WHAT a summer! Everyone was in the South of France. Willie Maugham was at Antibes. Margot Asquith was at Jimmy Sheean’s. Jimmy Sheean was at Margot Asquith’s. In June, we all went up to Paris to watch the Prince of Wales, then the most popular man of his time, fall off his horse at Auteuil. When he did, the crowd rushed across the track, picked up the young heir apparent, and carried him on their shoulders all the way to his room at the Ritz. Despite the twenty-two-mile walk through heavy traffic, with the Prince in obvious pain from a broken collarbone, it was a stirring occasion. Later, in the lobby of the hotel, I noticed a slight, dark-haired American lady making her way discreetly toward the service elevator. “We shall be hearing more about that girl,” I remember remarking to Sherwood Anderson, who was covering the spectacle for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I was right. That girl was Helen Wills Moody.
This was in 1928. Back in New York, Jimmy Walker was mayor and the whole city had embarked on a frenzy of high spirits and wild living. On Broadway, Fred and Adele Astaire, fresh from a season’s triumphs in Kumquats of 1928, were polishing new routines for the opening of Kumquats of 1929. Out in Hollywood, a young Spanish actor, Rodolpho d’Antonguolla, was already making a name for himself (Rudolph Valentino), subject to approval by the Los Angeles District Court. It was the era of prohibition, bootleg gin, and the infield single. Charles D. Flent was the best-loved man in America, and Calvin Coolidge was in the White House.
We were living at the time in a fashionable apartment on upper Fifth Avenue. On the advice of Bascomb W. Bascomb, my father had invested heavily in the rising bail-bond market, and our house was then a gathering place for many of the famous luminaries of the day. On the same evening, one might see such glittering personages as William S. (Big Bill) Thompson, William T. (Big Bill) Tilden, or William S. (Big Bill) Hart. Often, Otto Kahn, the banker, would come bustling in late in the evening with a bagful of money or Radio stock, which he would distribute to the guests. Noël Coward frequently made an appearance, as well as many other literary figures of the time: Bunny Wilson, Victor Hugo, Joseph Moncure March, Bruno Brockton. Sad, clever Bruno Brockton. If only he had published!
One of the best-known gatherings in New York in this period was the famous Oxford Group, a collection of writers, playwrights, and wits who met every Wednesday evening for lunch in the old Oxford Hotel, on Thirty-seventh Street. The members of the Oxford Group had a reputation for dazzling humor and repartee, to say nothing of sheer animal hunger, and to be invited to their table was one of the most sought-after honors that could befall a visitor to the city. It was at one of these lunches, I recall, that the famous exchange between S. S. Van-Flogel, the columnist, and Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist and count, took place. Tolstoy, whose novel War and Peace had earlier attracted much critical attention, had been traveling incognito in New York on the IRT, and was brought to the lunch late one evening by John Cameron Gilpin, the artist. Swiftly, the conversation turned to a discussion of the celebrated novel. It was widely known in New York that VanFlogel had had it “in” for Tolstoy for some time, and, suddenly, in a caustic tone, he asked the Russian if he wouldn’t have written the book differently if he “had been a woman.” There was a stunned silence. Van-Flogel’s biting wit was feared as far north as Sixty-third Street, and it was doubtful whether the elderly Russian could hold his own against the columnist. Tolstoy looked around him at the company. His eyes met Gilpin’s. “Which woman?” he replied quickly. The rest is history.
This was the year when the stock market began its unparalleled rise. Men were making fortunes overnight. A few even made money during the day. A veritable fever, or fervor, of speculation swept Wall Street, which now, thanks to the Securities and Exchange Commission, higher margin rates, sound money, cold feet, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, is no longer possible. It was the Golden Age of Sport. Dempsey knocked out Carpentier. Tunney knocked out Dempsey. Babe Ruth hit five hundred and three home runs. Charles D. Flent was the most popular man in America, and Francis X. Bushman was in the White House, visiting Calvin Coolidge.
SCOTT Fitzgerald was much in the news at this time, and his exploits were helping to set the pace for his generation. Fitzgerald, who had attended Princeton some years earlier, had been dropped from the football squad for being “too thin,” and had always regretted not having had a chance to play John O’Hara’s Yale team in the Bowl. One evening, toward the end of the football season, we were all sitting around in the Plaza fountain—Maxwell Perkins, Burton Rascoe, K. K. Huneker, Ellsworth Vines, Fitzgerald, and myself—when Fitzgerald leaped to his feet and cried, “Let’s go up to New Haven and beard the bulldog!” Rascoe quickly commandeered a carriage from the hack stand on Fifty-ninth Street, and we all piled in for the trip to Connecticut. By the time we reached New Haven, the Yale team had already left the practice field, but Fitzgerald jumped out of the carriage and ran through the college quadrangles yelling, “Fire in the engine room, men! Everybody out to the Bowl!” What a night that was! The undergraduates poured out of the dormitories and we all swept out to the great stadium. By this time, Fitzgerald and the rest of us had dressed in football gear, but Yale unfortunately fielded its first lacrosse team. I remember Fitzgerald turning to me as we all trooped back to the dressing room and saying, “Twenty years from now, we shall all have a good laugh over this.” Sad, brilliant Scott Fitzgerald. Was he more than just a regional writer? I have always maintained that he was.
MY most lasting memory of the times, however, is of the day I went, with John Middleton Mommsen, to meet the Lone Eagle, the young aviator whose daring exploits and pioneering spirit had made him the most famous figure in the land. We found the youthful pilot working in overalls beside a frail little craft, apparently made out of buckboard and canvas, with the legend “Spirit of St. Louis” hand-stenciled on its side. He spun the propeller. The engine gave a few fitful coughs and lay still. He spun it again. There was no response. The third time, he put his whole lanky body into the effort. The engine roared into action. Lindbergh—for it was he—stepped back and turned toward us. “It’s a serviceable machine,” he said shyly, “but it will never replace the Zeppelin.”
How little the three of us knew then. War clouds were already gathering over Europe. The Zeppelin was doomed.
1960