Up in the Old Hotel (Vintage Classics) (30 page)

For a few minutes on the morning of July 19, 1936, it looked as if the mystery might be solved. On that day a letter from John S. Smith was delivered to the Irving Trust. The official on whose desk it was placed became excited. The envelope was postmarked Wabash, Indiana. Inside there was a letter scribbled wildly on the backs of seven lunchroom menus. It began, ‘Irv. Nat. Bank of N.Y. Dear Sir,’ and then became illegible. The official was exasperated. He glanced through page after page and none of the writing made sense. The letter had been written with an indelible pencil and had come in contact with water; most of the words had beome ugly purple blots. Also, it was evident that John S. Smith had carried
the
letter around in his pocket for days before mailing it. The sheets were mottled with grease and there were tobacco crumbs in the folds. The official got a magnifying glass and he and a colleague went to work. After a considerable amount of agonizing labor, they isolated the following phrases: ‘listen those three waitress,’ ‘put something in that bank,’ ‘in USA for 26 yrs 30 yrs 22,’ ‘mortgage and now,’ ‘to see about cats,’ ‘waitress girl in that place in Ohio,’ and ‘all over USA.’ To make matters worse, two of his ubiquitous checks were pinned to the letter. Both were made payable to the Irv. Nat. Bank and both were written on the Irv. Nat. Bank. One was for $6,000, the other was for $15,000.

When I finished reading the letters in the file I realized that I did not have a clear impression of John S. Smith. At first he reminded me vaguely of W. C. Fields, but that impression soon disappeared; for one thing, I found no letters indicating that he had ever given checks to bartenders. For a day or so after I read the letters I thought of him as a benevolent old screwball. Then I began to be troubled by the memory of those crude, grinning faces with which he decorated so many of the checks. I began to think of the vain hopes he raised in the breasts of the waitresses who had graciously given him hundreds of meals and the truck-drivers who had hauled him over a hundred highways, and to feel that about John S. Smith of Riga, Latvia, Europe, there is something a little sinister.

(1940)

The Don’t-Swear Man

ONE DANK AFTERNOON
I dropped into Shannon’s, an Irish saloon on the southeast corner of Third Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street, and ordered a split of Guinness. ‘Fine pneumonia weather we’re having,’ the bartender remarked. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s one hell of a day.’ A portly old man standing a few feet up the bar gave a grunt, abruptly put down his beer glass, turned to me, and said, ‘My boy, a profane word never yet had any effect on the weather.’ The remark irritated me. I was in extremely low spirits; my shoes had been sopping wet all day and I felt certain that I was going to catch a cold and die. However, I nodded perfunctorily and said, ‘I guess that’s right, Mister.’ ‘Oh, don’t apologize,’ the old man said. Then he dug into a pocket of his coat and pulled out a small, pale-pink card. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘read this and think it over.’ The card said,
‘NEW HOPE FOR THE WORLD. GOD BLESS AMERICA AND OUR HOMES. HAVE NO SWEARING. BOYCOTT PROFANITY
!
PLEASE DO NOT SWEAR, NOR USE OBSCENE OR PROFANE LANGUAGE. THESE CARDS ARE FOR DISTRIBUTION. SEND FOR SOME – THEY ARE FREE. ANTIPROFANITY LEAGUE. A. S. COLBORNE, PRES
. 185
EAST SEVENTY-SIX STREET.’

After reading this, I took a good look at the old man. He was over six feet tall and he had a double chin and a large paunch. His cheeks were ruddy and his eyes, behind steel-rimmed glasses, were clear and utterly honest. Instead of a vest, he wore a brown sweater. In the knot of his polka-dot tie there was a horseshoe stickpin. Three pencils and a fountain pen were clipped to his breast pocket. He had placed his hat on the bar, upside down, to dry off. He had a white mustache and a fine head of white hair, several locks of which had been brushed down across his forehead, old bartender style. He looked, in fact, like a dignified, opinionated, old-fashioned bartender on his day off. I have always had a high regard for that kind of man, and I said, ‘If I offended you, sir, I’m sorry, only what makes you think “hell” is a profane word?’

‘Well, I tell you,’ he said gravely, ‘it might not be one-hundred-per-cent profanity, but it’s a leader-on. You start out with “hell,” “devil take it,” “Dad burn it,” “Gee whizz,” and the like of that, and by and by you won’t be able to open your trap without letting loose an awful, awful, blasphemous oath. It’s like the cocaine dope habit. I know. I talked real rough myself when I was a young squirt, but I had the mother wit to quit. I haven’t uttered a solitary profane word since a Sunday morning in the winter of 1886. I was running to catch a ferryboat and I got left, and let an oath out of me so awful I broke down and cried like a baby.’

I was about to ask what the oath was, but thought better of it. Instead I said, ‘You remind me a lot of a man who used to work behind the bar at the Murray Hill Hotel. Are you a bartender?’

The old man did not answer me. He picked up his glass and finished his beer. Then, after a resounding smack of the lips, he said, ‘Profanity! Blasphemy! Evil tongues a-wagging and a-wagging! That’s why the world is headed for wrack and ruin! Let me introduce myself. Name is Arthur Samuel Colborne. I’m the founder and head of the Anti-Profanity League. Founded 1901. An international organization. If the truth was known, I’m also the founder of the Safe and Sane Fourth of July movement. Founded 1908. On the Fourth I used to stand on the steps of City Hall and read the Declaration of Independence to all that would listen. People called me a crank, but I told them I wasn’t crank enough to spend good money on firecrackers. Others took up the Safe and Sane, and I kept plugging away with the Anti-Profanity. I’ve spent the better part of forty years cleaning up profanity conditions. I and my members have passed out six million cards like the one I handed you. We call them profanity-exterminators. Six million. Think of it! I’m past seventy, but I’m a go-getter, fighting the evil on all fronts. Keeps me busy. I’m just after seeing a high official at City Hall. There’s some Broadway plays so profane it’s a wonder to me the tongues of the actors and the actresses don’t wither up and come loose at the roots and drop to the ground, and I beseeched this high official to take action. Said he’d do what he could. Probably won’t do a single, solitary thing. I wanted to have a chat with Mayor La Guardia, but they told me he’d just stepped out. That’s
what
they always say. The Mayor’s a pompish little fellow, as strutty as a duck. I’ve heard that he gets so profane when he loses his temper it’s enough to make your head swim. You think that’s true?’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me a bit,’ I said.

Mr Colborne pursed his lips and sadly shook his head from side to side. ‘He ought to be ashamed of hisself,’ he said.

The bartender had poured my stout. I asked Mr Colborne to have a drink with me. He drew out a thick gold watch, glanced at it, and said, ‘Much obliged, but I seldom take more than two, and I’ve had that. Nothing wrong in beer. Good for your nerves. I’d have another, but I want to get home in time for a radio program. Hillbilly singing. I’m a great believer in it. Very wholesome. I’m also a great believer in opera music, Hawaiian music, Kate Smith, and Charlie McCarthy. Here a while back, this Bergen feller had Charlie saying “Doggone this” and “Doggone that” on the radio, and I wrote him and attached an exterminator to the letter. “Think it over, Mr Bergen,” I said. Got a speedy reply. “Won’t happen again,” he said.’

‘Is “doggone” a leader-on?’ I asked.

‘I’ll say it is! One of the hardest to eradicate! Look here, my boy, I’d like to give you some exterminators to pass out to your friends, keep the ball rolling, but I’m cleaned out. Put a handful in my pocket this morning, but I gave some out on the subway, and I slipped a few into some cars that were parked in front of City Hall, including the Mayor’s car, and I left a couple with the Mayor’s secretary, and the one I handed you was the last of the lot. Drop into my headquarters sometime and I’ll give you a supply. My address is printed on the exterminator.’

‘Thanks very much,’ I said.

He waved his hand deprecatingly. ‘Don’t mention it,’ he said.

He put on his hat, paid for his beers, shook hands with me, and nodded to the bartender. Halfway to the door, he turned and came back to the bar. ‘Interesting case out in Chicago here a while back,’ he said to me. ‘Two big German butchers had been working at the same block in a slaughterhouse for eighteen years. One morning one butcher took up his cleaver and split the other butcher’s head. Police asked him why he did it, and he said, “I just couldn’t stand
his
profanity any longer!”’ I laughed, and Mr Colborne gave an indignant snort. ‘Look here, my boy,’ he said, frowning at me, ‘first-degree murder’s not a laughing matter. If you look at it the right way, there’s a good lesson in that case. Think it over!’ Then he left.

‘Was the old gentleman kidding me?’ I asked the bartender, who had been listening.

‘Oh, no,’ the bartender said. ‘He’s a big reformer. He’s well known in the neighborhood. His headquarters are up the street half a block.’

Mainly because he was the first beer-drinking reformer I had ever encountered, I resolved to visit Mr Colborne. Several afternoons later I did. The address printed on the exterminator he had given me turned out to be an old, red-brick apartment house, on the front of which, just left of the stoop, was nailed a foot-square tin sign reading,
‘HEADQUARTERS ANTI-PROFANITY LEAGUE. CARDS THAT READ DO NOT SWEAR CAN BE HAD FREE.’
A woman with a poodle in her arms was standing on the stoop. She watched me read the sign, and when I walked up the steps she said, ‘If you’re looking for the don’t-swear man, he lives down in the basement.’ I rang the basement bell and Mr Colborne let me in. Over his suit he had on a black, full-length apron, the kind printers wear. He held a frying pan in his left hand and a dish towel in this right. ‘Come in and make yourself at home,’ he said. ‘Take a seat, and I’ll be with you soon as I finish washing up in the kitchen. This room here is the headquarters of the League. I sleep and eat in a couple of rooms in back. I’m a bachelor and I get my own meals. I’m a bit set in my ways, and I prefer the grub I cook for myself to the highest-class restaurant there is. Cleaner. While you’re waiting, look at my scrapbook. You’ll find it somewhere in that mess on my desk.’

He went back to his kitchen and I took a look around the room. It was a long, narrow, low-ceilinged room. There were two windows, but not much light came through them. Both were shut, and there was a kitchen smell in the air. The floor was covered with linoleum. Running just below the ceiling were a couple of asbestos-sheathed steam-heat pipes. On the mantel stood a highly colored plaster statue of St Michael trampling the Devil. The statue was wrapped in cellophane, doubtless to keep off dust. Along one
wall
were two tables and a small iron safe. There was a typewriter on one table, and on the other were a radio and a tall vase of artificial roses; dust was thick on the red petals of the roses. Two walls were hung with oil paintings from baseboard to ceiling. At least half were religious, many of them portraits of saints and of the Virgin; other subjects included a windmill in the moonlight, a mother sewing beside a cradle, a thatched cottage, and a Jersey cow standing belly-deep in a lush meadow. All were in gilded frames.

On Mr Colborne’s flat-topped desk were a coffee cup half filled with foreign stamps clipped from envelopes, a begonia plant and a geranium plant in little red pots, an alarm clock, and a great pile of correspondence, books, and religious magazines. There were also five neat stacks of exterminators. I found the scrapbook he had mentioned under some copies of a monthly magazine called the
Holy Name Journal
. Pasted in the scrapbook were scores of letters from publishers, politicians, actors, public officials, and moving-picture and radio-station executives, either replying to Mr Colborne’s complaints about ‘profanity conditions’ or thanking him for sending them exterminators. Most of the letters were evasive, but all were extremely respectful. One, from William Randolph Hearst’s secretary, said, ‘On behalf of Mr Hearst, I want to thank you for the little cards you sent to him. It was very kind of you. Mr Hearst is not in town, and therefore it is impossible to give them to him.’ I was about half through the book when Mr Colborne returned, still wearing his black apron. He sat down, clasped his hands over his paunch, and yawned.

‘I’m sort of sleepy,’ he said. ‘Sat up late last night studying over bar and grill profanity. Why, the women are worse than the men. And you can’t talk to them! Why, they’ll spit in your eye! I got a notion to revive the warnings I used to put up in saloons back before prohibition. In those days the liquor-dealing element cooperated with me. In 1916 I had posters tacked up in four thousand premises, bar and back room. I’ll show you one.’ He ransacked a desk drawer and brought out a cardboard poster which said,
‘IN THE INTEREST OF CLEAN SPEECH AND COMMON DECENCY, PLEASE REFRAIN FROM THE OBJECTIONABLE USE OF PROFANE AND
OBSCENE
LANGUAGE AND EXPECTORATING IN PUBLIC PLACES. WOULD YOU USE SUCH LANGUAGE IN YOUR OWN HOME? RESPECT YOUR FELLOW MAN. ANTIPROFANITY LEAGUE.’

‘Those warnings did a world of good,’ Mr Colborne said. ‘They just about put a stop to saloon profanity, and then along came prohibition and tore down all my work. Looking at it from an antiprofanity standpoint, prohibition was an awful nuisance. Nowadays saloons don’t even look like saloons, and I’m not sure they’ll let me hang posters in them. In the old days saloonkeepers were generous friends of the League. They used to call me the Professor. Practically every place I put up posters, the boss would insist on making a contribution. I held them in high esteem. So much so that when Mayor Jimmy Walker, a fine man, was organizing his great beer parade up Fifth Avenue in May, 1932, I went to my most active members and I said, “The liquor-dealing element was always nice to us, and now we should hit a lick for them. Let’s have a delegation from the League in the beer parade.” The idea caught on, and during the morning of the parade we rounded up five hundred head of people and a brass band. That afternoon we marched right behind the Tammany Hall delegation. We carried tin growlers and shouted, “We want beer!,” “Down with profanity,” “Beer for taxation,” “Boycott profanity!,” and the like of that, and had a most enjoyable time. We wound up in a saloon and drank more beer than John saw.’

Mr Colborne was interrupted by the doorbell. He grunted and got up and opened the door. A thin, elderly woman came in. ‘I already passed out the exterminators you gave me last month,’ she said, with obvious pride. ‘You better let me have about two hundred this time.’ ‘Oh, my!’ said Mr Colborne. ‘That’s good work. Keep at it, and one of these days you’ll have the Bronx all cleaned up.’ He handed the woman a supply of cards held together with a rubber band and she dropped them in her handbag. ‘Mr Colborne,’ she said, ‘do you think there’s been an improvement over last year?’ Mr Colborne stood quite still for a few moments, deep in thought. ‘I’ve noticed a decline in street swearing,’ he said finally, ‘but there’s an awful lot of work still to be done.’ ‘You never spoke a truer word,’ the woman said. ‘You know, it’s disgusting to me the way
the
city’s tearing down the elevated lines. There was always less swearing on the “L” than on the dirty old subway. A lot less obscenity, too, if you ask me. It just means we’ll have to redouble our efforts.’ ‘That’s the spirit!’ Mr Colborne exclaimed. ‘We’ll have to keep plugging away. Isn’t that right?’ The woman smacked her palms together. ‘That’s right, Mr Colborne!’ she said emphatically. Then she left.

‘She’s a widow woman from the Bronx and one of our most active workers,’ Mr Colborne said. ‘Look here, my boy, would you be interested in hearing how I came to start this work?’

I said that I would.

‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘the history of the League and the story of my life are all wrapped up together, so I’ll begin at the beginning, as the fellow said. I’m English-Irish by descent, born down on Avenue A and Fourteenth Street. I’m a Roman Catholic by religion, although some think I’m hooked up with the Salvation Army. Not that the Army isn’t a fine thing. Some of those Salvation fellers are wonderful for passing out exterminators. By trade, I’m a picture-restorer, frame-maker, and gilder, the third generation in that line. I own a set of gilder’s tools and a toolbox that was used by my grandfather and my father. I’m also a painter – not house but oil. I painted most of the pictures you see on the walls of this room. I went to work in the picture line when I was fresh out of knee britches and became a fine craftsman. Look at my hands, the hands of a man that knows his trade. In 1890, I took my savings and went over to Brooklyn and opened me up a store of my own, the Paris Art Gallery, occupying an entire four-floor building at Broadway and Gates Avenue. Pictures, frames, gilding, and bric-a-brac. Did a big business.