V
When The Metropolis was published in 1908, the New York critics said it was a poor novel because the author didn’t know the thing called “society.” As a matter of fact, the reason was exactly the opposite; the author knew “society” too well to overcome his distaste for it. Attempting to prove this will of course lay me open to the charge of snobbery; it is not good form to establish your own social position. But, on the other hand, neither is it good form to tell about your drunken father, or the bedbugs in your childhood couch; so perhaps one admission will offset the other. What I am doing is explaining a temperament and a literary product, and this can be done only by making real to you both sides of my double life—the bedbugs and liquor on the one hand, the snobbery on the other.
My maternal grandfather was John S. Harden, secretary-treasurer of the Western Maryland Railroad. I remember going to his office and seeing rows of canvas bags full of gold and silver coin that were to go into pay envelopes. I remember also that the president of the road lived just up the street from us and that I broke one of his basement windows with a ball. I was sent to confess my crime and carry the money to pay for it.
Grandfather Harden was a pillar of the Methodist Church, which was not fashionable; but even so, the leaders of Baltimore’s affairs came to his terrapin suppers, and I vividly recall these creatures—I mean the terrapin—crawling around in the backyard, and how a Negro man speared them through the heads with a stout fork, and cut off their heads with a butcher knife. Apparently it was not forbidden for a Methodist to serve sherry wine in terrapin stew—or brandy, provided it had been soaked up by fruitcake or plum pudding.
I recall the long reddish beard of this good and kindly old man and the large bald spot on the top of his head. It did not occur to me as strange that his hair should grow the wrong way; but I recall that I was fascinated by a mole placed exactly on the top, like a button, and once I yielded to a dreadful temptation and gave it a slap. Then I fled in terror to the top story of the house. I was brought down by my shocked mother and aunts, and ordered to apologize. I recollect this grandfather carving unending quantities of chickens, ducks, turkeys, and hams; but I cannot to save me recall a single word that he spoke. I suppose the reason the carving stands out in my mind is that I was the youngest of the family of a dozen or so and therefore the last to get my plate at mealtimes.
I recall even better my maternal grandmother, a stout, jolly old lady, who made delightful ginger cookies and played on the piano and sang little tunes to which I danced as a child:
Here we go, two by two,
Dressed in yellow, pink and blue.
Mary Ayers was her maiden name, and someone who looked up her family tree discovered that she could lay claim to several castles in Ireland. The family got in touch with the Irish connections, and letters were exchanged, with the result that one of the younger sons came emigrating—a country “squire,” six feet or more, rosy-cheeked, and with a broad brogue. He told us about his search for a job and of the unloving reception he met when he went into a business place. “‘Git oot,’ said the man, and so I thought I’d better git oot.” Not finding anything in Baltimore, our Irish squire wound up on the New York police force—a most dreadful humiliation to the family. My mother, of a mischievous disposition, would wait until her fashionable niece and nephew were entertaining company, and then inquire innocently: “By the way, whatever became of that cousin of ours who’s a policeman up in New York?”
My mother’s older sister married John Randolph Bland, named for John Randolph, the Virginia statesman. This Uncle Bland, as I called him, became one of the richest men in Baltimore. Sometime before his death, I saw him scolded in a country club of his home city because of his dictatorial ways. The paper referred to him as “the great Bland”—which I suppose establishes his position. He knew all the businessmen of the city, and they trusted him. So he was able to sell them shares in a bonding concern he organized. I remember walking downtown with him one day when I was a child. We stopped at a big grocery store while he persuaded the owner to take shares in the company he was founding. Its name was the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company, and of course he became its president. You have probably heard of it because it has branches all over America and in many of the world’s capitals.
After I had taken up my residence in Pasadena, he made a tour of the country to become acquainted with the agents of his company; he gave a banquet to those in southern California. There must have been two hundred of them, for they filled the biggest private dining room of our biggest hotel. His muckraker-nephew was invited to partake of this feast and listen to the oratory—but not to be heard, you may be sure! We all sang “Annie Laurie” and “Nellie Gray” and other songs calculated to work up a battle spirit and send us out to take away the other fellow’s business.
In my childhood, I lived for months at a time at Uncle Bland’s. He and his family lived in one of those brick houses—four stories high, with three or four white marble steps—which are so characteristic of Baltimore and were apparently planned and built by the block. Uncle Bland’s daughter married an heir of many millions, and through the years of her young ladyhood I witnessed dances and parties, terrapin suppers, punch, dresses, gossip—everything that is called “society.” Prior to that came the debut and wedding of my mother’s younger sister, all of which I remember, even to the time when she woke my mother in the middle of the night, exclaiming, “Tell me, Priscie, shall I many him?” For the benefit of the romantically minded, let me say that she did and that they lived happily until his death.
Let me picture for you the training of a novelist of social contrasts! My relatives were intimate with the society editor of Baltimore’s leading newspaper; a person of “good family,” no common newspaperman, be it understood. His name was Doctor Taylor, so apparently he was a physician as well as a writer. I see him, dapper, blond, and dainty, with a boutonniere made of one white flower in a ring of purple flowers; he was one of those strange, half-feminine men who are accepted as sexless and admitted to the boudoirs of ladies in deshabille to help drape their dresses and design their hats. All the while he kept up a rapid-fire chatter about everybody who was anybody in the city. I sat in a corner and heard the talk—whose grandfather was a grocer and whose cousin eloped with a fiddler. I breathed that atmosphere of pride and scorn, of values based upon material possessions preserved for two generations or more, and the longer the better. I do not know why I came to hate it, but I know that I did hate it from my earliest days. And everything in my later life confirmed my resolve never to “sell out” to that class.