
“That’s the way he always talks,” put in Peter banteringly. “Dick loves to stage things. But they’re great stories just the same.”
I leaned back, prepared to be thrilled. Dick drew up his chair to the table and adjusted a green-shaded gas lamp close to the table’s edge. He then unfolded his MS. and began reading in a low, well-modulated, semi-pathetic voice, which seemed very effective in the more sentimental passages. Reverently I sat and listened. The tale was nothing, a mere daub, but, oh, the wonder of it! Was I not in the presence and friendship of artists? Was not this Bohemia? Had I not long heard and dreamed of it? Well, then, what difference whether the tales were good or bad? They were by one whom I was compelled to admire, an artist, pale, sensitive, recessive, one who at the slightest show of inattention or lack of appreciation might leave me and never see me more.
I listened to about nine without dying, declaring each and every one to be the best I had ever heard—perfect.
CHAPTER XXIV
From now on, because of this companionship, my life in St. Louis took on a much more cheerful aspect. Hitherto, in spite of my work and my natural interest in a strange city, I had had intensely gloomy moments. My favorite pastime, when I was not out on an assignment or otherwise busy, was to walk the streets and view the lives and activities of others, not thinking so much how I might advantage myself and my affairs as how, for some, the lightning of chance was always striking in somewhere and disrupting plans, leaving destruction and death in its wake, for others luck or fortune. I never was blinded to the gross favoritism practiced by nature, and this I resented largely, it may be, because it was not, or I thought it was not, practiced in my behalf. Later in life I began to suspect that a gross favoritism, in regard to certain things at least, was being practiced in my behalf. I was never without friends, never without some one to do me a good turn at a critical moment, never without love and the sacrifice of beauty on the part of some one in my behalf, never without a certain amount of applause or repute. Was I worthy of it? I knew I was not and I felt that the powers that make and control life did not care two whoops whether I was or not.
Life, as I had seen and felt from my earliest thinking period, used people, sometimes to their advantage, sometimes not. Occasionally, as I could see, I was used to my advantage as well as to that of some one or something else. Occasionally I was used, as I thought, to my disadvantage. Now and then when I imagined I was being used most disadvantageously it was not so at all, as when for a period I found myself unable to write and so compelled to turn to other things—a turning which resulted in better material later on. At this time, however, I felt that whatever the quality of the gifts handed me or the favors done me, they were as nothing compared to some; and, again, I was honestly and sympathetically interested in the horrible deprivations inflicted upon others, their weaknesses of mind and body, afflictions of all sizes and sorts, the way so often they helplessly blundered or were driven by internal chemic fires, as in the case of the fascinating and beautiful-minded John T. McEnnis, to their own undoing. That great idealistic soul, that warm, ebullient heart!
The opportunity for indulging in these moods was due to the fact that I had plenty of time on my hands, that just at this time I was more interested in seeing than in reading, and that the three principal hotels here, Southern-fashion, were most hospitable, equipping their lobbies and even their flanking sidewalks with comfortable rocking-chairs where one might sit and dream or read or view the passing scene with idle or analytic eye. My favorite hotel was the Lindell, rather large and not impressive but still successful and popular, which stood at the northwest corner of Sixth and Washington Avenue. Here I would repair whenever I had a little time and rock in peace and watch the crowd of strangers amble to and fro. The manager of this hotel, a brisk, rather interesting and yet job-centered American, seeing me sit about every afternoon between four-thirty and six and knowing that I was from the Globe, finally began to greet me and ask occasionally if I did not want to go up to dinner. (How lonely and forlorn I must have looked!) On Thanksgiving and Christmas afternoons of this my first season there, seeing me idle and alone, he asked me to be his guest. I accepted, not knowing what else to do. To make it seem like a real invitation he came in after I was seated at the table and sat down with me for a few minutes. He was so charming and the hotel so brisk and crowded that I soon felt at home.
The daily routine of my work seemed to provide ample proof of my suspicions that life was grim and sad. Regularly it would be a murder, a suicide, a failure, a defalcation which I would be assigned to cover, and on the same day there would be an important wedding, a business or political banquet, a ball or a club entertainment of some kind, which would provide just the necessary contrast to prove that life is haphazard and casual and cruel; to some lavish, to others niggardly.
Mere money, often unworthily inherited or made by shabby methods, seemed to throw commonplace and even wretched souls into such glittering and condescending prominence, in this world at least. Many of the business men with whom I came in contact were vulgarians, their wives and daughters vain and coarse and inconsiderate. I was constantly impressed by the airs of the locally prominent, their craving for show and pleasure, their insane greed for personal mention, their hearty indifference to anything except money plus a keen wish to seem to despise it. I remember going one afternoon to an imposing residence where some function was in progress. I was met by an ostentatious butler who exclaimed most nobly: “My dear sir, who sent you here? The Globe knows we never give lists to newspaper men. We never admit reporters,” and then stiffly closed the door on me. I reported as much to the city editor, who remarked meekly, “Well, that’s all right,” and gave me something else to do. But the next day a list of the guests at this function was published, and in this paper. I made inquiry of Hartung, who said: “Oh, the society editor must have turned that in. These society women send in their lists beforehand and then say they don’t receive reporters.”
