Grant M. Overton

i

One way to write about Nina Wilcox Putnam would be in the way she writes about everything. It’s not so hard. As thus:

Some dull day in the office. We look up and whom should we see standing right there before us but Nina Wilcox Putnam! Falling over backwards, that being what our swivel chair is made for, we say: “Well, well, well! So today is May 3, 1922! Where from? West Broadway?”

“I should not say so! South Broadway, I guess. I’ve just motored up from Florida. But your speaking of West Broadway reminds me: I’ve written a piece for George Lorimer of Saturday Evening Post. You see my book, West Broadway, brought me so many letters my arm ached from answering them. What car did you drive? Where d’y’ get gas in the desert? What’s the best route? And thus et cetera. So now I have wrote me a slender essay answering everything that anybody can ask on this or other transcontinental subjects. Mr. Lorimer will publish, and who knows—as they say in fiction—it might make a book afterward.”

“How’s Florida?”

“I left it fine, if it doesn’t get in trouble while I’m away. I’ve bought a ranch, for fruit only, on the East Coast, between Palm Beach and Miami, but not paying these expensive prices, no, not never. And I shall live there for better but not for worse, for richer, but most positively not for poorer. I pick my own alligator pears off my own tree unless I want to sell them for fifteen cents on the tree. Bathing, one-half mile east by motor.”

“Been reading your piece, ‘How I Have Got So Far So Good,’ in John Siddall’s American Magazine.”

“Yes, I thought I would join the autobiographists—Benvenuto Cellini, Margot Asquith, Benjamin Franklin, et Al, as Ring Lardner would insist. Do you know Ring? He and I are going to have one of these amicable literary duels soon, like the famous Isn’t That Just Like a Man? Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are! which Mrs. Rinehart and Irvin Cobb fought to a finish. But speaking of sport, I have discovered my grandest favourite sport, in spite of motoring, which is deep sea fishing, nothing less. Let me inform you that I landed a 9-pound dolphin which he is like fire-opals all over and will grace the wall of my dining-room no matter if all my friends suffer with him the rest of their lives. He was a male dolphin; get that! It makes a difference from the deep sea fishing sportsman’s standpoint. And this place of mine at the end of South Broadway where I can roll cocoanuts the rest of my life if I want to is at, in or about Delray, Florida. D-e-l-r-a-y; you’ve spelled it.”

“We’re publishing your new book on how to get thin, Tomorrow We Diet.”

“Oh, yes. Well, I am several laps ahead of that. Now, I am going up to my home in Madison, Connecticut, to work. Later, I’ll maybe drive out to Yellowstone Park or some place. Well, I might stay here at the Brevoort for a month; run down to Philadelphia, maybe. Did you know I once wrote a book for children that has sold 500,000 copies? And, besides a young son whom I am capable of entertaining if you’ll let him tell you, I have a few ideas....”

Hold on! This isn’t so easy as it looked.

Probably Nina Wilcox Putnam is inimitable. This one and that may steal Ring W. Lardner’s stuff, but there is a sort of Yale lock effect about the slang (American slanguage) in such books as West Broadway which is not picked so easily. As for the new Nina Wilcox Putnam novel, Laughter Limited—if you don’t believe what we say about N.W.P. inimitableness just open that book and see for yourself. The story of a movie actress? Yes, and considerable more. Just as West Broadway was a great deal more than an amusing story, being actually the best hunch extant on transcontinental motoring, outside of the automobile blue books, which are not nearly such good reading.

And then there’s Tomorrow We Diet, in which Nina Wilcox Putnam tells how she reduced fifty pounds in seven months without exercising anything but her intelligence. But if you want to know about Nina Wilcox Putnam, read her story in her own words that appeared in the American Magazine for May, 1922. Here is a bit of it:

“Believe you me, considering the fact that they are mostly men, which it would hardly be right to hold that up against them, Editors in my experience has been an unusually fine race, and it is my contracts with them has made me what I am today, I’m sure I’m satisfied. And when a fellow or sister writer commences hollering about how Editors in America don’t know anything about what is style or English, well anyways not enough to publish it when they see it, why all I can say is that I could show them living proof to the contrary, only modesty and good manners forbids me pointing, even at myself. I am also sure that the checks these hollerers have received from said Editors is more apt to read the Editor regrets than pay to the order of, if you get what I mean.

“Well, I have had it pretty soft, I will admit, because all the work I done to get where I am, is never over eight hours a day penal servitude, locked up in my study and fighting against only such minor odds and intrusions as please may I have a dollar and a quarter for the laundry, or now dear you have been writing long enough, I have brought you a nice cup of tea, just when I am going strong on a important third chapter. But my work is of course not really work since it is done in the home, as my relations often remind me. At least they did until I got George, that’s my pres. husband, and he never lets me be interrupted unless he wants to interrupt me himself for a clean collar or something.

“Also besides working these short hours, four of which is generally what us authors calls straight creative work, I have it soft in another way. I got a pretty good market for my stuff and always had, and this of course has got me so’s I can draw checks as neat and quick as anybody in the family and they love to see me do it.

“All kidding to one side it is the straight dope when I say that from being merely the daughter of honest and only moderately poor parents I have now a house of my own, the very one in our town which I most admired as a child; and the quit-claim deed come out of my own easy money. I also got a car or two—and a few pieces of the sort of second-hand stuff which successful people generally commence cluttering up their house with as a sign of outward and visible success. I mean the junk one moves in when one moves the golden oak out....

“I never commenced going over really big until it was up to me to make good every time I delivered, and this was not until my husband died and left me with a small son, which I may say in passing, that I consider he is the best thing I have ever published. Well, there I was, a widow with a child, and no visible means of support except when I looked into the mirror. Of course, before then I had been earning good money, but only when I wanted something, or felt like it. Now I had to want to feel like it three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

“I’ll tell the world it was some jolt.”

Perfect Behaviour is the calmly confident title of the new book by Donald Ogden Stewart—a work which will rejoice the readers of A Parody Outline of History. Behaviour is the great obstacle to happiness. One may overcome all the ordinary complexes. One may kill his cousins and get his nephews and nieces deported, and refuse to perform Honest Work—yet remain a hopeless slave to the Book of Etiquette. In a Pullman car, with a ticket for the lower berth, he will take the seat facing backward, only to tremble and blush with shame on learning his social error. Who has not suffered the mortification of picking up the fork that was on the floor and then finding out afterward that it was the function of the waiter to pick up the fork? What is a girl to do if, escorted home at night from the dance, she finds the hour is rather late and yet her folks are still up? Whether she should invite the young man in or ask him to call again, she is sure to do the wrong thing. Then there are those wedding days, the proudest and happiest of a girl’s life, when she slips her hand into the arm of the wrong man or otherwise gives herself away before she is given away. Tragedy lurks in such trifles. Don Stewart, who has suffered countless mortifications and heartbreaks from just such little things as these, determined that something shall be done to spare others his own unfortunate experiences.

Perfect Behaviour is the result of his brave determination. It is a book that will be constantly in demand until society is abolished. Then, too, there is that new behaviouristic psychology. You have not heard of that? I can only assure you that Mr. Stewart’s great work is founded upon all the most recent principles of behaviouristic psychology. Noted scientists will undoubtedly endorse it. You will endorse it yourself, and you will be able to cash in on it.

Stewart wrote A Parody Outline of History for The Bookman. When the idea was broached, John Farrar, editor of The Bookman, was about the only person who saw the possibilities. Response to the Parody Outline of History was immediate, spontaneous and unanimous. When the chapters appeared as a book, this magnificent take-off of contemporary American writers as well as of H. G. Wells leaped at once into the place of a best seller. It remains one. The thing that it accomplished is not likely to be well done again for years.

Neither Here Nor There is the title of a new book by Oliver Herford, author of This Giddy Globe.

I do not know which is funnier, Herford or his books. Among the unforgotten occasions was one when he was in the Doran office talking about a forthcoming book and nibbling on animal crackers. Suddenly he stopped nibbling and exclaimed with a gasp of dismay:

“Good heavens! I’ve been eating the illustrations for my book.”

Timothy Tubby’s Journal is, of course, the diary of the famous British novelist with notes by Theresa Tubby, his wife. Tubby, on his visit to this side, was remarkably observant. He says:

“How weary we were after a few hours of being interviewed and photographed! This deep appreciation on the part of the American people was touching, but exhausting. Yet my publishers telephoned me every two or three hours, to say that editions of my latest novel were flying through multitudinous presses; that I must bear up under the strain and give the public what it demands; namely, the glimpse of me and of my aristocratic wife. This, it seems, is what sells a book in America. The public must see an author in order to believe that he can write.

“When my distinguished forebear Charles Dickens[1] arrived in the town of Boston, he found his room flooded with offers of a pew at Sunday morning church. This fashion in America has apparently passed, though I was taken on sightseeing expeditions to various cathedrals whose architecture seemed to me to be execrable (largely European copies—nothing natively American). It was never suggested that I attend divine service. On the contrary, I had countless invitations to be present at what is known as a ‘cocktail chase.’ My New York literary admirers seemed tumbling over one another to offer me keys to their cellars and to invite me to take part in one of those strange functions. It is their love of danger, rather than any particular passion for liquor, that has, I believe, given birth to these elaborate fÊtes.

“A cocktail chase takes place shortly before dinner. It may lead you into any one of a number of places, even as far as the outlying districts of the Bronx. If you own a motor, you may use that; if not, a taxi will do. Usually a large number of motors are employed. Add to this pursuing motorcycle policemen, and the sight is most impressive. The police are for protection against crime waves, not for the arrest of the cocktail chasers. A revenue agent performs this function, when it becomes necessary.

“The number of our invitations was so large that it was hard to pick and choose. Naturally, we did not care to risk attendance at any function which might injure our reputation. Usually my wife has an almost psychic sense of such matters; but the Social Register was of no assistance in this case.[2] Before several hours had passed, however, we decided to hire a social secretary. I phoned my publisher for a recommendation. ‘Dear Tubby,’ he said, ‘what you need is a publicity agent, not a social secretary. I’ll send you the best New York can offer immediately. It was careless of me not to think of it before. You seemed to have a genius for that sort of thing yourself.’

“The publicity agent is difficult to explain. He is somehow connected with an American game which originated in the great northwest, and which is called log-rolling. He stands between you and the public which is clamouring for a glimpse of you. The difference between a social secretary and a publicity agent seems to be that the former merely answers invitations, while the latter makes sure that you are invited. He writes your speeches for you, sometimes even goes so far as to write your novels, and, in a strange place, will impersonate you at all public functions unless your wife objects.[3]

“Mr. Vernay arrived, fortunately, in time to sort our invitations. ‘First,’ he said, ‘just you and Terry’ (he was one of those brusque new world types and Theresa rather enjoyed his familiarity—‘so refreshing,’ I remember she said) ‘sit right down and I’ll tell you all about literature in this here New York.’”

... I have always been meaning to read Tubby’s novels—so like those of Archibald Marshall and Anthony Trollope, I understand—but have never got around to it. Now I feel I simply must.

Such an expert judge as Franklin P. Adams has considered that the ablest living parodist in verse is J. C. Squire. Certainly his Collected Parodies is a masterly performance quite fit to go on the shelf with Max Beerbohm’s A Christmas Garland. In Collected Parodies will be found all those verses which, published earlier in magazines and in one or two books, have delighted the readers of Punch and other magazines—“Imaginary Speeches,” “Steps to Parnassus,” “Tricks of the Trade,” “Repertory Drama, How They Do It and How They Would Have Done It,” “Imaginary Reviews and Speeches” and “The Aspirant’s Manual.”

The great source book of fun in rhyme, however, is and will for a long time remain Carolyn Wells’s The Book of Humorous Verse. This has not an equal in existence, so far as I know, except The Home Book of Verse. Here in nearly 900 pages are specimens of light verse from Chaucer to Chesterton. Modern writers, such as Bert Leston Taylor and Don Marquis, share the pages with Robert Herrick and William Cowper, Charles Lamb and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Verses whimsical, satiric, narrative, punning—there is no conceivable variety overlooked by Miss Wells in what was so evidently a labour of love as well as of the most careful industry, an industry directed by an exceptional taste.

P. G. Wodehouse used to write lyrics for musical plays in England, interpolating one or two in existing successes. Then he came to America and began writing lyrics, interpolating them in musical comedies over here. Then he began interpolating extremely funny short stories in the American magazines and he has now succeeded in interpolating into modern fiction some of the funniest novels of the last few years. This bit from his latest, Three Men and a Maid, is typical:

“Mrs. Hignett was never a very patient woman. ”‘Let us take all your negative qualities for granted,’ she said curtly. ‘I have no doubt that there are many things which you do not do. Let us confine ourselves to issues of definite importance. What is it, if you have no objection to concentrating your attention on that for a moment, that you wish to see me about?’

“This marriage.’

“‘What marriage?’

“‘Your son’s marriage.’

“‘My son is not married.’

“‘No, but he’s going to be. At eleven o’clock this morning at the Little Church Around the Corner!’

“Mrs. Hignett stared.

“‘Are you mad?’

“‘Well, I’m not any too well pleased, I’m bound to say,’ admitted Mr. Mortimer. ‘You see, darn it all, I’m in love with the girl myself!’

“‘Who is this girl?’

“‘Have been for years. I’m one of those silent, patient fellows who hang around and look a lot, but never tell their love....’

“‘Who is this girl who has entrapped my son?’

“‘I’ve always been one of those men who....’

“‘Mr. Mortimer! With your permission we will take your positive qualities for granted. In fact, we will not discuss you at all.... What is her name?’

“‘Bennett.’

“‘Bennett? Wilhelmina Bennett? The daughter of Mr. Rufus Bennett? The red-haired girl I met at lunch one day at your father’s house?’

“‘That’s it. You’re a great guesser. I think you ought to stop the thing.’

“‘I intend to.’

“‘Fine!’

“‘The marriage would be unsuitable in every way. Miss Bennett and my son do not vibrate on the same plane.’

“That’s right. I’ve noticed it myself.’

“‘Their auras are not the same colour.’

“‘If I thought that once,‘ said Bream Mortimer, ’‘I’ve thought it a hundred times. I wish I had a dollar for every time I thought it. Not the same colour! That’s the whole thing in a nutshell.’”

Mr. Wodehouse is described by a friend as “now a somewhat fluid inhabitant of England, running over here spasmodically. Last summer he bought a race-horse. It is the beginning of the end!”