Mrs Schuyler came into the room, bringing several small books. ‘When Philippa was very little I kept a careful account of the stories and poems she wrote, the words she invented, the questions she asked, and such things,’ she said. ‘I wrote them down in the form of letters to her, letters for her to read when she becomes a young woman. The people at the gifted-child clinic saw the books and had the notations transcribed for their files. Perhaps you’d like to look through some of the books.’
I opened one. At the top of the page was written ‘Three years, seven months.’ Beneath this was the following notation:
You are very interested to know why some people are good and some bad. ‘What do they do with bad people?’ you ask. ‘If they are very bad, they put them in jail,’ I say. ‘What is a jail?’ you inquire. ‘A jail is a building full of little rooms with barred doors.’ ‘What do they do to bad people in jail?’ ‘They don’t have nice things to eat or wear,’ I explain. Several days later you heard about how poor most people are in Georgia, and you asked, ‘The poor people in Georgia who have nothing nice to eat or wear, are they bad?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘They are not bad. They are unlucky. Later, I will explain more fully.’ That afternoon you laughed and asked, archly, ‘Jody, when the weather is bad, do they put it in jail?’ The same day you asked if flowers get white hair when they are old. And you asked if people who sleep on cots say at night, ‘I am going to cot.’ And you asked if mothers ever say to their children, ‘You must go crooked to bed.’ Walking along the street you said, ‘Jody, trees stand on one leg.’ Yesterday you began to giggle. ‘There’s no Mr Lady or Mrs Man,’ you said, and enjoyed the humor of the idea very much. Today you made up a poem.
‘Pipes are steel,
But bones are real.’
Tonight you sat on the floor and made up a long story. You said, ‘Varnetida, a little girl, and her mother, Armarnia, went to see Slowbow, a brother who lived with his father, Solom, in a big house in Channa. They met the grandmother, Branlea, and another little girl, Jolumbow, who had a kitten named Lilgay, and a dog named Cherro. They all sat down in a chilbensian room and ate dishes of wallaga and thaga …’ and so on, as long as I would listen. If you were at a loss for a word you simply invented one with a perfectly solemn face.
I picked up another book. In it I found a poem Philippa wrote when she was five. She wrote it on Easter morning while sitting in the bathtub:
The sun is lifting his lid.
The sun is leaving his crib.
The sun is a waking baby
Who will bring the Spring maybe
Thump, thump, thump! out of the earth.
I thought that this was a wonderful poem. It was followed by this notation:
Tonight a red light flashed to green while we were walking across Fifth Avenue. The automobiles were whizzing by us. Suddenly you looked up and said, ‘Jody, will you please name for me all the diseases in the world?’
‘Philippa must be hard to deal with at times,’ I said.
‘She is indeed,’ Mrs Schuyler said. ‘Women often tell me, “You mustn’t push her!” Their sympathy is misplaced. If there’s any pushing done, she’s the one that does it.’
A few minutes later, I said good night to the Schuylers. At the door I asked Mrs Schuyler to tell me the answer to the riddle Philippa had propounded just before she went to bed; it had been on my mind ever since. ‘That riddle about what’s smaller than a flea’s mouth?’ she said. ‘That’s an old, old nursery riddle. I guess it’s the only one I know. The answer is, “What goes in it.” I’m very sorry she got hold of that riddle book. Tomorrow at breakfast she’ll have the drop on us. She’ll ask us two dozen, and we probably won’t know a single answer.’
(1940)
A Sporting Man
COMMODORE DUTCH IS a brassy little man who has made a living for the last forty years by giving an annual ball for the benefit of himself. ‘I haven’t got a whole lot of sense,’ he likes to say, ‘but I got too much sense to work.’ On big showcards which he puts up in drinking places in the theatrical district, he advertises his ball, which is usually held in the spring, as ‘The Annual Party, Affair, Soirée & Gala Naval Ball of the Original Commodore Dutch Association.’ Dutch founded this organization in 1901, because he needed the name of a sponsor to print on tickets. At first he called it simply the Commodore Dutch Association, adding ‘original’ during the depression. ‘It sounds more high-toned that way,’ he says. ‘It sounds like I got imitators.’ No meetings of the organization have ever been held, and its headquarters are wherever Dutch happens to be. He keeps all its records in his pockets. It has one active member and three hundred honorary members. Dutch is the active member. Among the honorary members are eighteen Tammany politicians, thirteen saloonkeepers, six fight managers, six night-club proprietors, four publishers of racing dope sheets, two executives of the New York Giants, the owner of a chain of barbershops, a bail bondsman, a subway contractor, the manager of a Turkish bath, and approximately one hundred and twenty-five professional gamblers. All these men occasionally give Dutch small sums of money; that is the only requirement for membership in the Original Commodore Dutch Association. Dutch refers to these sums as dues, a euphemism which makes some of his members snicker. Joe Madden, an ex-prizefighter, who keeps a West Fifty-sixth Street saloon in which sporting and society people hang out and who has been an honorary officer of the association for twenty-seven years, not long ago defined the attitude of many of the members when he introduced a friend to Dutch and remarked, ‘Commodore Dutch is a bum, but he’s not an ordinary bum. He doesn’t make touches; he collects dues. He’s the fanciest bum in town.’ Dutch was not offended by this remark. He beamed at Madden and said, ‘Thanks, pal.’
Dutch lets each member decide how much dues he should pay. ‘You’re the doctor,’ he says. ‘Give me what you think is right. I’ll take anything from two bits to a million dollars.’ Practically every time a member pays dues, Dutch hands him a Gala Naval Ball ticket. Dutch keeps a supply in his pockets and passes out hundreds every year; they take the place of receipts. On the back of them, Dutch always writes, with a flourish, ‘O.K. Pd. Member in Good Standing. C. Dutch (signed).’ Only a few members attend the ball, and some do not believe that he actually gives it. Less than twenty-five showed up for the last one, which was held in the back room of an obscure Third Avenue saloon. Dutch’s feelings were not hurt. ‘When my constituents show their respect for me by coming to my swaree, I am gratified,’ he once said, ‘only I don’t mind admitting that the main thing I am innarested in is dues.’
The Original Commodore Dutch Association has a profusion of officers and committeemen, all appointed by Dutch. Their names are printed each year on the showcards with which the ball is advertised. Some of these men dislike seeing their names in print, so their nicknames are used. On the most recent card, interspersed among such names as Herbert H. Lehman, Robert F. Wagner, and Alfred E. Smith, are nicknames like Big Yaffie, Little Yaffie, Gin Buck, Senator Gut, Eddie the Plague, Johnny Basketball, and Swiss Cheese. With the exception of Swiss Cheese, who is the retired operator of a private detective agency, all these nicknamed men are connected with horse racing. Swiss Cheese is called that for two reasons; he has a sallow, pock-marked face, and he is a passionate yodeler. He likes to get pie-eyed, then go to Salvation Army street meetings and make a nuisance of himself by yodeling hymns. At the Gala Naval Ball he is a star performer.
There are thirty-two officers of the association, and Dutch is constantly adding to the list. He holds the highest office, Founder and Standard Bearer. Just beneath him in importance is Head President. Sam H. Harris, the theatrical producer, was Head President from 1916 until his death in 1941. The office is vacant at present. ‘Out of respect for Mr Sam, I’m going to wait a year or so before I appoint a successor to him,’ Dutch says. ‘He was the most ideal officer I ever had. I put the bite on him real often, and he never bellyached. A sawbuck was the least he ever slipped me. Sometimes he made it a double s
awbuck.’ Joe Madden is Assistant Head President and Nick the Greek, the California gambler, is Second Assistant Head President. Other high offices are Admiral, Rear Admiral, Front Admiral, Captain, Auditor, Field Marshal, Judge Advocate, Floor Manager, Gangway Overseer, High Commissioner, Master of Ceremonies, and Master of Fox Hounds. The majority of the offices are held by gamblers. ‘I got a lot of respect for gamblers,’ Dutch says. ‘They throw money around, and I like to see people throw money around. I figure they might throw some my way.’
There are four standing committees, all made up of men who have been especially generous to Dutch. The honorary members committee is the most impressive. Except for Sam Rosoff, the subway contractor; William V. Dwyer, the Tropical Park racetrack man; and Horace Stoneham, president of the Giants, it is composed of public offficials and Tammany district leaders. Former Governor Lehman, who automatically gets out his wallet whenever he catches sight of Dutch, is chairman. Dutch appoints officers and committeemen without consulting them. He was once asked if the Governor had authorized the use of his name on some showcards. ‘He never told me I couldn’t,’ Dutch said. People in show business predominate on the arrangements committee. The reception committee is a hodgepodge of race-track and night-life characters; Abe Attell, the old pug, who now runs a Broadway saloon called Abe’s Steak & Chop House & Bar & Grill, is chairman. The floor committee is made up entirely of prizefighters and James J. Braddock is chairman. Dutch calls the prizefighters ‘my adjutants.’ ‘Years ago,’ he says, ‘anybody that came to my ball with a load on and misbehaved himself, I snapped my fingers and my adjutants rushed up from all directions and piled on top of him. Nowdays, to be an adjutant, it’s just honorary.’
Dutch enjoys explaining the duties of his officers and committeemen. It makes him giggle. ‘Except to pay dues, they don’t have no duties,’ he says. ‘Anybody that slips me a buck off and on, I consider him a member in good standing of the Original Commodore Dutch Association. That entitles him to come to my ball, but it don’t get him no privileges. It just makes him an ipso-facto member. If he wants to rise higher, he’s got to stake me. If he stakes me, I elect him to a committee. If he stakes me good, I make him a chairman. If he stakes me real good, I elect him to be an officer and confer him with a title. An officer has privileges. He can make a speech at the ball, or sing a song, which nobody can shut him up. Also, he can take part in the grand march, providing enough people show up to have a grand march; such a thing hasn’t happened in years. Any officer that gets behind in his dues, I weed him out. Take Joe Madden. I made him a high officer because he slips me a sawbuck every time I hit him for dues. Well, if he was to make a practice of slipping me a deuce instead, God forbid, I would naturally figure on getting me a brand-new Assistant Head President.’
Dutch is sixty-two, but he often says that he feels much older. ‘I feel like I am a hundred and sixty-two,’ he says. He is small and wizened and hungry-looking. His cheeks are sunken, and he has big ears, a jutting nose, and distrustful pale-blue eyes. He has only one tooth, an upper incisor, and when he smiles his face takes on a distinctly hobgoblin aspect. He has such an extraordinary face that he himself is sometimes taken aback by it. One night in Attell’s, after he had stared at the bar mirror for a while, he suddenly clapped his hands over his eyes and groaned. ‘I scare meself,’ he said, when he had regained his composure. ‘I never see such an ugly fella. My ears are a coupla sizes too big for my head, and they ain’t even with each other, and I’m the hatchetest damned faced human being God ever made. I wonder why He took the trouble.’ However, despite Dutch’s unusual countenance, he usually looks quite dapper. He keeps himself as neat as possible. He often shaves twice a day, and he gets a manicure whenever he can afford it. Several times a week he ducks into a dry-cleaner’s and sits in a booth while his suit is being sponged and pressed. He brags that he was a dandy in his youth. ‘When I was twenty-five, I had a wardrobe consisting of twenty-five suits,’ he says, ‘and most of them hadn’t ever been turned.’ Now, for winter wear, he owns two black suits and a double-breasted imitation camel’s-hair overcoat with a belt in the back. In summer he customarily wears a black jacket, a baby-blue rayon polo shirt, seersucker pants, and a stiff straw hat. He keeps a big artificial rose in his lapel; when one gets grimy, he drops into Woolworth’s and buys another.
Dutch makes a show of being blithe. Actually, he worries a lot, particularly about his health, which is good. He broods about pneumonia, and wears rubbers almost every day in winter, even though they make his feet ache. He has a germ phobia; in most of the restaurants he goes to, before he will eat anything he shakes out his napkin and painstakingly polishes his knife, fork, and spoon. On the street, he walks close to buildings, keeping as far away from automobiles as possible; he claims that one good whiff of exhaust will give him a headache. ‘In all the world,’ he says, ‘there’s nothing I hate as much as a god-damn automobile.’ His eyesight is poor, but he is too vain to get spectacles. Every night he spends several hours studying the Daily Mirror’s horse-racing charts, which are printed in small type, and he uses a magnifying glass he bought in Woolworth’s. He holds the newspaper and the glass close to his face, and while he reads his lips work. This always amuses onlookers. ‘My God, Dutch,’ Attell once told him, ‘you look like you’re trying to chew the Daily Mirror.’ When not in use, his magnifying glass dangles by its handle from a black ribbon which he wears around his neck. He is disturbed about his hair, which is growing thin. He carries a military brush in a coat pocket and gets it out when he has time on his hands, no matter where he happens to be, and gives his hair exactly one hundred strokes, counting each stroke out loud. Sometimes, standing at a bar or sitting in a restaurant, he will suddenly start brushing and counting, startling the people around him.
Although Dutch spends at least half of his waking hours in saloons, he is a teetotaler. ‘In my youth,’ he says, ‘I was the scourge of the gin mills, and bartenders shuddered when they seen me coming, but I reformed.’ He has forgotten the year he went on the wagon, but remembers, for some reason, that William Howard Taft was President at the time. When a comparative stranger offers to buy him a drink, he looks uneasy and says, ‘I got a bum heart. One drink and I would most likely drop dead.’ He gives a different explanation to his intimates. ‘If I was to get a skinful,’ he says, ‘I would start right in and insult everybody I know. I would make enemies, and enemies don’t pay dues. Also, I look at it from a health standpoint. What happened to all the tanks I palled with years ago? We mourn our loss. Gone but not forgotten. When I think of all the dead-and-gone crap-shooters that if they had took it easy on the schnapps they would be here today, I’m glad I swore off.’ Dutch prefers caffeine to alcohol. He drinks from fifteen to twenty cups of black coffee a day. He frequently gets so fidgety that he begins to stutter, or has a sudden attack of the trembles, or upsets a glass of water by just reaching for it. Although he takes coffee black, he always demands cream on the side. After finishing the coffee, he drinks the cream in one gulp, although he does not like it, ‘I pay for it, don’t I?’ he says. He carries a bag of Bull Durham smoking tobacco in his breast pocket and rolls his own cigarettes. He is as expert as any cowboy. ‘Made butts are too dear,’ he says. ‘Also, I think they put chemicals in them. I be damned if I think they’re sanitary.’
Dutch has lived in furnished rooms practically all his life. At present he has a room in a house on Thirteenth Street, just west of Third. He uses it only as a place to sleep. He customarily gets to bed around 5 A.M. and sleeps until noon. He goes to the races every day a local track is open; he always turns up at the railway station early, and most days he is able to find a member who will buy him tickets for the train and the track. After the races, on the way in, he goes down the aisle of the train looking for any members who might be aboard, soliciting dues from those who have been lucky and listening sympathetically to those who haven’t. Dutch himself is an extremely timid horseplayer. He makes only one small, sure-thing bet a day, b
ut he always has a doleful answer when someone asks, ‘How’d you do, Dutch?’ ‘Picked wrong every race,’ he usually answers. ‘Even lost my coffee money. Don’t know how I’m going to eat tonight, and already my belly thinks my throat’s cut. Could you slip me some dues?’ Three or four nights a week, he makes a round of saloons, restaurants, cigar stores, bowling alleys, barbershops, and hotel lobbies around Broadway in which sporting people foregather. Other nights, he goes to gambling places. He has been a hanger-on in gambling circles since adolescence and keeps on good terms with every operator of any consequence in town. Gambling-house lookouts and doorkeepers pass him in without question, although he rarely risks a dollar; he just stands around and gazes wistfully at the cash on the tables. When one of his members wins a fistful, Dutch’s eyes light up; he knows he can be certain of at least a couple of bucks of it. Now and then he spends an evening away from Broadway. He considers himself a staunch Tammany Democrat, and a number of downtown Tammany district leaders are members of his association. He occasionally drops into their clubhouses, and he shows up for many of their beefsteak parties and moonlight sails; he finds out about such affairs by reading a political-gossip column in the Sunday Enquirer. He does not eat anything at beefsteak parties; he shakes hands with the dignitaries and watches for a chance to collect some dues. He always goes to the weighing-in ceremonies before important prizefights, and most fight nights he hangs around the outer lobby of Madison Square Garden. A couple of times a month he puts in an appearance at Jimmy Kelly’s night club in Greenwich Village; he and Kelly have been friends since they were in their teens. He makes a practice of attending the funerals of prominent politicians. On these occasions he usually manages to pick up a few dollars. ‘Some of my big-shot members like Al Smith and Governor Lehman, the best time to put the bite on them is to bunk into them at a funeral,’ he says.
Up in the Old Hotel (Vintage Classics) Page 15
