And I'd Do It Again

by Crocker, Aimée;

  Poor dear! I naturally pushed him away with the proper indignation. He could never have understood how I felt, and he was seriously bewildered, not to say hurt and crestfallen. He went away in high dudgeon, muttering dark oaths to his Italian saints.

  I was amused at the whole ridiculous situation, but sorry for him, too.

  Next day he was waiting for me at luncheon. He was all smiles, all waving hands and politeness. He begged my pardon, then ten thousand pardons, he “maka-da big-a meestak-a.” And he was very cheerful and courteous indeed.

  Then came the surprise.

  That evening, after promising wildly to behave himself, he took me out on the deck once more … and then … he proposed to me.

  The scene was beautiful. A masterpiece. The huge ruby ring he wore that looked more like a brass knuckle than anything else, he took off his hand and pressed into mine, saying that I was the kind of woman he “lik-a.” It seems that there had been a Signora da Rocca who had passed away only a year ago, and that his home was bare and empty. It seems also that I was his ideal, a serious woman who did not flirt, who “do no flirt-a, who no lik-a da kees-a,” and that I was being given a chance to make his home on Bleecker Street once more cheerful, once more happy, to bring his children into his Italo-American world to carry on the “beeg-a beesness” he was going to make.

  I wanted to laugh, and even wanted to cry. He was decent. He was very serious. It was perhaps the most honest proposal of marriage I have ever had. I tried to stall and hold off my decision until we got to New York, but he was very determined. Finally I told him that I could not promise definitely until I had seen my father in Chicago, but that I really wanted to marry him. I begged him to wait. I squeezed his hand. I patted his face. I made him feel very happy. It was pretty unfair, but I could not give him any real reason for refusing.

  Well, he took it for granted that everything would be all right. He was proud of his success in the vegetable business and he believed he was a “catch” for me. He was childlike and sweet.

  That evening he announced our engagement to the entire steerage company, and we prepared a great celebration party to which the first and second classes were not invited. It was fun. There were three accordions, two mandolins, a guitar, tambourines, and a mad little girl who danced a tarantella until I thought she would faint. All the snobbish people from the upper decks crowded round their rail to listen to the festivities. They wanted to come down and dance, but the officials were in on the game and they refused permission absolutely. Da Rocca bought wine for everybody, good red Chianti, not champagne, and we danced and played all night. And, as far as da Rocca and the rest of the steerage knew, I was to be the next wife of a successful vegetable dealer and live happily in Bleecker Street among garlic and bologna for the rest of my life.

  Complications came through Yvonne. Being the favorite of the Captain, she was given certain liberties which nobody else in the steerage shared. She wandered freely all over the ship and got to know everybody aboard. I went up to the first-class deck to find her, one day. I was distinctly not dressed for exhibition purposes, I remember, and there was a square-jawed Boston woman in pince-nez and a tailored suit who stared at me as though I were a thief, called a steward and asked him if he did not know his duty … concerning me, naturally.

  Well, the steward was a sweet, nice young fellow, who knew perfectly well why I was there. He came over to me and with really sincere apologies said that he would have to ask me to go below to my own deck. I asked him to send Yvonne to me, and retreated, rather disgruntled, but nevertheless amused that I, who had always traveled with an entire apartment in first class, should be sent back to “my proper place,” because of the complaining of this prim, stiff nobody. Ah, well …

  Yvonne did not come directly. I learned that she was having the very devoted attention of a young man slightly her senior, and was “unavoidably detained.” When she appeared she was all excited.

  “Mother,” she said, “there is the nicest boy here from California, and he knows all about you and us.”

  Poor youngster, she was very pleased, but I was frightened stiff at the thought. Well, the “nicest boy” came down to my deck the next day and asked me straight out if I were really a San Francisco Crocker. There was nothing to do but to tell the truth, and I tried for some time to make him understand that he was to keep the news to himself. He never understood, the dear boy, but he promised. I suppose he thought that I was hiding, or had fallen into some terrible catastrophe. He never would have understood my real fear of the newspapers. Result was that he dropped Yvonne as though unclean, but he never mentioned a word. How unjust and how hard youth is! And how tragic! My daughter never understood, and she was hurt.

  Well, New York came at last. I was put off at Ellis Island, like any other low-class immigrant, and I must say that in spite of all the stories I have heard about our crude and unkind ways with the herds of poor, freedom-seeking arrivals on American shores, I was treated with every courtesy, as were all the others.

  But now comes the cream of the story. My Italian suitor showed himself to be a man of enterprise. He saw us through Ellis Island, my servant (who passed for a niece and who looked much less like an immigrant than I) and all, and squandered a dollar on a taxicab to take us to a hotel. At the hotel we first went to, they absolutely refused to give me a room. They were very superior indeed. Da Rocca was furious, vociferous and raging, but in vain. We continued in the taxi to another even smaller and less attractive hotel and repeated the same experience.

  Well, eventually, we located in an almost unmentionable “joint” … I can think of no other name for it … and there I had to be very firm with Jiacoppo, for he had some ideas of anticipating the marriage we had planned that were not at all in my scheme of things. I am sorry to recall the next act of this tragicomedy. I engaged a suite, two rooms for myself and the family, and he, after much pressure on my part, went off to his Bleecker Street apartment, promising to come and take me to dinner and to celebrate our “engagement” before I left for Chicago.

  Scarcely had he gone when I packed my things again, left the bags that were not filled with real valuables, and took my children and servant and taxied to the Biltmore where I was very well known. At first the clerk was as nose-in-the-air as all the others had been, but finally he recognized me and took us in, a little bewildered, but very nice. I was able to dress myself in respectable clothes, telephone my friends and relatives, and finally get to my bank and fix my financial situation.

  I never returned to the hotel where da Rocca had left me, but I did buy him the most beautiful diamond ring I could find … I mean “beautiful” in his sense; it looked like a lump of ice and was set in an enormous thick gold band. I sent it to him with a pretty limping sort of letter, and indicated no address. That, I am ashamed to say, was that.

  Next I got in touch with the sailor boy who had been so kind to us on the ship and paid him the $150 for the mate and gave him another $200 for himself. I have never seen anybody so bewildered and pleased and happy as he was. I guess that poor old ship, if it is still in existence with any of the same crew, will never get over the legend I must have created in the steerage department.

  The last curtain of this drama of my voyage was played down about a week after my arrival. I was invited to the home of some friends, an artist who was particularly celebrated at the moment, and his very charming wife. There were perhaps fifty others there, and a very pleasant afternoon party it became.

  Suddenly, some one touched me on the shoulder, exclaiming:

  “Well, well, what a small world it is after all. Here we all just arrived in the Savoy and I meet you in this huge city …”

  I turned round. It was the pince-nez lady from Boston who had requested the steward to send me back to my proper place.

  I was very cruel. I looked at her, straight through. I never cracked a smile. I never offered her my hand. I merely said:

  “But, Madam, you traveled first class and I s
teerage. I’m afraid I do not know you.”

  She wilted. I was very pleased with myself.

  Aimée Crocker with dog.

  ✥

  Oh, the people, the human beings of this world! What a kaleidoscope they make with their changing colors, their twisting shapes, their constantly transmuting characters and variegated souls. More than the handiwork of man, more than our bridges, our steam machines, our radios and our x-rays, more than ever our stealing of the birds’ flying skill and the marvelous robots and electric eyes that do wonders of work for us, mankind itself is magnificent. The things and qualities we call weaknesses in some and strength in others, the frailties and the passions and the prides and the fears and deceits and cunning of this creature Man is the most full and most fascinating of all study, of all lore, of all culture.

  I am closing this book, already too long. I am coming to the end, not only on the paper you are reading but in my own life, my adventures and experiences. But I want these closing pages to tell about humans. I want them to be a passage in review, a parade of faces and minds and bodies and souls, as I knew them and as I remember them.

  I wonder how many thousands have passed through the fingers of my life. I wonder how astonished I myself would be if I could only remember them all. I wonder what legions would parade through this book, each with the banner of its own color, his own virtues and vices, his own mannerisms and tragedies and comic incidents. But I have forgotten so many, I have let them slip through the fissures of this aging mind and grow dim upon the fading retina of my recollection.

  Yet the ones I still can see, each with a little spot of light shining over him, each with some special tang or flavor peculiar only to him, incidental to my life, a bright patch in the tapestry of my existence.

  And I have been privileged. So many of them have made themselves known to a curious world. So many have attained fame … or notoriety. So many of them have been publicized and written about and explained as I could never hope to do. And yet … my small recollection, my little, sometimes intimate, sometimes incidental, piece of those human puppets that I stole from them and have hidden away in the hiding places of my brain and heart … perhaps it is worth while. At least I like to think so, and I will toss them on to these pages for you to smile or frown at.

  Who and how many are alive today who remember New York’s most curious figure of the twentieth century, Chuck Connors? Most of us have left this world for the Unknown. There are very few of my day who still cling on to life. But Chuck Connors, splendid and mysterious, a ruffian and a gentleman, a nobleman and an apache, still a legend in New York’s saga … I could not close this book without waving farewell to his memory.

  What shall I tell you about him? That his wife died in my arms? That he silently ruled the Underworld, that he was the Bowery king, the “open sesame” of the hinterland of lower New York where even the police never ventured save in numbers and armed? I can picture him still … hard-faced and strong, with the look of a handsome man, powerful in body, a walk in which every step seemed to say, “I go where I choose, unmolested, the master,” dark, with those triangular eyes that fighters have.

  It has been said of me that I collect people as others collect postage stamps. I used to resent it, but now I think it is probably true. I “collected” Chuck Connors (or did he collect me, I wonder?) and brought him frequently to my house in New York where he became one of the more spectacular members of a very varied assortment. It amused him. I suspect that I amused him, too, and that was fair enough because it was natural. It was through him that I had the privilege of seeing what was behind the scenes of New York, and peering into the dregs of that cauldron.

  And let the modern, self-styled sophisticate not pride himself that today we are more enlightened on those “abnormal” facts about existence which are today paraded all too plainly. Let me tell you that Chuck Connors took me into that notorious institution (of which you may never have heard if you are young enough) called Parisis Hall. It was an institution for men only. Trusting you to understand with true modern perception, I shall only add that the gentlemen were such that my presence was not noticed. Perhaps I was fortunate.

  Others pass in this parade. Oscar Wilde, who was not busy shocking England in that day, was a frequent visitor at my San Francisco home. I am aware of the gigantic structure of naughtiness which the world has hung around the neck of his memory, but I must say, if my timid and unimportant voice can whisper a defense … if he needs defending … that I found Mr. Wilde a charming gentleman, fascinating as much for his courtly manner to women as for the pungency of his wit.

  An incident? Yes, I can remember several. Here is one, amusing and quickly told. After a dinner given at my home in San Francisco, the other invited gentlemen decided that it would be an amusing thing to drink Mr. Wilde “under the table.” A deep and dark plan was laid. I was a party to it, although not an active one. The idea was that if he should relax his guard in drinking, he might reveal some of the things which had already caused scandal.

  The drinking started with champagne after dinner. Oscar Wilde dominated the conversation … the only tiresome thing I could detect in him … and the glasses clinked. At ten o’clock, there was far more boisterous talk and very much less wit, except for Mr. Wilde who seemed to expand and grow more than ever magnificent in his repartee. At midnight, some of the gentlemen had withdrawn from the contest, and others were decidedly red in the face. At two o’clock, Mr. Wilde threw consternation into the conspiracy by demanding gin instead of whisky, and pouring an enormous glass of it for each of his fellow drinkers as well as for himself.

  At three o’clock in the morning, Mr. Wilde came suddenly to the realization that he had been making pretty witticisms to an audience that was snoring soundly and had been out of conversation for twenty minutes. He filled himself another gin, tossed it off neatly, and said to me that really he was quite sleepy and would retire. The would-be tipplers had to be carried to their rooms by my servants, but Wilde never even suspected the plot. He was really magnificent.

  Wilde recalls another literary figure, Edgar Saltus.

  He was the nearest in perfection to sheer physical beauty I have ever had the privilege of knowing. I do not merely mean sensuously attractive. He was radiant of power and will and dash and excitement and pithy wit and all that women hope to find in the ideal male. I met him … at a dinner party given by Roosevelt Schuyler. It was as though I walked innocently into a spider’s web, and as though the spider were a polished, ironic, master-mind who knew every trick of fascinating women, and who spun around me an invisible web of magic gauze that ensnared me and tangled me up in its very comfortable tissue.

  We were off, so to speak.

  For three years I lived and thought and had heartbeat only in the sunshine of Edgar Saltus. He glittered beside me in Paris, in London, in Central Europe, my cavalier, my Lancelot, my Don Juan, my Faustus. I could bore you and please myself with a recollection of Lake Como which is an idyll that only Stendhal … or Saltus … could make worthy of print. I could …

  But I must go on. They glitter in their parade, they are crowding and pressing to be written down, and my book is at its close.

  Caruso, Enrico Caruso, the former blacksmith whose voice was like a rich mine of gold. He too came into my collection and sang often in my home. Once for charity, and on that day Anna Held took up the offering of my guests for those who could not live as we did.

  Then there was De Max, the strange Roumanian actor who made stage history, and very nearly made me into a page of it; Gaby Deslys, that charming and slightly devilish little creature whom the play-going world loved and now can weep over; Mrs. Leslie Carter, Belasco, Raymond Hitchcock, Diamond Jim Brady, the Barrymores, John Drew, Lillian Russell … the whole panorama pour themselves through my mind. I cannot take the space nor impose the time upon you to give you each one his little incident that gives them just their own one bright color in my memory. But these theatrical names bring a homely an
d amusing story back to me. It concerns my husband, Harry Gillig, and it happened in Malta.

  Malta, as you may not know, possesses an opera. It is not great, as operas go, but it was remarkable in that some of the loges were equipped with comfortable beds. Yes, that is what I meant to put: Beds. Well, my husband, who had a sense of humor, and who all his life had adored music and worshiped the opera, had a passionate desire to hear one in bed. We went, a group of three of us. Hardly had the first note of the overture sounded when Harry withdrew to the alcove behind the loge where the bed was, and promptly undressed himself and got in. We had a great deal of fun about it with him, but he insisted that the opera had never been so pleasant nor seemed so artistic as when he lay listening to it in a state of reverie in the curious little bedroom of his loge.

  But we were talking of people. Husbands, at best, have little to do with “people.” I know, because I have had a certain number of them.

  When I look back I am inclined to be envious of the young woman I once was, and rather pleased with having been her. For it seems to me that I was privileged to be alive in the most glorious times since the renaissance … I mean the closing “Nineties” which you can see so magnificently pictured by understanding souls like Toulouse-Lautrec.

  You hear today a great deal of chatter about pre-War Paris, and yet almost invariably from persons who are too young to have known those gallant days of the Boulevardier. Not long ago the newspapers devoted a little space to the death of Boni de Castellane, the very last of those magnificent gentlemen. A little space, a few lines on a type machine, and yet that great boulevardier was the symbol of a whole, extinguished civilization. With him passed the memory of Babette and Palmier’s Bar, the heyday of Maxim’s, Maurice, the efficiently mysterious and mysteriously efficient Parisian. With him passed the last vestige of those days when the Boulevards had a meaning and a culture, the days when wit was superior to learning, when heaviness was a criminal offense, when every word of conversation was a rapier with which to thrust and parry.