2 3 1 '
3801
By the Same Author:
Confessions of a Grand Hotel:
THE WALDORF-ASTORIA
Footloose in France
Footloose in Canada
Footloose in Italy
Footloose in Switzerland
Happy Holiday (with Ewing Krainin)
Horace Sutteii
SUTTON'S
PLACES
Henry Holt and Company * New York
Copyright, 1954, by Horace Sutton.
AH rights reserved, including the
right to reproduce this book or por-
tions thereof in any form.
First Edition
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-7725
Printed in the United States of America
The Private
cf Jack the Tripper
Through circumstances that are not awfully clear to me nor to
my employers, I started writing pieces about travel for a publica-
tion called the Saturday Review some years back, and before
either of us knew it, the whole thing had gotten out of hand. My
record of transatlantic crossings began to stack up with stewards
who had started their careers on the Berengaria. I went to Paris
with the spring and to St. Moritz with the snow. I filed from Kyoto,
from Uxmal, from Tobago. What is more, I became an Expert.
First thing you know, I had to buy myself a trenchcoat, and people
like my Uncle Albert were on the phone asking me to tell him a
place in Miami where he could stay for three dollars and twenty-
five cents, American plan. You should have what Albert pays in
taxes.
Things have certainly been different since I became an Expert
For one thing, I have been eating too many iguanas, chewing too
much sashimi, drinking too many einsparmers. Also I haven't been
home much. However, I have had any number of communications
from people whom I never expected to hear from, and these in-
clude a counselor of a camp I went to when I was nine, the parents
of a torrid romance of mine during my sixteenth year, and a
friend of my mother's she hasn't talked to since 1932. They were
all taking a holiday someplace and they wanted Information,
preferably Inside.
Truth to tell, I don't have any inside information, for I am a
thrifty type and put every scrap from my notes into these articles.
If there should be anything left over, I sell it to Bennett Cerf,
who weaves old jokes out of it which, I suspect, fetches him a
fancy price indeed. As for these long-lost people who seek me
when the wanderlust season is on, I would gladly send them my
paper on Cuernavaca which appeared last July, except that I have
Vlii THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF JACK THE TRIPPER
this lousy filing system and I would probably turn up with the
piece oa Helsinki from September. So instead of making many
trips to the files, I have made one and I collected a handful of
stories from the Saturday Review and some that appeared in a
syndicated column I do which runs in fewer papers than Drew
Pearson. When you've got all these stories together 4 they span a
considerable amount of territory, for they take in most of Europe,
and some of North Africa, much of the Caribbean, and out into
the Pacific as far as the Orient. I have had a very good time, and
have eaten and rested and rubbernecked well. And I have put
down where and how I did it. But while these papers say a lot
about hotels and restaurants, and sights to see and places to go
and how to smell a pikake in Hilo, I don't mean this to be a guide-
book. As a matter of fact, what I like best about it is that when
Uncle Albert calls me again for Information, I'm going to tell him
to go out and buy this collection. It costs three-fifty and that may
shock him into making his own reservations hereafter.
H. S.
Gramercy Park
New York City
Contents
THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF JACK THE TRIPPER - VU
Outbound
HOW TO GET OUT OF TOWN
Learning le Foreign Language 5
Twenty Ways to Say Bon Voyage Besides Bananas
Heard the One About the Traveling Buyer? - 8
Europe
IRELAND
Desperate Dublin 13
ENGLAND
Gems from the Thames 18
FRANCE
Le Wild Bleu Yondair - 29
Paris and Spring 31
The Sewer Tour - 33
Paris and Cognac Brown 36
Ole Man Riviere 36
A la Campagne 39
Gaul Stones 41
HOLLAND
It's Cheaper If You Go Dutch - 45
DENMARK
Dig That Crazyrevykomedielystspilfarce - 49
Come On to Aarhus - 55
NORWAY
FlikkFlakkinHam - 60
When They Begynn the Bergen Bekjenn 66
X * CONTENTS
SWEDEN
Djungel Djim in Lapland 71
The Outdoor Boys on the Baltic 76
How to See a Cow Through a Porthole 81
FINLAND
The Soft-boiled Tourist on the Edge of Russia - 83
AUSTRIA
Some Schnitzels from Wien - 89
ITALY
Rome in the Gloamin' 94
SPAIN
In Spain They Say, "Thee, Thee" 98
In Several Little Spanish Towns - 1 03
New Yorker in Majorca - 109
PORTUGAL
Sing Me the Sad Songs - 1 13
Kings Back to Back, Also Big Casino 118
North Africa
ALGERIA
I Wouldn't Walk a Mile on a Camel - 125
TUNISIA
Tunis, Anyone? * 128
All at Sea
AT THE SIGN OF THE BLUE FISH. The Andrea Doria 135
A YENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT. The Gripsholm 1 37
THE ZEE AROUND us, The Maasdam 142
THE CALORIE EXPRESS. The Liberte 146
THE LARGEST FIREPROOF ASPIDISTRA IN THE WORLD.
The United States 148
CHINESE NO LIKE CHEESE. The President Wilson - 153
CONTENTS * XI
The U.S.A. and Canada
LAY THAT WATER PISTOL DOWN 159
ONE-HOSS SASHAY - 163
GARDEN OF GRAPES 168
WILLIAMFBURG IN THE FPRING 1 71
THE BAY WINDOW 175
THE ANGEL'S ROOST * 1 79
THE MALE PLANE * 184
UP ON THE UPHOLSTERED FRONTIER " 186
Some Enchanted Islands
THE CARIBBEAN 193
THE BAHAMAS * 213
BERMUDA 276
Mexico
WITH LOVE AND ECK-ESS 223
"ROGER, DODGER!" 226
CORTES SLEPT HERE 229
THE MEXICO OF M-G-M 232
SEVEN-UP BY THE SEA 233
MAYAN EASE 236
The Pacific
HAWAn
This Site of Paradise 247
Aloha, Hilo Hello, L. A. - 245
Jtll - CONTENTS
JFAPAH
Purely Occidental - 249
The Time of the Tsubame - 255
The Voice of the Nightingale - 26O
Homeward.
FROM ATTICA TO THE ATTIC ' 267
THE END OF A ROUNO-TRIP TICKET - 269
OUTBOUND
HOW TO GET OUT
or TOWN
Learning l_e f creian Lanauaae
LOOK, MAMAN! i AM SPEAKING FRENCH!
I am speaking wiz ozzer Americans who have an accent, Mon
Dieu! Eet eez 'ow you say? Lon-zay?
I speak French Mondays at lunch wiz ozzer Americans who are
brushing up before going to France. The idea for linguistic lunch
hours belongs to the French National Railroads, who have organ-
ized a series of weekly French Luncheons for Americans. There
are only three requirements: you must have a working knowledge
of French, you must promise that only French wiH be spoken, and
you have to pay your own tab.
At un o'clock the other bleu Monday I arrived at a Manhattan
bistro known as Le Chanteclair for the first of the parkz-vous
picnics. I was haggard and worn. I had beem up the whole night
with my Berlitz records. I had been exercising my working knowl-
edge. "Ou est la plume de ma tante?" I had been saying over
and over.
There were fifteen tables in the restaurant, each flying a French
Railroads flag, and all crowded with Americans possessed of a
working knowledge of French and an intention of going to France.
The head waiter stopped me at the door. tc Votre nom?*' he said
with a deep Gallic bow. "Ou est la plume de ma tante?" I answered
with a smile, shooting my cuffs and pulling on my lapels. Bilingual-
ity is a grand feeling.
Shortly thereafter I found myself seated with three ladies named
Mile Woodman, Mile Kahn, and Mile Welsh, who were Americans
4 OUTBOUND
with a working knowledge of French. Our host was M. Robert
Berthe, of the French National Railroads, who had a working
knowledge of English. M. Berthe pronounced his name "bayrt."
Everyone said he was "enchante" to meet everyone else.
M. Berthe ordered dry martinis avec lemon peel for the ladies,
un Scotch for me and a "Man'attan" cocktail for himself. What to
say in French until the drinks come is something you will not find
in a Chardenal. All of us had been to France and we related some
of our difficulties with our working knowledge. "Le biggest diffi-
cultay que j'ai had," said Mile Woodman, "was ordering le petit
dejeuner. Nobody understood me on the telephone at my hotel, so
I waited there in bed to see what they would bring me. After three
mornings without breakfast I went downstairs to eat."
M. Berthe looked at Mile Woodman sternly. "Parlez frangais,
s'il vous plait, mademoiselle," he said. Mile Woodman was con-
trite. "Excusez-moi," she answered. The waiter arrived with over-
sized menus. The Americans ordered omelettes with chicken livers.
M. Berthe chose the tete de veau sauce ravigotte, which is to say,
the head of a calf. M. Berthe has a very French appetite.
"Que pensez-vous de M. Laniel?" said Mile Kahn to M. Berthe,
speaking of the gentleman who was the French premier the day
we had lunch. M. Berthe spouted brilliantly, like a Vickers machine
gun, and while we were all composing an answer, Mile Woodman
leaned over and whispered in my ear. "Un autre cocktail would
have made all the difference," she said.
Now the table was talking about les problems de traffic in Paris.
"Les bicyclettes goxomme ga," explained M. Berthe, making a
thrusting motion with his arm. "Les voitures go comme ga," he
added, crossing with the other arm. "Les pietons go comme ga/' he
said, indicating a pedestrian hopping nimbly between speeding
voitures and bicyclettes. A homesick look came over his face. "Ah,
c'e&t tres amusant, tres amusant." Then he said with pride, "You
know, you will nevair see a Franch drivair who ees not h'angry
at something."
"Parlez frangais," said Mile Woodman, fixing him with a stare.
M. Berthe smiled. He said that American women were so amusing.
He offered Mile Woodman a taste of his tete de veau. Mile looked
at the plate of brains and smiled. "Enchante," she said, and dipped
her fork. "Mmm," she said, "not bad." "Parlez frangais," said
HOW TO GET OUT OF TOWH 5
M. Berthe. "Pas mauvais," said Mile Woodman. "Pas mal," cor-
rected M. Berthe.
When we were getting ready to leave, M. Berthe explained that
the luncheons would be held every week and that anyone coming
to New York on his way to France could write the French National
Railroads at 610 Fifth Avenue, New York, for a reservation. He
said he certainly looked forward to meeting more Americans. He
said he liked America very much. He said, "J'aime beaucoup fe
Vermont," which is where he spends his vacations. He called it
"Vair-monV "J'aime beaucoup la peche," he added, explaining
how he spent his time up in Vair-mon'.
"I like to fish, too," Mile Woodman said, "particulairment le
striped bass."
"Ah, le striped bass," I agreed, for I am an old pecheur when it
comes to striped bass.
"Parlez fran^ais," demanded M. Berthe.
I turned to Mile Woodman. "Oii est la plume de ma tante?"
I said.
"Takes one American to understand another American's
French," she said.
"Ah, oui," sighed M. Berthe.
Twenty Ways to Say
"Ben Vcyace** Besides Bananas
IF THERE IS ONE THING A TRAVELER DOESN'T NEED IN A STATEROOM
it is twenty-seven dollars* worth of juicy pears. The idea about
giving a mess of fruit to a ship passenger dates back to the
Neanderthal days when the best a ship served was hardtack and
salted beef, but the fare has improved since then, even on the Staten
6 OUTBOUND
Island ferry. After a casual fifteen-course snack on the Kungsholm
OTtbQllede France, who needs three dozen oranges? And if there
is one thing I would rather not look at when the ship starts to
lurch and I retire to my stateroom, it is bananas.
Give the traveler a traveling gizmo, I say, and in support of this
campaign I have assembled one of the greatest lists of things-I-don't-
know-how-I-was-able-to-live-without-up-'til-now. For example, if
your traveler is on his way to cold lands, the thing to give him is
a pocket hand warmer. This item also makes an ideal gift for those
who don't own gloves. Nickel-plated, it looks like a cigarette case
and provides one hundred and twenty degrees of heat all day with-
out any flame. All you have to do is drop in two tablespoons of
naphtha or benzene. It costs two dollars and fifty cents, is a boon to
arthritis sufferers, and, according to the instructions, can also be
used for wanning golf balls. Anybody knows a warm golf ball will
travel farther than a cold one.
The man who shaves with an electric razor and is always finding
himself in places that have no electric outlets will do nip-ups
over the new electric razor battery. It comes in a leather case, costs
ten dollars and fifty cents, and each set of batteries is good for
thirty shaves. For those who are motel frequenters, there is the
motel coffee-maker, a whole kit stuffed in a cowhide case, includ-
ing two-cup water heater, two plastic cups, two spoons, jars for
sugar, and room left over for instant coffee. It costs thirty dollars
complete, except for the groceries, and for five dollars more you
can have the automobile type that plugs right into your cigarette
lighter, should it be in working order. A New York grocery chain
puts up a gift package containing instant coffee, instant cream and
sugar cubes capable of producing an instant cup of something or
other that will prove almost as good as the coffee you can get in
the local dining room, unless you happen to be in England.
Among the newer gadgets is a one-pound hoist that will fit in
your pocket and yet is strong enough to help you pull your car out
of the mud or pull your boat onto a trailer. It can also be used for
letting one's self out of a hotel room without having to tie the sheets
together. Thirteen dollars and seventy-five cents. A collapsible
hammer, saw, file, knife, and can opener all packed into a small
zippered case is just the thing for the traveler, especially those en
route to Dannemora. Voyagers inclined to get thirsty en route are
HOW TO GET OUT OF TOWN 7
candidates for a traveling bar. One version, containing eighteen
glasses appropriate for highballs, cocktails, and whisky sours, plus
shaker, jigger, ice crusher, and corkscrew, goes for a fast fifty dol-
lars. However, the gift for travelers who just want to tote the bare
essentials should be a leather suitcase containing a pair of gleaming
metal flasks each of which holds a solid gallon of something or
other. The metal is a new alloy, guaranteed not to alter the taste
of the potable, and even two-dollar rye won't corrode it. The gaflon
pair is one hundred and sixty dollars and there is a half-gallon size
for light drinkers pegged at one hundred and fifteen dollars.
A man could, of course, leave home equipped with a black eye-
mask for sleeping in airplanes during the daytime, a tie pin that
has a built-in compass that will advise you what direction you're
headed for, a private-ear radio that fits in your breast pocket, unless
you are Jane Russell, and picks up stations in a fifty-mite radius.
Of course, you have to be willing to walk around with a ptag in
your ear and an aerial growing out of your suit For people who are
tired of other means of locomotion, pogo sticks are selling this year
for seven dollars and ninety-five cents.
Personally, I am wary of travel gadgets, for I have discovered
that traveling tie racks make your ties look as if they had just come
through the wringer. And wringers are cheaper. Also I have found
it is not easy to get people to use these things if they are not orderiy
types. Not long ago I lost my head and stuck my hand in my lady's
suitcase, a rash move that caused me to impale my forefinger on
a pair of tweezers. As I removed the mitt, bobby pins hung from
my fingernails like the time they tortured Gary Cooper with
bamboo slivers in Lives of a Bengal Lancer. So I went out and
bought the girl a jim-dandy toilet kit with special places to park
the soap, the toothbrush, and all. Once when I ran out of soap
somewhere north of Finland I went poking around in this kit again
and it was a sad mistake, though not as bloody as the first time.
Bobby pins poured like ingots out of the soap dish, and where the
toothbrush should have been were earrings. Soap flakes filled tlie
bottle that had been meant for toilet water, and tucked in the flap
that had been designed to embrace a comb was a list of good places
to eat in Paris.
Maybe the best thing to give the traveler is a copy of Around the
World on $80 1 a book written by one Robert Christopher. The
8 OBTBOtJND
only thing is that the book costs three dollars and for that kind of
money and Mr. Christopher's know-how you could get to Hawaii.
If your traveler has read the book, then the only thing left is to
give him a wad of kopeks or francs or lire or escudos, depending
upon where he is bound. You can buy them at banks or foreign-
currency exchanges. The thing about money is that it is a gift that
goes a long way, especially if you give a lot of it.
Heard the One Abcut the
Traveling Buyer?
SAN FRANCISCO
WHENEVER i AM ON THE BRINK OF THE SEA, READY TO EMBARK
for far and mysterious places, I am consumed with the doubt that
I will ever get time to look at any of them. This trip will carry me
some eighteen thousand miles before I see home or the rent bill
again, but I'm loaded down with so many errands from the folks at
home it doesn't look like there will be any time for sight-seeing.
For instance, in the soap dish of my toilet kit I carry a large and
bulbous pearl made of a toe brand of paste. When my mother got
wind of my intention to visit Japan, she whipped out this phony
pearl and said, "Here, match this. I have always wanted a pair of
real pearl earrings just this shade." Then she thrust sixty dollars
in my coat pocket, which is all she had under the mattress at the
moment, and said, "Don't spend more than one hundred and
fifty dollars."
Nobody knows how long my mother has had this fake pearl
stashed away against this occasion, but my bet is that it's been
years. Every time I was getting ready to make a trip someplace,
she would ask me where I was going, and when I would say Europe
HOW TO GET OUT OF TOWN 9
or the Caribbean, she would say, "When you go to Japan, I want
you to get me some pearls." I should have known she wasn't
kidding.
When the boss heard I was bound for Japan, he brought the wife
down to the office, which is an uncommon thing, and he called
me in. "You going to China?" he asked me. I said no sir, I was
only going as far as Japan, and that there didn't exist much of
China where a man could go and expect to get back, except perhaps
Hong Kong. We looked up Hong Kong on the map, and if my arith-
metic is right it lies one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one miks
from Tokyo. "Well, don't make a special trip," my boss told me,
"but the wife is looking for a Lowestoft china bowl." "About so
big," his wife said, making a great circle of her arms, indicating a
tureen used for serving stew in families of seventeen. "Don't spend
more than a hundred," the boss said. "You can get one for fifty,"
said the wife. "If you run short, I'll cable you the money," the boss
said.
I looked up Lowestoft in my geographical dictionary and it said
it was a town in England formerly noted for the manufacture of
chinaware, so I don't know what such a bowl would be doing in
China. I also don't know how I'm going to cover those one thou-
sand eight hundred and fifty-one miles to Hong Kong, not to men-
tion the one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one miles back, so I
guess my question about who would pay for the Lowestoft bowl if
I bought it and dropped it en route is purely rhetorical.
One of my most memorable quests was for a bottle of perfume
named "Ce Soir ou Jamais," which is sophisticated talk meaning
"Tonight or Never." I used to think it was a brand name known
only to my wife, for I asked for it in Paris, which has more perfume
than Heinz has pickles, and all I got was a Gallic shrug. I scoured
the perfumeries of Bermuda and of Grasse on the French Riviera,
where they make their own. Nothing. I searched the souks of Tunis,
where sinister Arabs whip up dangerous aphrodisiacs, but I never
brought home anything more than a blank look. "Where did you
hear about this perfume?" I asked my wife, and she said she
smelled some on a lady in an elevator once and it was divine and
she had to have some, which of course is a royal command. I am
happy to say that a friend of mine turned up a bottle of "Ce Soir
ou Jamais" in Peru recently, where they make it from old river
10 OUTBOUND
water, which anyway is what it smelled like when my wife opened
the bottle. It was only eleven dollars, which is not much for a glass
bottle and a label printed in authentic French.
Just a short trip up to Toronto will bring me a request from my
aunt for a Royal Doulton figurine, which is what she collects. I am
grateful her hobby isn't East Indian brassware, which is not as
fragile but is the all-time heavyweight if you're traveling by air, If
you can keep a request down to a figurine I figure you're not so
bad off. Once this same aunt had her sister bring her a whole set
of Wedgwood chinaware, which is much cheaper in Bermuda than
in the United States. The Bermuda store shipped the crates dom
to the airport as instructed, and when the overweight was paid the
dishes were only slightly more than twice the cost in New York.
Not all my business is done in purchases. When I'm off on a trip,
I make some deliveries too. A lady I never met called me the other
day and said she was a friend of my mother-in-law and she had
heard I was going to Japan. Her daughter and son-in-law were
living in Tokyo and she would like to send over a few packages
with me. I said I would be glad to oblige if she would be sure to
keep the packages small. "Why?" the lady asked me incredulously.
"You're going by ship, aren't you?"
Just before I left for the West Coast I found a message in my
office from this same lady. Her son-in-law had called from Tokyo,
and when he heard I was coming out with the few packages, le:
asked if I would bring along their living-room rug. So this friend
of my mother-in-law had left word that she had sent the rug to
me at my ship in San Francisco. It would be put in the hold; no
trouble at all.
I'm not saying what I'm going to do about that rug if the son-ill-
law of the friend of my mother-in-law is not on hand to collect it,
But if you should happen to see an Oriental rug peddler on tie
dock at Yokohama about two weeks from now, that won't be an
Oriental. That'll be me.
EUROPE
ICELAND
Desperate Dublin
DUBLIN
ALTHOUGH IRELAND CAN BE ENJOYED AT ALMOST ANY TIME OF
the year, if you want to encounter more Irishmen than is abso-
lutely necessary, then go during the annual home-coming. "An
Tostal," as the home-coming is being called in Ireland's resur-
gence of Gaelic, is a muster of Irishmen living the worid over and
an invitation to visitors to see the new land that has sprung up in
the past thirty years.
An Tostal will be celebrated with Aeriochtai, Ceilidhe, and
Cuirmeacha Ceoil, which is to say open-air entertainments, dances,
and concerts. It is unlikely that Irishmen will refer to them in
anything but perfectly understandable English words, for few of
them know Gaelic and most of them view its pronunciations as
"desperate," a word of current local popularity that corresponds to
the British use of "shocking."
Gaelic is being taught in the schools, street signs have gone up
in Gaelic as well as English, and the government-supported Radio
Eireann performs frequently in the ancient tongue. But as a friend
who broadcasts Gaelic plays over the Irish air told me, "Just think!
When that red light flashes on and the first Gaelic words go out over
the air, we are being tuned out in homes all over Ireland. Incurables
of years' standing are getting up and walking over to the radio to
turn it off." When Senator Taft's son was appointed as ambassador
to Ireland, a great fuss was made in the American press of his
knowledge of Gaelic, but one wonders with whom he will converse.
The modern Irishman's difficulty with the tongue of his forebears
implies, however, no diminishment of nationalism.
14 EUEOPE
One is told that Ireland participates neither in the UN nor in
NATO, because to join would be to give tacit approval to the
existing borders between the republic and Northern Ireland. The
division is a sore point indeed, desperate, you might say, and the
inequities of it are outlined in outraged bulletins which are dis-
seminated to transatlantic passengers at Shannon Airport.
A rash of letters has broken out in the local press while I have
been here deploring the fact that an American flag was carried in
Dublin's St. Patrick's Day parade, an act which seems to imply
some sort of allegiance to the United States. Nor was the Irish
ambassador's action in giving Eisenhower a shamrock applauded
at home. "Might as well give one to the Queen of England,"
humphed a correspondent. The schools in Limerick have decided
not to take part in the Tostal Sports Carnival parade because "for-
eign games organizations intend to march in it." One speaks
tenderly of England here as "the far side." And though during
Coronation year one Irish manufacturer did turn out some tumblers
embossed with "E.R." and the royal crest, the drinker, having
quaffed the contents, was confronted with the legend "Up the
Republic!" printed in the bottom of the glass.
I journeyed over from the far side the other day, taking the
Irish Mail, a crack train of the British and Irish Railways that has
been coursing over the same tracks since 1848. It leaves London
late in the afternoon and if you dally with tea (an endless proces-
sion of sandwiches and cakes for twenty-eight cents) and then sign
up for the late seating at dinner you find you will have fairly well
disposed of the trip. There seemed hardly time between meals to go
back to my compartment to listen in on a trio of Welshmen we
were slicing through Wales discourse on David Lloyd George,
the most famous Welshman of modern times. Since these opinions
were delivered in Welsh, a language fraught with letters that are
double f s and double d's, I was obliged to wait for translations,
and thus occupied it was no time at all before the Irish Mail had
arrived in Holyhead. From there you board a ship inevitably named
the Hibernian and sail overnight in an immaculate stateroom to
Dun Laoghaire, nee Kingstown, a few minutes from Dublin.
There is not enough I can say for the hotels in Dublin, for they
are well kept, handsome, and by the standards of Britain and
IHELAN0 ' 15
France inexpensive. A room in the Gresham, furnished in tlie
best Paris taste with radio and lavender-tiled bath, comes to five
dollars and twenty-five cents a day, and that includes a breakfast
of grilled kippers, eggs and bacon, and coffee. The Shelbonrne
resembles Claridge's in London but its prices resembk the Gresham,
and the Royal Hibernian, an ancient black and white landmark on
Dawson Street, is f aultlessy manicured and offers bed and breakfast
for four dollars and twenty cents.
The food is good, plain, abundant, and not expensive at any of
these hotels, but you can supplement your list with several mascu-
line, old-timber, and polished-brass places that are scattered artmad
town. The Dolphin offers monkey-gland steak for about eighty-five
cents, in such surroundings, the appellation referring to the sauce,
not the meat. It also serves angels on horseback (oysters wrapped
in bacon) and devils on horseback (chicken livers in bacoa).
Jammefs gets the racing crowd, which is virtually everybody in
town, to whom it feeds lobsters and stout.
Stout is, to be sure, the milk of the land, and Dublin consumes
a black, rich malty river of it every day, much of it from aluminum
barrels which the tippling fraternity calls "iron lungs.** Stout and
Guinness are virtually synonymous terms, and the Guinness Brew-
ery at St. James's Gate is one of the city's prize landmarks. TOOTS
are run through it several times a day, and visitors learn, as did I,
that it is the largest brewery in the world, covering sixty-six acres
of real estate, using eight miles of railway, and employing three
thousand six hundred people, including a barrel smeller who is
hired for the sole purpose of whiffing the empty casks to see that
they have been properly cleaned. Most wooden barrels these days
are giving way to the aluminum iron lungs which the Irish, like the
English, pronounce "al-yoo-min-ee-um." Guinness brews porter
for local thirsts, extra stout for the U.K. and Ireland, expect stout
(which is stronger) for Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, and for-
eign extra stout (which has more hops and is more bitter) for the
U.S. Furthermore, the stout in Ireland is weaker than what goes
to Northern Ireland and England, and all Irishmen who are
offended by this intelligence may take up the matter directly with
the Guinness people. Anyway, this has been going on since 1759,
and fifty-five thousand people come to watch the proceedings every
16 * EUROPE
year, ending with a stop in the sampling room for free tankards
of porter and stout. A former teacher tells me that during a teacher's
strike when funds had run out, he and a friend organized tours of
the Guinness plant taking parties of thirty at a time and "makin*
sure that twenty-two were teetotalers." A man had to live.
Aside from black beer, there is more than a patriotic affinity for
Irish whisky and some hardy souls swallow potteen, or Irish moon-
shine, but that kind of libation takes a man with a stomach of
al-yoo-min-ee-um. Lest the Irish get a reputation for free imbibery,
I am informed that nondrinkers are sometimes inclined to wear a
badge signifying total abstinence, and total means no lime juice
either. Nobody offers a drink to an abstainer and if the man's own
will gives way, "the biggest drunk in Ireland would kick him out
of the door," an informant has advised me. "Yessir," he told me,
"a man violating an abstainer's badge would be bloody well
filletted," which is to say, deboned.
So many of Dublin's pubs and saloons having reached inter-
national prominence because Ireland's writers drank there, I felt
obliged in line of duty to render a report. Hiding my abstainer's
badge under my lapel, I ventured forth to Davy Byrnes at 21 Duke
Street, which Joyce had called "Davy Byrnes moral pub" in
Ufysses. A haunt of Joyce and of Liam O'Flaherty, it was done
over in 1941 and sports a modern cocktail-lounge decor and some
murals I could only term as desperate. The Abbey Bar, once a
favorite of Dudley Digges, Barry Fitzgerald, and the Fay brothers
(who organized the Abbey Theatre), has certainly not been re-
decorated, and it was filled on the night I stopped by with a covey
of salty characters who were playing a ring-toss game in the little
back room. A sign on the men's room read "Fir, Men, Hommes,
Herren, Retret, Uomni," which I suppose takes care of all hands
likely to enter the premises. O'Meara's on the quays has harps all
over its outside walls; and greyhounds and shamrocks, a pair of
symbols rather dear to the hearts of the local populace, are ex-
travagantly whittled on its wooden door.
One hardly knows with whom one tipples in Dublin, for one
morning in Jerry O'Dwyer's pub on Moore Street, whence I was
escorted by Niall Sheridan and Jimmy Clare of Fogre Failte, the
government's publicity office, we were shortly in the company of
Shamus Cavanaugh, of Radio Eireann, and Brinsley McNamara,
IBELAND 17
who is credited with Glorious Uncertainty, Look at the Heffemans,
and other plays. Mr. McNamara puffed his briar but Mr. Cavanaugh
spilled in my ear the word that the playwright had directed the
Abbey Theatre and had toured with it in company with Sarah
AUgood and Arthur Sinclair some forty years ago. Biddies who
had already reached their majority in those days sat alongside us
there in O'Dwyer's, their week-end provisions in a bag by their
feet, their black hats pulled down on their gray heads, their black
stout on the table before them. They had bought a joint of lamb or
mutton, for one had to have a joint on Sunday and fries would not
do. We, meanwhile, were occupied with the Dublin telephone direc-
tory, counting up the O apostrophes, of which there are three
thousand one hundred from O'Bannon to OTuathalain. Outside,
Moore Street was a Spanish market, and when the door opened
you could hear the call of the lady hucksters. "Eight pence a pound
the onions," they would call. "Ten pence a pound the sound to-
matoes," and Shamus advised me that meant "those that had not
fallen asunder."
Ireland's other big occupation is the Irish Sweepstakes. I went
out to Ballsbridge in Dublin's suburbs to find a four-acre building
occupied by two thousand girls. Four teams were on hand back
in the mixing room, a salon decorated with murals of jockeys, pad-
docks, and Arctic Prince, winner of the 1951 English Derby. Two
teams in blue dresses and yellow dresses were scooping up tickets
from baskets and dropping them into a huge drum which was fitted
with an electrical mixer. While two teams in green dresses and red
dresses were resting on the sidelines, five million counterfoils were
being shuffled, a whistle blew to start and stop the mixing, and a
loud-speaker played "Old Shanty Town."
For the final picking, the No. 1 Army Band plays in Sweepstakes
Gardens, and lunch and tea are served on the lawn. A special staff
of geographical experts is permanently employed to locate such
places at the Shan States of Mongolia, whence requests for tickets
emanate. The whole thing is illegal as near at hand as England, or
as someone put it, "If you're caught with a Sweeps ticket on the
far side, you're for the high jump." Despite the rules, the Irish Hos-
pitals Trust, which runs the business, has raised 27,624,845 for
charity and given away 68,870,190 in prizes, and two dollars
and eighty cents makes a pound.
18 " EUHOFE
A rather active publicity campaign is maintained, and once the
Sweeps committee dispatched a trawler to the edge of the English
coast and dumped hundreds of bottles shaped like fish over the
side. Each bottle contained a note bidding the finder to write the
Irish Hospitals Trust and give the name of their favorite pub.
Seventy-seven bottles washed ashore at Sennen's Cove in Corn-
wall, or so the receipts indicated, and the committee promptly
sent five shillings per person to each pub cited and invited the
correspondents to have a drink on the Irish Hospitals Trust. Fellow
turned up in New York harbor with a bottle and the hospital
people stood him a drink at Jack Dempsey's. The luck wasn't so
good at Bournemouth, England, however, where the police kept
an avid watch on the shoreline and seized every bottle that washed
in with the tide. Things get pretty desperate sometimes over on the
far side.
ENGLAND
Gems frcm the Thames
LONDON
IF THERE IS ONE PLACE THAT LOOKS LIKE THE STRETCH OF LAND
that lies between New York City and Idlewild Airport it is the
stretch of England that lies between Northolt Airport and London.
Hit's Jackson Heights all over again, h'is what. Or maybe Jackson
'eights.
The highway runs between rows of two-family, red-brick sub-
urban houses. The only diiference is that the televison aerials are
ENGLAND 19
vertical, and, of course, the traffic drives on the left, giving an
American the impression that he is looking at the cars through
a rear-view mirror. Even the factories are familiar Gillette,
Hoover, Pyrene. And the flaming red busses of the London trans-
port companies, also double-deckers, carry signs that proclaim the
miracles of Tide, the washwoman's delight, and a beer called Ben
Truman (no relation).
To see London properly, one must, they say, eat fish and chips
from newspaper, feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square under the
spray of the fountains, listen in on the public arguments which
take place in Hyde Park at Marble Arch, and visit a creaky pub
like The George, where London businessmen with bowler, um-
brella, and red carnation foregather at noon to eat a stand-up lunch
of Cornish pasties (a meat and vegetable pie) and "ordinary"
cheese sandwiches, washed down with a pint of ate. The Paris
edition of the New York Herald Tribune, which appears in Loiidoa
each morning of good flying weather, once ran an editorial com-
memorating an anniversary of the bowler. In London the bowler,
or Coke as it is sometimes called, is as much a part of the equip-
ment of the successful businessman as, for example, a steady job.
If you can find a hotel room, there is enough to see in London
to keep you here for weeks. One must, to be sure, visit the Tower
of London, which is nearly as famous as its guards the Beefeaters,
more formally known as the Yeoman Warders of the Tower
they of the flat-domed, pleated, red and black hat, the ruffled
collars, the knee breeches, and the halberd. The Tower, whose
most recent prisoner of note was Rudolph Hess, is also a haven for
a flight of ravens, who are sacred residents of the property. There
is a legend that if the ravens leave the Tower the Empire will
crumble. The authorities aren't superstitious, but just to be on
the safe side they clip the ravens' wings. It hardly hampers the
birds very much, for they remain a threat to the tower cats. When-
ever a cat proves slower than a raven, it sounds, the Beefeaters
say, like a battalion of Scottish bagpipers marching to church. Since
the ravens do not breed in the unromantic confines of London's
Tower, all the birds are replaced by donors. Upon arrival for
crown duty, each raven is registered and given a ration card,
although the royal birds seem to get more meat than the average
Londoner.
20 EUBOPE
The Tower is, as well, the repository for Britain's crown jewels,
which are kept inside barred and glass walls in a separate building
(admission extra). Says the Beefeater who functions as guide,
"Let me tell you, should you decide to view the jewels, to hang
onto the railing and hope for the best. It'll surely dazzle you."
He also briefed potential jewel-viewers not to ask, "Are they real?"
That would be an insult to the warder who guards them. To ask
their value is to be a crass commercialism They are priceless to the
British Empire, but a jewelry appraiser once slapped an estimated
value of something like eight million pounds on the royal baubles.
While gripping the rail and hoping for the best, we did manage
to scribble in our notebook a fragment or two about what dazzled
us most. The collection includes the State Salt Cellar used at the
coronation banquet and given by the city of Exeter to Charles II;
the scepter of George VI, which holds the Great Star of Africa,
largest cut diamond in the world; the state crown of Queen Mary
used at the coronation of George V on June 22, 1911, and the tiny
crown made to order for Queen Victoria, who could withstand the
tribulations of the Empire, but not the weight of a crown on her
head.
If you should possess a historical curiosity and a heavy over-
coat, you will doubtless enjoy rummaging around in the dank
confines of Westminster Abbey, a church which holds the graves
of most who were great and who were British. One can scarcely
enter through the west door without noticing the simple wall
plaque to Franklin Roosevelt, honored as a friend of Britain and
freedom and four-times president of the United States. Another
American so honored is Longfellow, whose marble bust (but
not his body) reposes in the Poet's Corner. In the floor nearby lie
Browning (1812-89) and Tennyson (1809-92), side by side.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning is buried in Florence. Around a par-
tition are the remains of Samuel Johnson, Dickens, and Thomas
Hardy. On the day we barged in on the Abbey, the stone slab in
the floor marking the grave of the actor Henry Irving, who died
on October 13, 1905, was covered with three bunches of withering
flowers. Said a card attached to one:
Sent from Ellen Terry's garden on October 13, 1950, on behalf
of Ellen Terry (d. 1927) and of her daughter Edy (d. 1947).
A. and C. St. J.
ENGLAND * 21
Looking down from the opposite wall is Jenny Lind Goldsmith,
died November 2, 1887. Her immobile features are chiseled into
the stone, and so is a lyre surrounded by a marble wreath.
An even more realistic memorial to personalities both English
and international is Madame Tussaud's wax works, a huge col-
lection of nearly five hundred effigies. Tussaud's gets you in the
mood by sprinkling around a few wax ushers, wax bobbies, and
tired-out old wax ladies sitting on the public benches. The figures
upstairs include political, military, theatrical, and sportive celebri-
ties, past and present. As you browse, a catalogue keeps you abreast
with thumbnail biographies. So Tussaud's records in a tableau of
many figures the sorrowful end of Mary Queen erf Scots, whom
Elizabeth had beheaded. There is a working model called Sleeping
Beauty, whose bosom actually heaves. Madame Tussaud herself
modeled her from life, using as her subject Madame St Amaranthe,
the widow of a colonel in Louis XVTs bodyguard who had been
killed in the attack on the Tuileries in 1792. Robespierre tried to
make her his mistress, and when the great beauty declined, be
had her hauled before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Although the
charge was false, the dead colonel's lady lost her head to the
guillotine at the age of twenty-two.
For a few extra pence you can descend into Tussaud's basement,
officially known as the Chamber of Horrors. It is by and large
a collection of English murderers who will be unknown to Ameri-
can visitors. On the wall, however, hangs a facsimile of a letter
sent by a well-known whittler to the Central News Agency in
London. It says in part: "My knife's so nice and sharp I want to
get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck. Yours truly,
Jack the Ripper." Also on hand are the death masks of Marie
Antoinette and Louis XVI, both of whom were taken immediately
after their executions in the Place de la Concorde by Madame
Tussaud herself
But if it is spring, the best attraction is London itself. The bril-
liant purple cherry trees hide the skeleton rods of the TV aerials
along the airport road. The May trees are blooming and English-
men recall the proverb, 64 Cast not a clout 'tfl May is out." People
are back at the seasonal argument, trying to determine whether
the ancient coiner of epigrams meant May the month or may the
the tree. A clout, everyone seems to agree, is an old English way
22 * EUBOPE
of saying clothing. Tulips dab London with color at every turn
in the quiet church garden behind St. Paul's, in the rubble of the
blitzed buildings, on the sills of newspaper offices on Fleet Street.
Lazy deck chairs are scattered over the greensward of Hyde Park,
and they beckon with great seduction to a traveler whose nerves
still jangle from the automobile horns of New York, just one day
away, across the sea.
It is a pleasant and costless endeavor in the London spring to
stroll the Thames Embankment under the leafy plane trees,
although the joy of watching the double-decker trolley cars that
rumbled along the edge of the quays is over, for they are gone. No
trustier brand of machinery has yet replaced the river scows,
fortunately, and they still push silently against the current, the
strain of their effort gone unnoticed by all but those who mother
them. For a man in need of a rest, the Thames Embankment
provides benches facing the river which rest on pedestals thought-
fully elevated so that one has an unhindered view of the maritime
scene.
London is a wonderful town to walk, but when the feet give out,
there are always the famed red double-decker busses which not long
ago toured the United States from coast to coast. A ride on them
in their home territory, say from St. Paul's to the Savoy Hotel
costs three cents, and even at that price the conductor has the
courtesy to say thank you and remembers to tell you where to get
off, virtually unheard-of customs in New York where the fare is
quadruple. But then in London it is possible to have a haircut at
the best gentleman's hairdresser for two shillings, or twenty eight
cents, which isn't enough for a tip at home.
And it doesn't cost at all to indulge in that favorite sport of
Americans in Britain, which is sign-watching. It would be hard
to say what is the best sign I ever saw in London, but it is prob-
ably the lettering on the truck that says: The Sea Salter and Ham
Oyster Co., Ltd. (If there is anyone in the house who collects rare
Irish signs, I will take this opportunity to submit the toy store
Joiown as: The Invalid Requisite and Baby Carriage Co., Ltd.)
Lunch in London can be a boon to the budget, especially if one
wants to meet the people and avoid the tourists. There are pubs
fill over town like the Bunch of Grapes on Jermyn Street, where a
glass of ale and an egg sandwich cost the equivalent of twenty-four
EKGLAHD 23
cents. Many dirty words have been uttered, even invented, to
describe British food, but it will be a hard job to get a bad meal
in the restaurants that line Frith Street in Soho. The Epicure, the
Isola Bella, and Kettner's get this department's personal seal erf
approval. Right in Piccadilly venerable Scott's has that dark
mahogany atmosphere, and the downstairs grill, especially, is a
wonderful place to have lobster and a pail of stout. One of the
town's best wine cellars, with excellent French food to go with it,
is suprisingly enough, in the tiny Gore Hotel in Kensington which
was taken over a few years ago by Robin Howard, a young
wounded veteran of impeccable taste. He also opened just for the
Coronation an Elizabethan Restaurant serving roast swan, lam-
preys, cold roast peacock, and other delectabtes. Tumblers flip
while your bird turns on a skewer in the fireplace. Troubadours
sing madrigals at your ear. The whole thing proved such a roaring
success that at last look it was still going and may well become a
permanent appendage to the Gore Hotel.
Anyone who enjoys seven waiters at the elbow should repair to
the famous Grill of the Savoy Hotel. For celebrities, try the Ivy
which is the local Nest for the theater people, or eke Siegy's Club
up near Berkeley Square. The bar is always a sophisticated hubbub,
and the last time I was in the room upstairs, it was decorated with
Clark Gable on one side and Yvonne deCarlo on the other.
For the most part, eating will be not only better but also cheaper
outside London, a realm which can be reached via the capable
means provided by British Railways or, should one be available,
by car. A way to make a car available is to hire one from somebody
like Daimler, Ltd., which rents a seven-passenger limousine only
slightly shorter than a hearse for about thirty dollars a day, includ-
ing the driver's keep. Or four people who are reasonably genial can
hire a Hillman Minx or an Austin Somerset, spend two weeks tour-
ing England and Scotland, cover one thousand four hundred miles,
and pay about fifty dollars each.
Anyone with better than average foresight can order a Hillman
Minx or other small British car before departing from the United
States and have it delivered in England. AJter touring Europe you
can ship the car home, but if you order it in the United States the
car cannot be charged off against your free-duty allowance. If you
buy it in Britain 'Incidental" as they say, to your trip, then Unite!
24 - EUROPE
States Customs permits you to apply your duty allowance to the
purchase price. Two tourists, each with a five hundred dollar
allowance, will almost write off the duty on a small car.
Well, so much for the fine print. The thing is, if you do drive in
England, the only thing that may bother you aside from keeping
to the left is the language barrier. I once went buzzing up to
Stratford-upon-Avon in a Humber Super Snipe to get an idea of
what British touring was like, and I would like to report that a
"roundabout" is a traffic circle, and a "lay-by" is a place by the
side of the road where you can park, picnic, or take in the view.
Petrol is the word for gas, gas in Britain being something that
accumulates on one's stomach. Bonnet is the word for hood, and
there is no such thing as a windshield since it is a windscreen. The
roads are narrow *but well paved, and the drivers of lorries, which
are trucks, have exquisite highway manners, motioning you on to
pass whenever the highway is clear.
Stratford, you most certainly will want to know, is ninety-two
miles from London and is, of course, the birthplace of Shakespeare.
I have been careful to call the place Stratford-upon-Avon, its real
name, because there used to be a postmaster in town who took
every letter addressed to Stratford-on-Avon and sent it back
stamped "Address Unknown." Everybody goes to see Shakespeare's
birthplace on Henley Street, which became a butcher shop after
the Bard's death, but has since been restored. More than one hun-
dred and twenty-five thousand tourists slipped through the house
last year, and the Queen herself with Margaret had a look on April
20, 1950. Shakespeare wooed Anne Hathaway in Stratford and
her house is on view. He won her, but whether he ever went so
far as to take out legal papers seems doubtful. Unfortunately for
Stratford, the house in which Shakespeare died exists no more- It
was acquired by one Francis Gastrell, an individual of uneven
temperament who became so incensed by the flow of inquisitive
tourists that he chopped down a mulberry tree which Shakespeare
had planted. (A watchmaker bought it up and made a killing selling
splinters.) The tourists, an inexorable army of them, flowed on,
and Gastrell finally had the house torn down. The indignant towns-
people passed a resolution that no one named Gastrell might ever
live in Stratford-upon-Avon.
ENGLAND - 25
Shakespeare is buried in the Collegiate Church of Stratford, in
whose holdings he was an investor. A likeness of him over his
tomb, done in painted stone only twenty years after his death, is
believed to be his most faithful likeness. There was talk of moving
him over to Westminster Abbey, but the famous lines, attributed
to him, which are carved on his grave were said to have been a
deterrent:
Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed heare
Blese be e man t spares thes stones
y y
And curst be he t moves my bones
y
The municipal book which records his birth on April 23, 1564, and
his death on the same day in 1616 can also be seen at the church.
Meanwhile, should his fame need further perpetuation, a repertory
of about five of his plays is given alternately from March through
October at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, a building for
which the Rockefellers put up half the jack.
Tourists can get by handsomely in Stratford at the Falcon Hotel,
a typical English wood-and-stone affair where the rates run about
three dollars and fifty cents for bed and breakfast. The Wekombe
Hotel, just outside the center of town is slightly higher. The Shake-
speare Inn is a pleasant enough place indeed where erne can secure
a room and breakfast for nineteen shillings or about two dollars
and seventy-one cents a day. Besides the inn there is also a Shake-
speare Press, a Shakespeare Garage, and it will be altogether obvi-
ous to any but the most myopic that Will Lived Here.
It is only ten miles from Stratford, the fountainhead of the
theater, to Broadway itself. Broadway in Worcestershire is hardly
more than a single street lined with wonderful English buildings all
constructed of the same honey-colored Cotswold stone. The win-
dows are divided by strips of lead and many of them bulge out in
graceful curves toward the passer-by. The gardens begin where
the houses end, and banks of flowers decorate the lawns in front
of antique stores, the lovely tea shops, and even the pubs.
Broadway has six inns, and the Lygon Arms, which is the biggest,
26 * ETFHOPE
was built in 1530 and is rich in dark paneling, pewter tankards,
and brass and copper utensils which gleam from the pale brick
walls where they hang. The dinner menu at the Lygon Arms which
I attacked included a choice of grapefruit or cream soup; grilled
river trout, casserole of chicken, or roast goose with stuffing and
apple sauce; roast potatoes, cauliflower, and garden peas; a choice
of gooseberry pie and cream, delate pudding, or vanilla ice
cream and caramel sauce. One could pick from a tray of cheeses
or have a savory, which is a special British way of returning the
palate to what it was experiencing along about mid-meal. The
savory CHI my night in Broadway was chopped venison and chutney
served on a block of toast. A wayward diner stopping by at the
Lygon Arms for this meal would pay one dollar and twenty cents
from soup to savory. Guests staying at the hotel for a minimum of
three days would pay six dollars and fifty cents for the room, a
bath, and three meals.
Broadway has no golf, no tennis, no dancing. But there is plenty
of beauty and peace, and there is the village pub, closing time
10 P.M. There isn't an ulcer within fifty miles of the original Broad-
way, and one could hardly call the other Broadway an improvement.
Two other stops in the Shakespeare country are Banbury and
Warwick. Banbuiy Cross is the place where the nursery rhymes
are always riding cock horses to, and Warwick is the site of a
storybook castle which can trace its beginnings to the tenth cen-
tury. A mammoth fortress set on a magnificent estate a hundred
feet above the meandering Avon River, Warwick Castle has a
moat, a drawbridge, and a fourteenth-century tower with walls
ten feet thick. It is one of the few castles in Britain which has not
been turned over to the government, since it is still inhabited by
the present Earl of Warwick, an affable and debonair chap who
shares his digs with tourists willing to pay two and six for a look.
With the proceeds the Earl makes frequent trips to America
where he is well known among the Hollywood set. He entertains
fairy princesses the likes of Paulette Goddard, who has served
time at Warwick when vacationing in England. The Earl also sup-
ports a fine collection of early armor and arms, owns a priceless art
gallery including Vandyke's famous portrait of Charles I on horse-
back, Hans Holbein's unpleasant impression of Henry VIII done
cm wood, and Rembrandt's Dutch Burgomaster. In the conserva-
ENGLAND - 27
lory is a relic known as the Warwick vase. A huge white marble
urn of Greek origin, it was found in 1770 at the bottom of a lake
at Hadrian's Villa just outside Rome by the English ambassador
to the court of Naples. I suppose it is also possible to see some of
the Earl's friends around the place too, especially Miss Paulette
Goddard, who as far as I can tell is quite a bit younger than that
Greek vase, not to mention better-looking.
HOW TO IMBIBE IN A PUB
A Guide to Drinking at British Bars Without
Fear or Befuddlement
THE DRINK
WHAT TO
EXPECT
WHO DRINKS IT
PRICE*
WHAT TO ASK
FOR
Mild Ale**
Dark ale
The working
man
1 shilling
Pint of Mild,
"a pint," or "a
pint of wallop"
Bitter**
Rich, strong,
amber beer
usually in a
tankard
All English-
men
1/2
Pint of Bitter
Mild and
Bitter**
Vz dark ale and
Vz strong beer
ditto
1/1
Pint of Mild
and Bitter, an
M & B, or "a
half-and-half" *
Old Ale**
Extra-strong,
black ale
Only the brave
or the discon-
solate
1/3
Pint of Old
Old Ale and
Mild Beer
Vfc old black
ale
Vi mild beer
Not-so-brave
old ale drinkers
and the mild
ale drinkers on
Saturday night
1/1,1/2
Pint of CM
and Mild
* 1 shilling is 12 peace, which equals 14 American cents; the number
preceding the slant line indicates shillings, the number after indicates pence.
The letter "d n following a number indicates pence.
** Those with limited capacities may order half-pints,
28
EUROPE
WHAT TO
WHAT TO ASK
THE DRINK
EXPECT
WHO DRINKS n
PRICE*
FOR
Light Ale
Clear, dark
The black-
9d
A Light
effervescent, in
coated or, as
bottles
we say, the
white-collar
class
Brown Ale
Dark brown
The above plu
9d
A Brown
Coke-colored,
the younger
effervescent,
generation
sweet
Guinness
Guinness
Women, espe
1/6
Guinness
Stout, very
daily when
dark, creamy
pregnant, and
head
those in need
of a tonic
Stout
Smooth, dark,
Women and
1/5
Milk Stout or
and sweetish
run-down men
Oatmeal Stout
with a bitter
tang
Black and
Guinness and
Those with an
2
A Black and
Tan
mild ale with a
acquired taste,
shillings
Tan
bitter taste
men only
Shandy**
Viz pint of ale
Perspiring
10 d
A Shandy or
topped with a
men, near-
Shandy-gaff
bottle of
teetotalers,
lemonade,
novitiates, and
sweet and
women
fizzy
Stout and
Small bottle of
Acquired
1/11
A Mother-in-
Bitter
Stout mixed
taste
law
with V pint of
Bitter
Beer
Light-colored,
The chic at
2/6
Lager
like American
lunchtime
>eer
and Americans
Reprinted from March 1953 Esquire.
Copyright 1953 by Esquire, Inc.
FEANCE * 29
PRANCE
Le >ViId Bleu Tcndalr
PABIS
THERE ARE ALL SORTS OF WAYS TO CROSS THE ENGLISH CHANNEL,
as you may inquire from Miss Gertrude Ederle, but I have found
a new one that beats swimming, is faster than the boat-train, and
cheaper than rowing. I refer to an airline known on the French
side as Le Silver City Airways, or sometimes as le seelvair seefcee
hairwaiz.
This airline with the Wild West handle operates a continuous
air-ferry service between the town of Lympne (proctoonced
"Limrn")? near Folkestone on the English Coast, and the famous
seaside resort of Le Touquet on the French side. Flying mammoth
Bristol Freighters that can swallow two whole automobiles and a
flock of passengers, Silver City conducts a shuttle service crossing
the Channel in just twenty minutes. It also takes bicycles, motor-
cycles, pushmobiles, scooters, baby carriages, and people. Once
it carried on an airlift of two thousand head of cattle, shuttling
back and forth every ninety minutes.
While the flying ferry is designed principally to carry motorists
and their vehicles, it also transports dismounted travelers at a
phenomenally low price and gives them a chance en route to see
some of the countryside that lies between London and Paris. For
the man on foot the cost of getting from Marble Arch in London
to the Arch of Triumph in Paris comes to eleven dollars and
thirty-four cents. Here is how to do it: From Victoria Station in
London take the bus to Lympne, a distance of sixty-seven mites.
The cost is ten shillings or one dollar and forty cents. The air-ferry
fare for unaccompanied passengers flying the Channel is six dollars
and thirty cents, the same tariff charged to pedalists accompanied
30 * EUHOPE
by their bikes. At Le Touquet a second-class train ticket to Paris
is three dollars and sixty-four cents, even less by third class.
Bicyclists and those with motor bikes, who don't have to worry
about train and bus fares, can cross from England to France for
less than ten dollars.
For those who are not adverse to hitchhiking, the cross-Channel
trip can be done for even less. I decided to make my way from
Marble Arch to the Arch of Triumph the other day, and a Silver
City man who was traveling down to the airport at Lympne agreed
to help. He appeared at my hotel in London early in the afternoon
in the lowest, reddest car I had ever seen. I looked at it in dis-
belief, but he reassured me. "New model," he explained in a crisp
English accent. "Thought you would enjoy what you Americans
call the gimmick."
My two bags and typewriter disappeared behind the seat and I
climbed into the gimmick. It proved to be a tricycle powered by a
motorcycle motor and fitted with a miniature scarlet automobile
body. Riding in it with top down was something like rolling
through the streets of London while sitting on a roller skate. I got
an anfs-eye view of the Marble Arch as the gimmick swung along
the avenue and headed for France.
We got to the airport at Lympne in two and a half hours, coming
by way of Maidstone and Ashford, stopping at a pub for 'arf a
pint o' bitter. Silver City's man and the red gimmick left me at the
airport, where I hitched a ride in a black Jaguar which the British
Automobile Association was delivering to a potentate in Paris. I
watched the motorized ramp move up to the open maw of the
flying ferry. When it was in place, the big car was driven right into
the nose of the airplane. A Ford followed it in. (The cost for an
average-sized American car would be about forty dollars.) Then
the passengers boarded the twelve-place cabin, and twenty minutes
later we had landed in France. Airport to airport, including time
to clear customs on both sides, had token about fifty minutes.
A Jaguar is slightly smaller than a lorry and carries a motor that
could propel the Queen Mary without breathing hard. As we sat
there on the runway with the car motor idling., it was one hundred
and forty miles to Brussels and one hundred and twenty miles to
Paris; it was also very nice in Le Touquet, which has an impres-
sive forest, a lovely beach, and a number of gilded dens given
FEANCE * 31
over to games of chance. But neither Belgium nor baccarat could
keep the Automobile Association from its rounds, and we roared
off down the poplar-lined roads that lead to Paris. Those who use
this route during the summer will pass through Montreuil, which
was Marshal Haig's headquarters in World War I and displays
again a new metal statue of him, the first having been removed by
the Germans in 1940. Abbeville, once under English rule for nearly
a hundred years and bombed and battered during World War II,
is on the route too. Not far off course is Amiens, which has the
largest cathedral in France. The town was once a Roman fortress,
later was chopped up by the Burgundians, then by the Prussians,
and twice by the Germans.
We put in for a bite at the tiny village of Poix and ate ham
sandwiches on big rolls at Au Cardinal. It was Sunday night and
for the French this was the village club. They sat around pkying
dominoes and cards, smoking Gaulloise cigarettes out of the comer
of their mouths while the smoke and babble swirled above them.
It was only a scant few hours from that *arf pint o* bitter in the pub
across the Channel.
Paris and Spring
PARIS
IT HAPPENED BY THE MEREST CHANCE THAT SPRING AND I ARRIVED
together in Paris this year, and we were equally glad to be there.
I had come in the night from across the Channel, where an ordi-
nary spring was biting through the topcoats of Americans and
reaching their bones, leaving the English in their suits and bowlers,
topcoats in their closets, not a whit disturbed beyond their catarrh,
which is expected, accepted, and seasonal. Somewhere in the dark
32 EUROPE
night I had to get up and swing open the full French windows to
let the mildness in. You could put your bare foot on the stone of
the tiny terrace outside the window without its growing cold, and
you could look up at the Vendome with the moon coming down
on Napoleon's head on top of the column. No one stirred the
checkerboard of lights and darkness along the Rue Castiglione,
and the moon was wasting itself on the gold-tipped spikes of the
Tuileries.
By morning the spring warmth was sending waves up from the
pavement, and, like an old dancer, Paris responded to the familiar
music with the old routine. The tables grew like sudden moss on
the rocks of the pavement outside the cafes. The lovers embraced
in noonday passion on a bench in the Louvre quadrangle. And
also under an arch at the Rue de Rivoli, and in a narrow alley
in Montmartre. The crescents of yellow flowers at the Rond Point
burst into new moons of butter. The caged birds in the oiselleries
along the Quai de la Megisserie were hung outside to chirp in the
sun and to behold the Seine, just over the embankment. The strange
klaxon moaned with an urgency and a wagon of pompiers hustled
off to extinguish a fire in their splendid silver helmets. Goats were
pulling carts full of youngsters in that little fringe of park that runs
up the Champs from the Concorde.
On the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honore three exquisite ladies in
the drapery of the haute couture were saying good-by after lunch.
Two sat in a low roadster, the top pulled back. The third ambled
off with the timid steps that are required by a hobble skirt. "Call
us if you have nothing better to do," cried the girls in the car, "and
if you do, bring it along." Along the Champs, Paris was walking
twelve abreast, topcoats on arms. An ancient boulevardler cocked
his black Homburg over one profuse eyebrow, and held his hearing
aid in his hand, and through the wires up to his hairy ear came
the pronouncements of the season just arrived.
FRANCE 33
The Sewer Tour
PARIS
THERE ARE MANY SIDES TO PARIS, BUT YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHING
until you've seen the under side. I mean under the manholes.
They advertise all kinds of tours here: "Paris by Night, " "His-
torical Paris," ... the latest addition is "Paris by Sewer," a fetch-
ing idea indeed.
I was having lunch one day with M. Max Blooet, the elegant
director of the very elegant Hotel George V. "Well, what are you
going to see in Paris this time?" asked M. Blouet, and he spread
his damask napkin across his striped trousers and dipped into the
pate de foie gras de Strasbourg. "I have seen Paris by day,** I
answered, "and Paris by night and Paris in the spring. This time
I'm going to take the sewer tour."
"Les egouts?" M. Blouet demanded incredulously as be reached
for a glass of Chambertin Jaboulet-Vercherre 1942. "Good, I go
with you.' y
The next morning M. Blouet and I were rolling down along the
Seine in an ancient Renault taxi. It was spring and the birds in the
bird market on the Quai de la Megisserie were chirping the news.
Our rendezvous was at the fountain in the Place de Chatelet. Here
we met Mme Cerisier of the French Tourist Office, who had ar-
ranged this special visit because the regular tours of the sewers
hadn't started yet. On hand to guide us was M. Balay, an engineer
of the Service des figouts de Paris.
"My name, Balay," said M. Balay as he led us over to an open
manhole. "It means sweepair, ver-ee apropos for somewan who
works in what you call soo-wears." He handed each of us a lantern
with a hook on one end. We bid spring in Paris adieu and climbed
down the ladder. Mme Cerisier, who is a very blonde and chic Paris
lady, was the first to inhale. "I all-weez get some dut-ee lak zis,"
she said, wrinkling her powdered nose. "Why do I not get zee
journaleests who weesh to visit Dior's?"
"Ah, Dior's," M. Blouet said wistfully, thinking he should have
34 EUROPE
stood in his lobby inhaling Femme de Rochas, Arpege de Lanvin,
or even fromage de Rocquefort
M. Balay ignored all these affronts, unrolled a chart, hung up
a lantern, and proceeded to tell us that the sewers of Paris, which
have been made famous by French writers, are one thousand five
hundred kilometers, or roughly nine hundred and fifty miles, long.
There are also two hundred and fifty miles of branch sewers. Paris
is the only city in the world in which you can walk through the
entire system. The first covered sewers were installed under
Charles V along the Rue Montmartre in 1370, not that Montmartre
needed it more than any other rue in town. The sewers have
progressed quite a bit since then, and besides a sewage trough
they also hold a pneumatic tube for mail, a pipe for drinking water,
another for nonpotable water, and cables for telephone and tele-
graph. Gas lines and electricity are kept out of the sewers in the
interests of safety.
Victor Hugo made the Paris sewers the most famous in the
world when he wrote Les Miserables, which was first published in
1862. M. Javert, the police inspector with the nasty disposition,
chased hero Jean Valjean up and down the damp, black tunnels,
and the locale has been popular with authors ever since. Orson
Welles switched to the sewers of Vienna in The Third Man, but it
is still too early to call it a trend.
M. Balay finished his lecture-by-lantern-light and led us on a
short tour of the premises. We were advised to stay close together,
and Blouet told me darkly of people who had wandered off on
their own into the far reaches of les egouts, never to be heard from
again. We walked single file along a ledge, about three feet above
a main stream which gurgled pleasantly in the dark. Blue and
white sign markers, the same as those placed on the street above
us, told us where we were. We stopped at No. 4 Quai de la
Megisserie. Upstairs the birds were chirping, but all we could
hear was the rumble of the subway. "The people above us do not
believe that we are here," said M. Balay gaily. "Let's not get lost
in this bloody place," said M. Blouet.
We passed a flight of steps leading up to a small room, and a
sign on it said, "Chalet de Necessite." "It ees for the convenience
of the workairs," explained M. Balay. He turned a corner and we
were on the Avenue Victoria and the Boulevard de Sebastopol,
FHANCE - 35
Now the water ran in a great torrent, and we were told to walk
with great care as the stream was eight feet deep in this district.
A workman walked alongside us carrying a long boat hook in case
anyone should slip on the wet pavement. Up ahead someone was
whistling "You're Too Dangerous, Cherie." "You whistling, Max?**
I called. "Whistling, hell," said M. Blouet of the George V, "I'm
looking where I'm going."
At the corner of the Boulevard de Sebastopol and the Rue de
Rivoli we found a bridge and a tablet marking some past floods.
Mme Cerisier held up her lantern and read that CHI the twenty-ninth
of May, 1901, the water rose as high, she indicated, as M. Blouet's
Sulka necktie. Had we been on hand the twenty-ninth of January,
1910, it would have been over everyone's head,
As we stood there on the bridge, twenty feet underneath Park,
I asked M. Balay about the tours of the sewers. From May 15 until
July 1 they are conducted on the second and fourth Thursdays and
the last Saturday of the month beginning at the Statue de L21e at
the Place de Concorde at 2:30 and 3:30 P.M. Two other tours on
the same days start from the Boulevard Malesherbes side of the
Madeleine Church at two and again at three. From July 1 to
October 15 they are operated every Thursday and the last Saturday
of the month, same hours and points of origin. It costs twenty
francs, and some six thousand people venture underground to
Les Mlserables country every year. The only difference between
the regular tour and the excursion we took is that normally tourists
are taken into bigger sewers under the Concorde, and they travel
in boats of which the Service des Egouts de Paris has seven.
I hurried to finish my notes, for Mme Cerisier was getting
anxious to go. "I weesh I was in Dior's," she said pointedly. "Oui,"
sighed M. Blouet, "or even outdoors."
36 * EUBOPE
Paris and Ccanac Ercwn
PARIS
SOMEBODY HAS TALKED SOMEBODY INTO PAINTING THE EIFFEL
Tower "cognac brown." Nobody is painting it with a tub of
V.S.O.P., mind you; that is merely the name of the color. If any-
body tries to lick a girder, the taste will be more Sherwin-Williams
than Courvoisier. Painting the Eiffel Tower will require two years
and thirty-five tons of paint. The job has been started at the top,
which will be golden cognac brown. The middle will receive a
darker shade, and the bottom half will be darker still. From a dis-
tance it will all look like golden cognac brown except to those who
have been sampling golden cognac, in which case it will look like
three Eiffel Towers.
Cle Man Riviere
PARIS
THERE WAS HARDLY A PARISIAN BOSOM OR LAPEL UNDECORATED
by a spray of lilies-of-the-valley the night I arrived in Paris from
London. It happened by sheerest circumstance to be May Day
night, a holiday which Paris couldn't have observed more strictly
were it the two hundredth anniversary of the storming of the
Bastille, an occasion not due to arise for another thirty-seven years.
The Metro wasn't running, the busses weren't appearing with
much regularity, and there were only a few stray taxicabs driven
FRANCE " 37
by stray opportunistic heathens to serve the whole celebrating city.
Those citizens with their own means of locomotion headed, as
tradition directed, for the woods to collect the muguets de bois.
Those who preferred to stay in town found vendors at every corner
for no vending license is required on May 1 shouting, "Porte-
bonheur! Qui n'a pas achete son porte-bonheur?" One bought
one's lilies-of-the-valley for good luck and, by tradition, handed
the bouquet of glad-tidings to a Mend,
Paris on May 1 was a young and engaging girl, full blown with
youth and radiance and well-being. Besides the muguets,, there was
the Champs, flowering too with a green canopy of horse-chestnut
trees that bloomed with big white cones.
Up on the butte of Montmartre, high over Paris, the tables had
blossomed on the Place du Tertre, a common ground for painters
and the tourists who come to look over their shoulders and offer
the budding Rembrandts free advice in bad French. On a mid-
week afternoon when the rest of the world was presumably at work,
I counted seventeen artists occupied in the square, dabbing at like-
nesses of the cobbled alleys and the Sacre Coeur which rises like
a big white feather over the highest point of Paris. The restaurants
that line the square had overrun the plaza with boxes of hedge
and umbrella-covered tables. Some places A La Mere Catherine
was one saw fit to label their umbrellas so the passing customer
would know just whose restaurant he was patronizing.
At night the painters disappeared, but the tourists sent up rein-
forcements, and the tiny alleys became a happy bedlam of horns,
cabs, motorcycles, and accordion music from the boites. Nigjfat
clubs on the butte, like Patachou, where you could enjoy the
doubtful privilege of having your tie snipped if you failed to join
in the group-singing (all French), were full to the rafters, and a
guard posted outside. Monsieur was assured he would be obliged
to make reservations days in advance. At Lapin Agile, the Place
of the Nimble Rabbit, Monsieur was handed a three-legged stool
and told to go find himself his own corner at some friendly-looking
table.
There are quieter things in Montmartre in the spring. One can
browse day or night in the informal galleries all over the hill, and
perhaps bring home a small oil by an unknown artist of, no doubt,
great hidden talent. The cost for such an adventure might run
38 EUHOPE
about ten dollars per small oil. Or less expensively, one might stand
in front of the Sacr6 Coeur and gaze upon all Paris laid out like
rhinestones on black velvet. The biggest sparklers are the Arc de
Triomphe, the Hdtel des Invalides, and Notre Dame, all bathed
on week-end evenings in white floodlights.
For some reason that's beyond me, lest there be an agent de
presse lurking somewhere in the background, Paris is undergoing
an "Ole Man River" craze. Boarding, one Sunday afternoon, the
river boat that skims along the Seine, we were serenaded by a
gentleman in blackface and river-boat costume who squeezed old
Show-Boat tunes out of an accordion as we slipped past Notre
Dame and the Eiffel Tower. Later, as we sailed under the bridges,
he went into such sweet French madrigals as "Smoke Gets in Your
Eyes," "Tea for Two," and other creations of that old French art
center, the Alley du Tin Pan. The excursion, incidentally, costs
about one dollar and fifty cents for the afternoon's ride, and a good
day will bring out an overflow mixture of Americans and French.
The Americans pop from rail to rail taking photos and shouting
leas openings and shutter speeds to each other. The French, mostly
young lovers, sit as though in a private curtained room and smooch.
You could have knocked me over with Gaylord Ravenal when at
the Folies Bergere that night an American Negro baritone ups and
sings "Ole Man River" again. This was followed by an incredible
business built around "Sonny Boy," when sonny dies on some
tropical isle, gets taken off to heaven by Negro angels, followed
seven choruses later by papa and mama. Aside from bringing on
these ancient tear inducers, the Folies delivered the coup de grace
with a fantastic number about baseball in Brooklyn entitled "You
Gotta Get Out There and Swing."
A new show, introduced just in time for the summer invasion
from the U.S.A., the current edition of the Folies had the Ameri-
cans crawling under the seats. The skits are a good deal tamer
than the last edition which seemed to have been running since the
days of Clemenceau. Otherwise, in such numbers where costumes
are used, the costumes are beautiful, and the staging is superbly
original and artful.
It is, as I have said, worth your life to get into the famous clubs
and theaters, but on the other hand it also takes some maneuvering
to find yourself a table on the sidewalk now that the nice weather
FHANCE 39
has arrived. At nine o'clock in St<termain-des-Pr& the sidewalk
tables at the Flore and the Deux Magots were jammed full, and
there was no way of knowing whether it was a late aperitif crowd
or an early after-dinner crowd. At any rate the Brasserie Lipp across
the street was quoting a fifteen-minute wait, and there were clus-
ters of hungry citizens, local and foreign, around the wonderful
inexpensive little places tucked away on the Rue St. Benoit.
I must confess I saw no evidences of it myself, but I have heard
that the hordes of Americans already in town, and the threat of
more to come, has inspired some of the Communist brush-wielders
to paint signs reading "Americans Go Home." One enterprising
employee of one capitalistic American venture is said to have taken
quick advantage of the slogan by simply adding the words "Via
Pan American."
A La Campasne
CHABTEES
AMONG THE JOYS OF PARIS DURING THE FINE-WEATHER MONTHS
is the assortment of interesting places in the environs. These
neighboring sights, many of them world-famous, are enough of
an excuse to get out into the country, sop up a little culture, and
have lunch en route at one of the fabulous inns of France tucked
away in the tiny villages.
Such a place is Chartres, a bustling town dominated spiritually
and physically by the renowned cathedral and decorated with a
handsome assortment of medieval houses. You see the cathedral
rising up out of the plain on the approach to Chartres, and it gives
the impression that it stands alone as if on a bare plateau. A few
minutes' ride and all but the steeples are hidden by the crowded
40 EUROPE
town. You get a view of the spires and then another, better vista
with the river Eure streaming in front and then finally you're in
the square. The guides take you right to the front portal, but
you'll find you have to walk way back as far as you can to get a
a full view, and even then all the building won't fit into your
camera viewer.
Chartres isn't in Brittany, but that mere geographical fact isn't
enough to dissuade three Breton women, all wearing their foot-
high, starched headgear, from taking up a vendor's position in front
of the cathedral. They sell beaded caps and delicate gloves made
by hand of lace and string.
As for the cathedral, it is best known for its magnificent stained
glass, said to be the most complete set in the world. The striking
decorations fill one hundred and seventy-three bays and cover an
area of some twenty-eight thousand square feet. All of it was
removed during the war. Back in place now, the colored glass
dapples the stone windows with patches of red, blue, and green in
hues that cannot in these modern times be duplicated. When a
cloud obscures the sun, the cathedral inside grows dark as if some-
one were pulling down a giant shade. It is cool inside, and shuffling
around among the shadows are Americans in tweedy jackets,
Frenchmen in corduroys, even German visitors in those slick black
raincoats worn by their military during the war.
Elsewhere in Chartres the local citizens were whooping it up at
a carnival that looked pretty much like a carnival anywhere. There
were merry-go-rounds and dodg'em cars and barkers selling chunks
of nougat. At one corner an exhibit called the Nouveau Museum
was trying to draw the customers with a loud and scratchy record-
ing of "Jingle Bells." It was a lurid show inside the tent, the signs
assured everyone. "Visible pour les personnes des deux sexes agees
d'au moins 16 ans." Another way of saying that entrance would
only be permitted to those males and females over sixteen. Busi-
ness wasn't very good.
Nearby the old houses of Chartres looked down tolerantly and
with the understanding born only of maturity. Many of the half-
timbered houses date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Anyone in search of a twelfth-century house can find one at 29 rue
Chantault Porte Guillaume, part of the ramparts that protected
the old town, were blown up by the retreating Germans in August
FRANCE 41
In those explosive days the gjtetss was safely removed and hidden,
and the doors were all sandbagged. They tell the story that the
first American liberators went racing through Chartres, but just as
they passed the cathedral one jeep came to a screeching halt. An
American officer didn't want to leave the city without having a
look at its famous sight. He and his men threw the sandbags aside,
pulled on the heavy doors, and the cathedral of Chartnes was thus
one of the first to be reopened in all of France.
There are full-day bus excursions to Chartres leaving Paris at
ten in the morning and coming back late in the afternoon. It is an
easy schedule that leaves a great gap for a long, lingering French
lunch. One of the country's fine inns is La Providence at the
minuscule village of Jouy, just before you get to Chartres. The
kitchen, full of rows of gleaming copper pots, couldn't be more
typical, and you can see local types in beret and light blue worik
suit amble in to sell the maitresse a mess of fresh snails. You eat
wonderfully, if a trifle expensively, either in the ancient dnrmg room
or the garden. The house specialty is souffle framboise, a towering
raspberry souffle served hot, which is pure French and all heaven
easily worth flying three thousand miles for.
Stcnes
LIMOGES
THE VALLEY OF THE DORDOGNE, ALIAS THE PERIGORD, IS A SCENIC
enclave in southern France where the principal occupations are
eating and watching the old stones get older. All this, as you can
imagine, is a wonderful relief from radio commercials, radio activ-
ity, and the irradiation of junior senators. The old stones can hardly
do anything but get older, and as long as the pate and truffles hold
out, life can be beautiful.
42 EtTEOPE
The caidinal blooper to be committed in the Perigord after all,
Td better tell you right off is to bring up the pate de f oie gras as
manufactured in the city of Strasbourg. Soap! Kirkman's laundry
bars in terrines, that's what! If you're going to eat pate, eat the
real stuff, pate du Perigord, with black truffles. Now there are many
way of finding a truffle, as any gentleman of the Perigord can tell
you. Perigord is to truffles as Pennsylvania is to coal, and for that
matter coal and truffles look alike, except that you eat truffles,
especially if you are from the Perigord. Since the truffle is a sub-
terranean fungus, it must be uprooted; and in this valley the job
is done by trained pigs, sometimes by dogs, and also by bees. The
pigs are persuaded to go agrunting along the ground until they
whiff a truffle. They dig the black morsel out of the earth with a
nudge of their snout, but before they can swallow it, a nimble
truffle-gatherer whisks it away. This makes for frustrated pigs and
well-garnished pate de foie gras. About the same process is carried
on with dogs, but the bee routine I find hard to take. In certain
seasons of the year the truffle-searchers just beat the ground, and
wherever the bees rise, chances are there will be a black nugget
underneath. At least that's what a fairly impeachable source
told me.
Black fungus shows up not only in the local pate, but also in
omelette aux truffes, an inescapable dish in these parts. The goose
is put to other uses here (they do everything but race them), par-
ticularly in the manufacture of confit d'oie, which is goose wing
redolent of garlic not much garlic, mind you, just enough to make
your eyes tear. All this gets washed down with a white, dry and
smoky wine called Chateau Panisseau and another called Chateau
Bonnecoste. The ultimate adventure is a round of spirits made
from the essence of walnuts, there being practically nothing from
which a thirsty man cannot fabricate alcohol. It comes in a crock
and is called La Vieille Noix, or the Old Nuts.
Before this becomes merely a voyage along the alimentary canal,
I would hasten to say that between meals in the Perigord there is
a string of fascinating, unspoiled things to see. You will almost cer-
tainly need a car, either picking one up in Limoges or else stopping
off en route to Spain. The most striking attraction are the caves of
Lascaux at Montignac, which were only discovered in 1940 by a
group of boys looking for their lost dog. Besides the dog the boys
also found a cavern covered with prehistoric paintings so sharp and
FBANCE 43
well preserved as to make skeptics doubt their authenticity. Horses,
bison, reindeer, oxen, and one strange man adorn the walls, all of
them having been drawn at last fifteen thousand years ago, ami
perhaps twice as long ago as that. The grotto entrance is in a pine
woods and is open daily except from twelve until two for the
"renouvellement de 1'atmosphere" and also, I would judge, for the
renouvellement of caretaker's eating habits as well.
You've seen the best grotto after you've done Lascaux, but the
capital of France's prehistory is nearby at Les Eyzfes, and you
shouldn't miss it. The town leans against high limestone cliffs, and
with such natural abutments at hand, the villagers were merely
required to build three walls on their houses, using the natural rock
for the fourth. You can achieve a fair idea of how it was to live
like a caveman at the Cro-Magnon Hotel, which has three walls
built by man, one by glaciers, and charges about two dollars and
fifty cents a day for a single room with private bath, and about six
dollars for the same premises including three meals.
La Roque-Gageac is a one-street village absolutely pasted against
the side of a cliff, with the lovely Dordogne River flowing past the
facades in a great sweeping curve. The view is magnificent, the
^peace is hypnotizing; perhaps the Romans found it that way, too,
for they built strange shelters high among the cliffs and relics of
them still stand. A great cMteau commands the road at the en-
trance to the village, but the greatest threat to security in town
nowadays is the river, which occasionally swells its banks and
creeps up the cliffside. Villagers have been soaked so often by the
Dordogne that all shops have since been installed on the second
floor, and Main Street is as dead as a Colorado town twenty years
after the lode ran out.
To see all the valley of the Dordogne laid out in front of you,
just like Cinerama, you drive a few miles down to Domme and
take the high road up to the lookout. There in the naist is La Roque-
Gageac, gray and smoky against its hillside, with the back road
from Domme leading up to it in a white, chalky line. The green
plain is rolled out flat, and the river wanders through it, making a
great, open U. Popla* trees, long and slender as a couturier's
mannequin, run the river bank, bursts of white plum blossoms lie on
the valley floor like wind-blown popcorn, and the inorimeaux
wheel and wing and are happy about the springtime.
Rocamadour is a fantastic site, a rocky cliff face jutting up from
44 * EtJROPE
a deep valley trough, with houses, hotels, and a church stuck on
every available promontory right up to the top. You stop your car
on the single street just under the hotel where you plan to stay, and
they drop a basket on a rope to pull your baggage up to the heights
with a winch. There is hardly a hotel or a room or a rock without
a fabulous view.
It is a legend that Zacchaeus, who climbed a sycamore tree at
Jericho to watch Christ pass, came to Gaul and built an oratory on
the highest point of the rock. His name became Amadour, and long
after he died, pilgrims came to see his bones, among them Henry II
of England, Louis IX and Louis XI of France. Pilgrims still come,
doing the stairs on their knees; and tourists come, too, from Easter
until fall, gasping at the views and wondering about the strange
sword stuck into a crevice in the rocks high up over a chapel door.
The sword used to be just eight feet off the ground and the legend
was that girls who touched it would be married in a year. So the
girls got ladders and climbed up to touch the hilt, while the boys
stood below enjoying the view. The cure thought this constituted
indecent exposure and had the sword placed up out of reach, and
so the legend is gone and so is the boys' favorite panorama.
Working back toward Limoges is the village of Collonge, known
as Collonge La Rouge, because now the earth is red and the rocks
are red and so are all the buildings. There is no pavement in
Collonge La Rouge, the chickens squawk along in the street, and a
blacksmith in those startled-blue coveralls the French like to wear
bangs his anvil. Overhead are strange red arches that span the
alleys and red towers rising against the brilliant blue sky, and
everywhere the quiet except for the chickens and the anvil.
I could hardly think of a better way to leave the Perigord than
on a full stomach. That can be accomplished with infinite pleasure
at the town of Brive, which has one of those multistarred inns over
which the gourmets do nip-ups and the guidebook people pull out
the bold-face type. This one is called the Hotel de la Truffe Noire,
or the Black Truffle Hotel, and it is being operated by a gentle-
man both ample and affable named Andre Dupart, half of the
Paris restaurant team of Yvonne and Andre which drew such
ravenous royalty as the Duke of Windsor, the Aga Khan, Churchill,
Harriman, and who knows all. The Paris place is sold now, but the
famous regulars have been journeying down to Brive for jambon-
neau truffe, foie gras truffe, omelette aux truffes, truit truffe noire,
HOLLAND * 45
volaiile bresse truffe noire, probably followed by FAIka Seltzer
truffe noire. I know people who wouldn't travel to Weehawken for
a truffle, but those gourmets are strange coves indeed. With them
one man's fungus may be another man's delight.
HOLLAND
It*s Cheaper if Ton ec Dutch
AMSTERDAM
I SHALL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOLLAND BECAUSE IT*S THE ONLY
country I ever visited for the express purpose of taking a bath. It
happened during the winter of 1944-45 when the division to whkdh
I was attached bogged down on the German border north of
Aachen. The only running water available ran down the basin of
the Roer River just in front of us, a stream zealously guarded by
the Fifty-ninth German Infantry.
To this day my family, which has remarkably clear memories
of my reluctance during my early years to immerse myself with
acceptable regularity in the bathtub, is disinclined to believe that
I would travel to another country for a bath. It happens nonethe-
less to be the case that whenever we couldn't stand ourselves any
longer and could secure the proper leave we were escorted over
the Netherlands border by a Dutch lad who had attached himself
to our outfit. He took us to the Dutch coal mines in the province
of Limburg, where each of us was assigned a huge porcelain bath-
tub used by the miners. There were no clothes lockers, and we
were directed by local custom and the mine superintendent to put
our uniforms <tfi a hook, which was then hoisted on a pulley system
46 ET7BOPE
up to the top of a fifty-foot ceiling. Looking up, we saw clothes
hanging all over the rafters, each set connected to the floor below
by its own guy rope.
I never did get to see any other part of Holland during the war,
and it was with great interest that I flew up to Amsterdam from
Frankfurt via KLM for a four-day trip through the northern
Netherlands. The hotels in Amsterdam and The Hague were
equipped with fine big porcelain tubs, but nowhere did I run across
the clothes-on-the-ceiling system, and I have had to dismiss the
scheme as a peculiarity of the Limburgers or of coal miners.
Holland proved to be a good deal less expensive than I had
remembered it, first because I hadn't gotten near any hotels during
my bath-taking excursions and secondly because of the devaluation
of the guilder, which followed the decline of the pound. A room
with private bath and a Continental breakfast augmented with
slabs of Gouda cheese cost about ten guilders at the Victoria
Hotel, old but good. Ten guilders is less than three dollars. The
best double room and bath in the place for two people en pension,
which is to say with all meals, comes to forty-eight guilders, slightly
more than six dollars a day per person. The very best hotel in town,
which is probably the American, is only slightly higher, and there
is a broad selection of comfortable places for a good deal less.
In spite of the hopeless double o's and double a's in the Dutch
language, not to mention the outcropping of y's in the most unex-
pected places, you'll probably stumble less over the language barrier
in Holland than anywhere else on the Continent. The Dutch have
long since come to the conclusion that the English-speaking world
is dialectically uhsuited for all those throat-clearing pronunciations,
and it seems now that half of Holland speaks English.
There is the influence from Britain, seven steamer hours or a
short air hop across the Channel, and there are also the ties with
America, eighteen air hours or six sailing days across the sea. After
all, when Henry Hudson sailed on April 4, 1609, it was from the
Tower of Tears, still standing in Amsterdam, to make his way past
what later became the Port of New York and the Hudson River.
In the government archives at The Hague there is a letter from a
delegate of the Dutch West India Company which states: "Our
people have purchased the island Manhattan from the Indians for
the value of sixty guilders: It is 1 1,000 morgens in size."
HOLLAND 47
Manhattan was bought in 1626, but six years before that the
Pilgrim Fathers gathered in St Anthony's Church in Rotterdam to
pray before departing on June 22, 1620, for a newer and freer
world. The church, built in 1417, is still standing.
From the Dutch village of Nykerk came the founders of Scbe-
nectady and Albany, and Holland has a Breuketen (but no
Doedgers) and also a Pentagon. In Dutch "The Pentagon" is De
Vyjhoek, which happens to be the name of a greengrocer's in
Haarlem. The Pentagon used to be called The Crowned Pentagon
back when it was a bakery owned by Antonius de Mil, an ancestor
of Cecil B. De Mffle.
You'll find Amsterdam more of a Venice than you perhaps
expected. It has fifty canals, spanned by fbur hundred bridges, and
low-domed sight-seeing boats wind through them all day. Amster-
dam seems to have more old houses than you're likely to find so
conveniently grouped together anywhere else. They hardly grow
higher than five stories, they are rarely more than three or four
windows wide, and every fagade is different.
In Holland there is one bicycle for every three citizens, and most
roads have an auxiliary bicycle path on the side. You can also
move almost anywhere in the country on the canals, and it is said
that you can pole your way down to Paris. The Water Tourist De-
partment of the ANWB, the Royal Netherlands Tourist Associa-
tion at The Hague, will tell you how you can rent a boat to live
on for the summer.
One can also move by car or by train, and it takes about forty
minutes to buzz down to The Hague from Amsterdam. The best
hotels in town, such as the des Indes, a place of great age and
dignity, will charge some eighteen guilders a day for bed and break-
fast. One of The Hague's great attractions is the Palace of Peace,
built at the suggestion of Czar Nicholas n and backed by the mil-
lions of Andrew Carnegie. It contains marble from Italy, stained
glass from England, rare woods from Brazil, an iron fence from
Germany, and, of course, a million and a half Carnegie dollars. It
opened in August of 1913, and the next year Europe was at war.
The Hague's diplomats and nearly everybody else in Holland
comes to bathe at a seaside resort called Scheveningen, which is
pronounceable if you can come out with something like "such-
raveningen." During the war the Dutch underground would test
48 ' EUROPE
the identity of doubtful parties by asking them to say Scheveningen,
on the premise that it takes a Dutch upbringing to gargle it cor-
rectly. The Germans just about ruined the beach by incorporating
it into the West Wall defenses. Everything is cleaned up now, and
the Swiss, the Belgians, the Americans, the Scandinavians, and the
British are back, soaking up the sun and sitting in those curious,
shell-like wicker chairs that cover the top and the back of you, so
popular on the beaches of the Low Countries. There are any num-
ber of pleasant bars about, but should you get bored with the inter-
national tippling, the backside of Scheveningen is a fishing port
and shipping center, and it is infinitely more interesting to watch
the herring get loaded.
Five miles from The Hague will bring you to the magnificent
little town of Delft, where the canals are bordered with white iron
fences, retained by red brick walls, and shaded by green lime trees.
It is a fine place to shop, especially for Delft porcelain, which is
made in town. The royal family's mausoleum is in Delft.
The sensible idea for tourists is to put up at The Hague and
make excursions to Delft and ten miles beyond to Rotterdam.
Twenty minutes on May 14, 1940, proved to be one of the most
fateful little interludes in Rotterdam's long history. Virtually un-
defended, the town was an open target to the German bombers that
zoomed in at shoulder level, laying waste six hundred and fifty
acres. It was a dry and windy day, and Rotterdam lost thirty thou-
sand dwellings. About nine hundred people were killed. Unlike
Germany, where the rubble is still scattered about like a long-fester-
ing wound, Rotterdam's damage has been swept antiseptically
clean. A round, ultra-modern building called the Bouwcentrum
displays materials that will prove helpful for architects, and already
great modern new buildings have risen. Rotterdam's harbor has
been rebuilt from a hopeless jumble of tangled steel girders and
cranes, and you can take a sight-seeing trip around the wharves in
one of the spido boats.
Inside tip to any Europe-bound traveler looking for an inexpen-
sive place in which to collapse: Make tracks for the Kasteel de
Hooge Vuursche at Baarn, southeast of Amsterdam. It is a thirty-
three-room former private chateau set in lovely formal gardens.
The d6cor is elegant and includes a Louis XV summer room, which
ot^ens on a Drivate Dark, and a low and leatherv bar called Le
DENMARK - 49
Caveau, which has snug little booths and a pygmy-sized, kidney-
shaped dance floor. All the rooms have baths, and the rates are
twelve guilders for bed and breakfast for a single or anywhere from
sixteen to twenty-two guilders for two. Lunch is five or six guilders,
dinner from seven to eight and a half. In other words, the cost for
two people, meals included, comes to something around thirteen
dollars a day v .
For the same price you are at Baarn a neighbor of Queen
Juliana, who lives in a mammoth white house just down the road
at Soestdijk. You are also a neighbor of the laches of Spakenburg,
who deck themselves out hi a curved board that fits like an armor
chestplate and a little embroidered beanie that sits on the back of
the head. Spakenburg, man and boy, is hi the herring business, as
one quick whiff will tell you. The Dutch are inclined to swallow
their herrings raw, excepting for Spakenburg herrings, which they
smoke and send over here. Not one case of throat irritation due to
smoking herring, either.
DENMARK
Dig That
CrazyrevykcmedielystsiMlfarce
COPENHAGEN
IT WAS QUITE OBVIOUS THAT SOMETHING HAD GONE WRONG WITH
the advance arrangements when we pulled into the station at
Malmo in Southern Sweden on the morning train from Gothenberg.
There to meet us was Malmo's fire chief, elegant in blue uniform
50 EUHOPE
and white hat. He was fresh from Jamestown, N. Y., and other
metropolises of the New World, he said, and he was eager to repay
to any American the kindnesses which had been shown him on
his recent swing through the States. He forthwith whisked us off in
his official sedan, a '52 Ford with a whiplash aerial that could have
picked up WVNJ, a local station nestling in the fastnesses of New
Jersey. It did manage, as a matter of fact, to pull in a number of
fire calls, which the chief took on one of the car's three phones
as we circled through the streets of Malmo on a sight-seeing tour.
After a pleasant spin during which time the chief pushed the
siren now and then to bid greeting to some of the local constabu-
lary, we arrived at the fire house for lunch. I have never before had
lunch in a fire house, but it was an amiable and distinguished
gathering that included two barons, and the place cards were
decorated with a photograph of a fireman in helmet and smoke
mask playing a hose across each guest's name.
I had presumed we were lunching in the fire house because it was
a convenient arrangement for the city officials who would later
show us the famous castles and other sights of Scania, as this
part of Sweden is known. Once downstairs, however, the chief
led the way to a courtyard where some fifteen pieces of fire equip-
ment and city ambulances, which are also in his purview, were
on official display. Reviewing a fire department is an accomplish-
ment easily picked up, and we eyed with furrowed concentration
a red Vespa, an emergency truck, a collapsing ladder-truck, a boat
for rescuing citizens who fall in the city canals, and a frogman in
full kilt who is instrumental in such underwater endeavors.
The fire department of Malmo being of such magnitude, there
was little time left for pursuing the normal courses of tourism,
and in short order we were aboard the ship that plies the narrow
stretch of water to Denmark, not knowing whether through some
quirk of communication we should be consigned to bring you news
of Scandinavian fire departments for the rest of the summer. Thus
disturbed, we spent the remainder of the crossing dividing our
flitting attention between the seagulls who fluttered over the stern
ensign in search of garbage, and the Danish ladies, steaming
homeward, who sat on deck puffing contentedly on black cigars.
Since that day I have heard the Copenhagen fire department
and can report to you that in place of sirens they use a moaning
with the vompiers of Paris.
DENMARK 5!
Beyond that, however, I can tell you little of Danish incendiary
matters. On the other hand, I can with some authority bring to your
attention, that Danish ladies who smoke cigars are Danish laidies,
that Danes have a passion for open-faced sandwiches, that they
have an amusement park in the middle of the city, that one out
of two have bicycles, that one out of four live in Copenhagen,
that Danish pastry is called Vienna bread, and that Danes are not
happy with people who pronounce Copenhagen, co-pen-hog-en
instead of co-pen-haig-en. Unfortunately this includes Danny Kaye
and the whole cast of M-G-M's musical, Hans Christian Andersen,
who are spreading the joyful news of wonderful Copenhagen far
and wide, but with the wrong pronunciation.
It might be added that the Danes themselves, who once spelled
the place Kj0benhavn, don't say it either way. They have since
simplified the spelling considerably to K0benhavn, which they
pronounce keu-pen-havn, the speaker uttering the final syllable as
if he had just swallowed his upper plate. The Danes enjoy inviting
foreigners to say r$dgr$d medflfide, which is red porridge with
cream and sounds like roid-grofd-meth-floy-the. One of the town's
favorite chuckles is attributed to Napoleon who said oa a visit
here that Danish is not a language but a sore throat.
Nonetheless it will not be necessary for Americans to rupture
their tongues over the local idiom, since there is hardly a shop,
hotel, barber, or street vendor without a working knowledge of
English. Some of the most involved words can be unraveled,
including the current show at the ABC Teatret, which is described
as a Crazyrevykamedielystspiljarce. The annual summer review at
the Dagmar Theatre carries the rather uninvolved title of "Hallo"
and is fraught with enough American references to keep the over-
seas visitor from slumbering through the Danish dialogue. The
Danes seem, too, to have captured the American flair for salesman-
ship, and theatergoers at the Dagmar are met in the lobby by an
attractive and rather scantily clad young lady curled up in a tank
of water who dispenses free samples of pickled herring.
On stage there were a variety of allusions to the magic proper-
ties of chlorophyll; the curtailed capabilities of Christine Jorgensen,
whose revision was, of course, accomplished under Danish aus-
pices; to President Eisenhower, who was said to have divorced
his wife because she showed up with a dress of taft, the Danish
52 * EUROPE
word for taffeta. A monologue by Marguerite Visby dressed as
Charlie Chaplin in which she rather baldly chides the United
States for its position in the Chaplin case is considered the hit of
the show, and at least one shop window in the city has an extrava-
gant display advertising the act. When Miss Visby told about the
"largest country in the world" keeping out "the sad little clown
because he said something against popular opinion," a Danish
lady in the adjoining seat got to her feet and shouted, "bravo!"
a bit of theatrics obviously designed for my American benefit
There are no politics to mar the simple pleasures of Tivoli, how-
ever, which is a magnificent amusement park of trees, flower
beds, and colored lights covering eight hundred and fifty thousand
square feet in the heart of the city. Nine cents will get you through
the turnstiles into a world of open-air stages for ballet, pantomime
theater, and international vaudeville acts, of free concerts, dancing,
and some twenty-one restaurants, including the immense Wivex
and the glass-walled Belle Terrasse. There are roller coasters, fun
houses, boat rides, and shooting galleries, and the dazzle of the
carnival lights that outline the contours of the pagodas and mosques
are reflected in a hundred colors in the still lagoons. Saturdays
and Sundays the Tivoli Boy Guard marches, and the skies are
split with fireworks that burst in a canopy of burning gunpowder
over the bulwark of city hall.
There are daylight pleasures too, not the least of which is
having breakfast at the sidewalk cafe of Frascati's on the broad
expanse of the Raadhusplads and watching Copenhagen roll to
work in a swarm of bicycles. A caj& complet is served with a fat roll
of butter, hardly less than a quarter of a pound, for each person,
and the sparrows swoop down from the lofty towers to stand at
one's table and nibble rich black bread from one's fingers. The tin-
type photographers in spotless white frock coats set up their cam-
eras on the square and then come the pfilser vendors in their
vertical white carts, selling oversized frankfurters and undersized
rolls, followed by the ice cream hawkers offering Hawaii Is and
other brands. Looking down, mute but imposing from a three-
story pedestal are a pair of bronze lur players who are locally said
to blow their ancient horns each time a virgin passes.
Down at the fish market each morning the fishwives sit under
DENMARK 53
a classic statue to themselves cleaning and selling red roe, brown
crab claws, a flat fish called red spots, and white, skinned cod
(which was a slow-moving item until they changed the name from
sea cat). In season there are homed fish that the English don't
eat but the Danes adore, 2nd there is herring, and also eel. The
fishwives live ten kilometers from Copenhagen, and in the old days
they brought their fish with them, but now they come in the earfy
hours and buy from the fishermen who bring their catch up the
Frederiksholms Kanal in perforated skiffs that are towed while
half-submerged until they reach the market. It is an ancient and
honorable profession, being a fishwife in Copenhagen; and the
dean of the trade is an eighty-three-year-old lady still nimble with
an eel, who started on the cobbtestoned corner when she was fifteen.
No distinction marks one fishwife from another except that some
still wear national costumes and those who sit on the sunny side
of the market wear hats of folded newspaper. Looking down are
the seagulls on endless whirling sorties, and across the street, like
a guardian, is the ancient green face of Krogs, most famous of the
fish restaurants.
Down the canal is the flower market, which is really a collection
of barges anchored along the street in the shadow of the Stock
Exchange. And a few blocks away is Nyhavn, a colorful street erf
three-masted schooners and such establishments as the Dixy Bar,
Cafe Texas, and Tato Jack's Tatouering, where Swedes come to
get their arms adorned with mermaids. Beer, which is $1 in
Danish, is the local mouthwash down here; and once well $ed, the
pastime reverts to rendering the Swedish sailors rauconsdoos and
insolvent in that order. Where Parisian ne'er-do-wells might ap-
proach the foreigner with care and finesse, here the lads walk up
to you as one did to me the otter night, opening with, "Hey,
Sven!" But schnapps and a glass of Tuborg give coarage to all
hearts, and Marc Connelly, the American playwrigto: who has all
the pugilistic capabilities of Lillian Gish, pushed away a table of
empty aquavit glasses in Tivoli the other night and said, **Wei,
what do you say we go down to Nyhavn and roll a Swedish sailor?"
Although most persons would be inclined to take offense, the
Danes are rather proud of the fact tliat the French occasionally
refer to them as "the people with the ridiculous stomachs."
54 * EUEOPE
Eating is a rather important consideration here, and the trav-
eler might just as well be initiated at Oskar Davidsen's which
serves one hundred and seventy-seven different kinds of open-
faced sandwiches, printing them on a menu that is well over a
yard long. My personal vote for the most engaging dish is No. 5,
Rejer, Pyramfdebelaegning, which comprises two hundred shrimp
each as big as your thumbnail, piled in military order on a piece
of bread. The best of names is No. 21, / stegt Frederikshavnerrfid-
spaettefilet med citron, or fried fish sandwich with lemon. For
dessert Davidsen's has crisp pancakes with a wad of ice cream
hidden inside, the whole thing doused with a syrupy black-currant
rum.
Au Coq d'Or is a blend of French overtones on a solid Scandi-
navian base. The decor is that friendly crisp Nordic modern, the
chef comes through the room to shake hands, and the wonderful
fish dishes are, as the owner explained, "prepared under a prescrip-
tion from Escoflier." Nobody ought to miss either the Seven Small
Homes, or 7 Smaa Hjem, where an appetizer consisted the other
evening of one whole fried fish, two rolled herrings, four potatoes,
puree of spinach, and a hard-boiled egg. The dessert was brought
to the table in a vase of ice under the escort of a pair of four-inch
sparklers that threw a fountain of fireworks to port and starboard
of the tray.
Since steak is running about one dollar and twenty three cents
in the town's better restaurants and a special chocolate souffle for
two ordered in the Palace Hotel was exactly one dollar and thirty
six cents, one ought to be solvent before reaching the shops, if
not after. However, the Amagertorv, which is the main shopping
center, has been the undoing of many a man, what with Royal
Porcelain and Bing and Grondahl, the world-famous china houses
standing side by side, and Hans Hansen and Georg Jensen, the
silversmiths, not far off. Ulums Bolighus has a distracting display
of modern lighting fixtures at incredible savings, clean-lined Danish
furniture, and all sorts of gifts in fine woods, not to mention a
department for stainless steel tableware. Those pleated paper and
white plastic lampshades that are sweeping the United States are
made here and sold as low as three dollars. Five dollars will get
you an outstanding design, and the weight is negligible if transpor-
tation is a consideration. The best of Danish goods have been
brought together under one roof called The Permanent, which is
DENMARK 55
to say it is a permanent exhibition of local crafts ceramics, toys,
furniture, fabrics, just about everything worthy of inclusion and all
of it for sale.
Another good buy are cigars, which are made here in a wide
assortment of shapes, sizes, odors, and asphyxlative powers, at
prices as low as fifty for two dollars.
At such rates even the women can't afford to abstain, and
indeed it is a common sight to see a couple of gentle, white-haired
grandmothers puffing away on a fat cheroot. One with extreme
gentility the other day was sipping her coffee and puffing from
a double-ringed holder, one ring around her cigar connected to
the other around her index finger. Anyway, cigars make a wonder-
ful gift to bring back home. Perfume has been done to death, and
besides there is nothing that mother would rather have on Mother's
Day than a box of fine one krone Coronas.
Ccme en tc Aarhus
FOR ANYONE WHO IS MAN ENOUGH TO EXTRICATE HIMSELF FROM
the whipped-cream world of Copenhagen, there awaits in the
Danish hinterland a whole elfin universe studded with such frothy
bits as castles, storks nesting on village roofs, and thatch-topped,
half-timbered houses that bulge with age like overstuffed hausfraus
with the supports removed.
When it comes to a gnomelike sense of humor, tifoe Danes can
match twinkles with man or magi, and it seems inevitable that the
three- and four-day excursions which follow a planned route
through the provinces should be known as the Fairy Tale Tour.
Fairyland itself is a gentle tract these summer months, rolling softly
now and then, the cooling winds off the sea (which is never more
56 " ETJHOPE
than sixty kilometers away) riffling through the tall rye until the
fields seem to roll like grass waves. Here and there white caps of
daisies break through, and sometimes there is a spattering of orange
poppies. Everywhere there are the fat brown herds and the mam-
moth horses, posing like heroic statues, sable gray.
I am not a man who can find many a new delight in many an
old quarry, however historic, but I must say that Fairyland began
for me at the castle of Egeskov on the island of Funen. A castle
that is an exhibition hall of antique furniture is a soulless shell,
but Egeskov is home to a noble family to this day, and visitors who
pay half a crown may stroll through the park that surrounds its
moat. Egeskov was built in 1550 by a Danish nobleman who
rammed pilings into the bottom of the lake and put his castle on
top of them.
Odense, Denmark's third city, was the birthplace of Hans Chris-
tian Andersen, and it is a charming town utterly uncluttered by
bars, grills, and bric-a-brac that bear his name. On the other hand
there are natural remembrances of him at every turn the house
on Hans Jensenstraede where he was born, painted yellow to con-
ceal the half -timber, which in those days was more a sign of poverty
than of charm; St. John's Church, where he was baptized, with its
open-air pulpit hanging over the road so that lepers could be
brought in the early days to hear an outdoor service and not con-
taminate the regular congregation. But mostly there is the Andersen
Museum, which adjoins his house and is connected to it by an
inside corridor. A series of frescos in the rotunda tell the highlights
Hans as a boy with his mother doing needlework, his father a
shoemaker; Hans at fourteen in a top hat leaving Odense by stage-
coach for the big city and vowing that he would return a famous
man; Andersen finishing school at the age of twenty-five, his tuition
paid by the manager of the Royal Theatre; Andersen in Naples on
one of the trips which he pursued for seven years of his life; Ander-
sen reading fairy tales to the Collins, a Danish family of Swiss
origin who befriended him. The elder Collin became his patron,
son Edward Ms long-time friend, daughter Louisa a love he wooed
and lost. Another panel shows Andersen with the Danish sculptor
Thorvaldsen, also a poor man's son, meeting at a manor house in
Zealand after both had become renowned; Jenny Lind, another of
his loves, singing for the Duke of Weimar with Andersen sitting on
DENMAHK - 57
the edge of his chair; and finally the greatest moment of his life,
when in 1867 he returned to Defense to received
ship of the city. Only Frederick VII had been given the honor
before, and no one has received it since.
Of the multitude of things about Andersen there are his report
card from the year 1826, when he was twenty-one, too big and too
old for the rest of his class at the school in Hsinore. In spoken
Latin he got G-minus, which is not good; in written Latin TG,
which is very bad; in Greek MDL, which is borfering on frightful.
He was no better in Hebraic, but in Bible studies he was very good,
passable in histoiy, excellent in arithmetic and geometry, and Ms
deportment was unquestioned.
There were remembrances of the later years when these things
no longer mattered; for example, the poem "Two Brown Eyes,"
which Andersen wrote for Riborg Voigt, the sister of a friend, Like
so many of his loves, Riborg married someone else, and for Ander-
sen there was only the customary pleasure of writing fairy tales for
her children. Years later when Riborg died, a bouquet of flowers,
long dried out, was found among her things with the note, "From
Andersen 7 August 1830 on Dyreborg."
As an older man Andersen was fond of being represented by the
new medium, photography. Again and again his mind would
return to the theater, which was his first love, and the silhouette
cuttings he so enjoyed making wociid frequently show a proscenium,
or a curtain, or actors. When he traveled, he made sketches so that
he could remember settings for the plays and navels he wrote
(with considerably less success than his fairy tales), and there are
inks of Bologna, Florence, and an umbrella pine on the Monte
Mario in Rome. His original script for "The Little Mermaid"
shows many scratchings, the words coming with great pain. His
passports show his many travels, and in a special case are his
famous top hat, the leather hat box which held a spare, Ms umbrdOa,
the bag givm him by the king, and the coil of rope he always
carried abroad because of his haunting fear of fires. Tfaare is a
picture of Dickens* house twice visited by Andersen, the last time
for too long and so their friendship ended. The furniture which
Andersen was using when he died is sealed BOW behiod glass, a
move that was hastened by the visit of Danny Kaye, who was per-
58 EUROPE
suaded by photographers to slip into the man's ancient boots, to
don his top hat, and to lie on his bed. The picture men had a field
day, and then afterward the writing press hit Kaye with everything
but the Andersen house for his lack of discretion. Now it is with
great temerity that so much as Andersen's desk is removed from
the glass cage each April 2, his birthday, and some famous thespian
Michael Redgrave and Eva Le Gallienne among them invited
to read the famous fairy tales.
Steeped in Andersen, the Fairy Tale Tour rolls on through Ribe,
founded in 948 on the edge of a canal that leads to the sea and still
there, not changed very much. The houses curve gently around the
cobbled streets, the half-timbered houses meet the new age grace-
fully with fresh coats of tar, and the storks still come, less of them,
it's true, flying up from Egypt each year with the spring and nesting
on the roofs of Ribe, where the citizens have long built platforms
hoping that a stork family would bless them with a good omen and
take up residence.
In Aarhus the new world has bravely broken through, and the
city hail and the university are magnificent exhibitions of modem
Scandinavian architecture, furniture, and interior decoration. For
the look of the old, one must repair to Old Town, which is a settle-
ment of some fifty buildings re-created in the Williamsburg tech-
nique in the center of the botanical gardens. The buildings are
merely a display and no longer lived in, but some of the customs of
the day are still handed down. We were in Aarhus for the Danish
Midsummer's Eve, the longest day of the year, which derives from
the pre-Christian days when the Vikings looked to nisses, or goblins.
A saucepan of rice pudding was placed on the roof in hopes that
the nisses would eat it, although more often it was the cat. Witches
were burned and their souls dispatched to Bloksbjerg, a sort of hell
on earth which exists in the Harz Mountains. The mountain be-
came the legendary meeting place of all witches; and before Mid-
summer's Eve, cartoons appear in the papers showing witches en
route to their annual convention. A Danish way of telling someone
to go to hell is to tell him to "Go to Bloksbjerg."
On the lawn in front of a restaurant called Varna at the edge of
the sea, and in the pit of the amphitheater at the university big
bonfires had been built. As ten o'clock came and the northern sun
DENMARK * 59
went to bed, reluctant as a three-year-old, the fires were lighted
and old songs sung as the Danes had lighted fires as long as anyone
could remember to keep the evil eyes off the rich crops just coming
due. In recent days such evil eyes as Hitler and Goebbels have
roasted in effigy atop a Midsummer bonfire, but this year's villain
in Odense was no personage more sinful than a skavsvin, OK in
American a litterbug who strews the forest with left-over picnics.
Anyone bound for the lands to the north can take fotir days in
Fairyland (seventy-five dollars complete) ending the tour at
Frederikshavn and sailing to Norway or via the trim, white Kron-
prinsessen Ingrid in four hours to the harbor of Gothenburg in
Sweden. The excursion can also be taken in three days (sevesty-
one dollars), finishing in Aarhus, where the boat sails overnight to
Copenhagen. Rounding the top of Zealand the ship slips into The
Sound, past the massive hulk of Kronborg Castle in Elsinore, whore
lived the dour Dane. Elsinore is an easy one-day trip out of Copen-
hagen, and a plaque on the castle wall sums up the whole stocy.
A king's BOH named AmLeth lived in Jutland before the Viking
age. Saxo wrote about him during the Middle Ages, and during the
Renaissance Shakespeare rewrote the story linking Hamlet's fate
with the castle and bringing "eternal fame to the Danish prince*'
and making Elsinore world-famous. Summer Hamlet festivals have
been given in the castle courtyard and the star performers have
included Olivier, Gielgud, and Michael Redgrave, but some years no
Hamlet can be found, and the cobblestones are bare of aH except
tourists and tuna fishermen.
The tourists come all summer, the tuna trappers in August,
when like any good Scandinavian the tuna are snapping at the
heels of the herring. Both tourists and fishermen meet ultimately
at a striking new inn three minutes from Elsinore called Kysten's
Perle, or the Pearl of the Coast. About four hundred patrons can
drink and dine on the various balconies and terraces erf the Pearl's
Miami Beach exterior. Another five hundred can ditto in the Pearl's
exquisite Danish-modem interior. Barflies who get bored can watch
movies shown in screens inlaid in the bar top. As for the sixty-five
guests who can be put up overnight, the price is roughly three dol-
lars a day European plan, five dollars a day with meals. Every
room comes equipped with a panel board full of buttons where the
60 EUROPE
guest may with a flick speak to the restaurant, the front desk, or
the maid, take telephone calls, tune in the Danish radio and the
Swedish radio, and also record messages on a dictaphone.
Fishermen can depart from the hotel pier, be in midstream in
fifteen minutes, and pay twenty-five dollars a day for the boat,
bait, tackle, and crew. At night in the Hamlet Grill of Kysten's
Perle there are tunamen to talk of tuna, the Swedes who are
twenty-five minutes from Sweden over to enjoy the easier liquor
laws, the American tourist to recite aquavit-inspired Hamlet virtu-
ally on location, and the Danes themselves telling their elfin tales.
If you will pardon my bald digression, I feel I must tell you,
before finishing this Danish treatise, the elfin tale which to me
synthesizes their whole sense of humor. During the war the Ger-
mans put up a waist-high concrete wall to protect their sentries
from snipers of the Danish underground. The Danes couldn't knock
down the barrier by force, but the next morning the top half of the
German sentries could be seen parading behind the wall on which
had been lettered. "He hasn't any pants." Andersen would have
loved that
riikk Flakk in Ham
FLAM
ALTHOUGH THE SHOP WINDOWS IN OSLO DISPLAY SUCH TEMPTA-
tions as Flikk Flakk, Topp Corn, and other pasteboard delights
patterned after the American breakfast table, the Norwegian eye-
NOBWJLT * 61
opener which the traveler is more likely to run opera may be quite
another thing. Hotels here, inhabited in summer by persons of a
dozen languages each possessed of different morning eating habits,
national or individual, have gotten into the habit of spreading one
immense buffet table and the tell with it One mooing it was in
*Stavanger I decided to take a casual sort of inventory of the
breakfast table, and found it was loaded, in addition to a sawdust
pile of Flikk Flakk and Topp Corn, with six varieties of faerrmg,
thirteen kinds of bread, one fresh ham, two ominous wmsts, a
salami, a cornerstone of liver paste, chicken salad, pickled beets,
a whole roast beef, and five kinds of cheese, erf which gammelast
(old) and gjeitost (goat) must be mentioned because there is no
getting away from them.
It is sufficient to say that if any tourist sets out for die sights of
town unbolstered, it is only because he doesn't like herring, or etee
the gammehst proved a little too f ormidable to get close &x Nor-
wegians are used to packing away this manner of f ortificatkm early
in the day (usually embellishing it with a boiled egg) because they
don't expect to see real food again until dinnertime, which comes
between four-thirty and fivfr-thirty in the afternoon. Office workens
frequently start operations at 8:30 A.M., nibble cm biscuits and tea
at noon, then work straight through to quitting time at half-past
three. Most stores are shut by four, and in any city outside Oslo a
man would be hard put to buy a package of cigarettes once the
hour of nine has struck.
Oslo, however, has a welter of open-air establishments festooned
with lights and decorated with geraniums, and these are gay and
bubbly sometimes as late as 1 1 P.M. To get Oslo all in one view,
one might journey up to the Frognersaeteren Hovedrestaurant, with
a view of the twinkling lights of town and in the f oregroend a col-
lection of rural Norwegian farm houses with grass growing on their
roofs. The Frognersaeteren is an equal favorite in winter, espe-
cially since it is near the HolmenkoUen, a ski jump which is used
only one day a year. A magnificent concrete structure, the Jump
is flanked with grandstands that will hold ten thousand, but on the
first Sunday in March, the day set aside for its use, one hundred
thousand Norsemen jam into the open suowfields to watch the
skiers iy through the winter air. Other f ortunates can view the pro-
62 ETJBOPE
ceedings from a new restaurant which has been built under the lip
of the jump, facing the landing area.
The one-day-a-year ruling is in force so that Oslo jumpers may
not be endowed with frequent practice on the run. Norwegians are
infinitely adept at ski-jumping despite these precautions, their most
pressing Scandinavian competition coming from the Swedes and
the Finns, the least pressure from the Danes. It doesn't snow very
much in Denmark. During one competition the Norwegians jumped,
the Swedes jumped, and the judges sat awaiting the Danish effort.
"But our team has jumped," the Danes insisted with indignity.
"Oh," the judges are said to have said, "we thought that was some-
one being thrown out of the new restaurant."
Norwegians like to note that their exports are wood pulp, Christ-
mas trees, and three tons of snow sent to Denmark each year in a
large railway car.
Those who would prefer to stay in downtown Oslo to sop up
the urban atmosphere, I would direct to Skansen's, which has an
expensive terrace restaurant and, just below, a beer garden that
seats three thousand four hundred in a tremendous expanse of
trees and lighted globes alongside the harbor. Here the Norsemen
and the nomads from the other world gather to drink beer and
Linje, a special brand of aquavit which the Norwegians send down
to the Line or Equator in the holds of ships, on the premise that the
heat and the swishing has a tonic effect on the alcohol. With or
without a belt of Linje, the view from Skansen, which gives out on
a statue of Franklin Roosevelt surveying the waterfront, would
prove a delight to almost anyone but Bertie McCormick. Big ships
line the quays, and in these fine months there are always the Papa
Boats puffing back and forth between Oslo and the fjords, where
most of the local fathers live with their families during the short
summer.
Other seafaring Vikings, who in other years sailed far beyond
the fjords, are commemorated in a handy suburb called Bygd0nes
where ancient Norse craft of the tenth century, the polar ship From,
and the Kon-Tiki raft are all on display. The Viking ships, dis-
covered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, are
about sixty feet long, and have been restored to their original grace-
ful lines. The Fram, which sits in a great hall all its own, was built
HOBWAY * 63
for Nansen, who went earth to the polar regions from 1893 to
1896, was used by Otto Sverdrap, who followed him in 1898 and
1902, and later took Roald Amundsen to the Sooth Pole in
1910-12. The staterooms occupied by these explorers are marked,
some contain equipment used by them, and there is still on hand a
box marked "Horlick's Malted Milk, Racine, Wis., USA, put up
expressly for Capt. Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth North Pote
Expedition 1926."
As for Kon-Tiki, if there is a man or boy in the house who has
escaped the newspaper dispatches, the magazine articles, the books,
or the subsequent film, I will merely recount for these recluses
that it was a balsa raft in which Mr. Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian,
set out to prove a theory that the Polynesian islands could have
been settled by natives from Peru. Kon-Tihi was set adrift outside
Callao on April 28, 1947, and ooe hundred and one days later,
after a number of hair-raising adventures and an interminable diet
of fish, the raft and all hands washed up on the Rarma reef near
Tahiti.
Norwegian excursions into the realm of art have been no less
dauntless. Frogner Park is a vast alfresco exhibition of sculptor
Gustav Vigeland, who worked with unrelenting vigor and singleness
of purpose for more than thirty years. The results of this dedication
are displayed in the park, commencing with monumental wrougfat-
iron gates, proceeding over a bridge flanked with fifty-seven bronze
groups, continuing to a fountain encircled by hordes of nude
children both bronze and human. The main concourse win take
the stroller to The Monolith, an obelisk fifty-six feet high carved
with one hundred and twenty-erne figures hopelessly entangled in a
mad scramble to reach the top. Surrounding it are thirty-six im-
mense granite groups which were designed to represent emotions
and situations from daily life. While I am chary of dispensing with
so monumental a life's work as Gustav Vigeland's, the sheer volume
is enough to glut the artistic sensibilities of the casual tripper.
There is so much that an appreciation of individual pieces is diffi-
cult and an assessment of the whole not often favorable.
Nature's effort to please man's eye comes off rather better. The
fjords that have made a fringe of the western shoreline inspire a
succession, of gasps that could only otherwise be produced by a
64 EUHOPE
massage in the solar plexus by Rocky Marciano. Fjords are sort of
salty rivers which run between high canyons a hundred miles or
more tram the sea where they belong. Or to put it another way, a
fjord is a displaced stream of sea water that doesn't know enough
to come in out of the terrain. Norwegians make a rather good thing
out of the fjords, taking thousands of sardines out of them every
year and bringing thousands of tourists in. This exchange is of
vastly greater benefit to the tourists, for the fish are packed like
sardines and shipped off around the world. As for the tourist there
is a fine network of comfortable hotels in the fjord country and a
number of altogether pleasant ways of getting there.
Those heading f jordward from Oslo can take the Oslo-Bergen
Railway, which must be classed as one of the world's most scenic
runs. Things begin serenely enough, with the train rollicking through
soft timber and lake land, boats skimming over the glass-topped
water, cottages waiting quietly in the pines. There is no diner
aboard, but as if by apology a corps of hucksters maintains a con-
tinuous procession, first with box lunches of fried chicken for the
important eaters, then for the nibblers sandwiches, cakes, fol-
lowed by soda pop and ice cream. The trip becomes a ball game,
a circus, with the action going on outside the window. One watches
and one eats, the menu ending with a bravura finish hot dogs.
They are served Scandinavian-style, three of them to one portion,
each nearly a foot long accompanied by one lone roll three inches
long. To wed one Scandinavian frankfurter to one Scandinavian roll
the way Americans do makes a ridiculous picture reminiscent per-
haps of the way one must look sleeping under one of those frus-
trating, unhinged Norwegian comforters. You pull it up and you
bare your feet, you cover your feet and you bare your chest, and
in any case it is only a matter of moments before the thing has
slipped to the floor.
The muser and the muncher will be snapped back to reality by
the sudden change in the countryside. The cottages and the pines
have disappeared back below the timber line which we have crossed.
Now the softness has become barren rugged rock. Snow hangs
from the mountainsides mocking July, and midsummer ice floats
in mountain lakes. Tunnels and snow screens make a one-eyed
patch of the view, revealing in fleeting glimpses the roaring rivers,
HOBWJLY ' 85
tremendous chasms, and waterfalls spiffing down from frost only
just melted.
The train goes on to Bergen, but if you get off at Myrdal (eleva-
tion two thousand nine hundred feet) yon can ride the new spur
line in fifty-^hree minutes to F15m (elevation six feet). The FUm
Line is twelve miles long, cost three hundred and fifty dollars per
yard of track, crosses waterfalls, and at one point is fenced to make
a complete loop inside a mountain. It was all but built in 1940
when the Germans came in, and, since Him is a gateway to the
sea, the Germans rushed to finish it. Before 1940 tourists were
brought in by high-wheeled carts pulled by stunted fjord liorses.
They stayed at the Fretheim Hotel, a kindly white frame tan that
was first opened in 1870 for salmon fishing. A double room with
bath still costs only three dollars and fifty cents a day at the
Fretheim, plus one crown (fourteen cents) if you are just an QPPPT-
nighten Goat cheese, ham, tongue, and porridge make a sixty-cent
breakfast; dinner (sliced reindeer meat) is one dollar and twenty-
five cents.
After the crashing, violent railway trip down the mountain fran
Myrdal, Flam is a sodden enclave of serenity, sitting there at the
edge of its waterfront with the hulking canyon walk all around.
Chi the day we arrived, the British training warship Devonshire
made an unbelievable sight sitting at the head of the fjord, eight
hundred yards from the hotel and one hundred and ten miles from
the sea. You looked up and you saw the great green walls, water
spilling down from a leaky crevice. You looked down and yos saw
the old white yrm 3 and the smell of the jasmine from the gardens
made you dizzy, like you were in church cm Easter Sunday. And
like the cry of a child in some back pew came the squeals of Hie
village girls who stood on the wharves giggling with the Engfish
sailors. The shrill notes caromed off the high gree& walk mid went
running down the Qord, out to sea.
66 EtTBOPE
When They Becynn the
Beraen CekJenii
BERGEN
THE METROPOLIS OF BERGEN ON THE WEST COAST OF NORWAY
exudes a rather special flavor, and not only because it is vastly
occupied with fish. Probably this is a good thing because Bergen
has one hundred and fifty thousand citizens, is the second city of
the kingdom, and it wouldn't be well for such a settlement to go
around smelling of herring. Or even cod.
What makes Bergen special is that it has grown up on one of the
ragged peninsular fringes of the west shoreline and is protected
from the mainland by a cordon of seven hills. Two of the few
things that keep Bergen connected to the rest of Norway are the
similarity of language and the Bergen-Oslo Railway, which was
installed in 1909. Before that it was far easier for Bergeners to
travel down to London or Hamburg than to their own capital. This
situation gave rise to the nifty boffola of the day, "I'm not from
Norway, I'm from Bergen." Well, then. On with tie lesson.
Before I get too far away from the subject, I don't want to leave
the impression that the air around the docks in Bergen is all
Shalimar and Nuit de Noel. The biggest damn open-air fish market
you ever saw is a lively (and portable) enterprise active each day
until about 2 P.M., when the fishmongers fold their tables, load
everything on carts, and steal away. During business hours, how-
ever, there is a sort of pleasant bedlam, the fishmongers in yellow
aprons and blue shirts making fast talk with the housewives who
are down to buy a mackerel which only ten minutes before thought
that lif e was a barrel of live mackerel. Anyway, behind the market
the masts and guy ropes of Bergen's tremendous fishing fleet rise
in a tangled mass that somehow gets untangled each morning at
the ungainly hour that fishing boats put out. One wharfside street,
known as the Bryggen, is lined with -die most wonderful assortment
of creaky, wooden, fish-town houses seen since Spencer Tracy
played the part of a Portuguese mackerel catcher.
NOHWAY 87
Mine is not to reason why (and I am thankful to avoid the
responsibility), but if there is one thing that will take the mind of
Bergeners away from fish and shipping it is musk. I had never
thought about fish mixing with music, or for that matter with any-
thing except maybe chips, but this musk kick is solidly entrenched.
For one thing there is the matter of Bdvard Grieg, the great Nor-
wegian composer who was bom, worked, and died here. Trdd-
haugen, his home in the suburbs, sits in a grove of white birches
with purple pansies and scarlet geraniums all around. Down the
hill, at the water's edge, is Grieg's red clapboard workshop aad his
piano with built-in candelabra. Here he could look out on the placid
lake and the string of islands fuzzy with trees and connected by
bridges. On Midsummer's Eve, longest day of the year, with bon-
fires burning on all the surrounding hills, the local folk would dress
in their native costumes and paddle their boats down the lake
where Grieg's place is. The composer would throw open the doors,
and while he played his own themes, his wife would sing to the
floating audience. There are some who still remember those nigjfats.
Grieg died in 1907, and he and his wife ane burled now in a
crypt hewn out of a boulder overlooking the lake. A rough chisel
has made the inscription: "Edvard and Nina Grieg." Foxgloves
shoot skyward like purple arrows from the moss atop the crypt,
birds sing in the far distance, a brown squirrel runs the woodlands
without cracking a branch, and the guide says, "Listen to the quiet"
Things are considerably noisier downtown at noon each day
when Bergen's regimental band marches through the streets and
serenades the town from a gingerbread bandstand in the square.
The oompah floats across Ole Bulls Plass in front of the harried
Hotel Norge, where Ole Bull, a local violinst who toured America
in the middle Eighties, draws his bronze bow.
Early each June, Bergen presents an international musical
festival whkh draws the finest names in musk. I regret to report
that all these worthies had long since packed their stands and fled
perhaps to Bayreuth, Salzburg, the Pepsi-Cola program, or other
seats of culture. For those of us who arrival hi the height of the
tourist season, the only musk hi musical Bergen was the daily band
in the square, a string ensemble in the sedate Hotel Bristol massag-
ing Rfchard Rodgers' score from The King and I, and the current
fare at Den Nationale Scene, the local repertory theater.
68 ' EITHOPE
Since the spring the curtain at Den Nationale Scene, where
Ibsen was director for five years, has been ringing up nightly with
Cole Porter's Anything Goes. It is given in Norwegian with certain
allowances for untranslatable items in the book which was written
by Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Lindsay, and Grouse back in the
Thirties.
For the equivalent of one dollar and thirty cents, checkroom
charge included, one could have a seat in tenth row center and
listen for familiar words spoken twenty years ago by Bill Gaxton
and Victor Moore to filter through the Norwegian. The libretto
had been considerably updated, and one could catch glimpsing
references to McCarran, Christine Jorgensen, and other statesmen.
The music proved to be something of a Cole Porter medley, f or
we were suddenly faced with the insistent rhythms of Natt og Dag,
which to the best of my recollection first appeared in The Gay
Divorcee. At any rate it was the first bit of Norwegian I could
understand for the lyric went:
Som sma dunk-dunk-dunk pa en tam-tam
Ear mitt hjerte slatt for deg
Og med tikk takk tikk
Sma sekunder gikk
Som de var sma or for meg
Of hvert drypp-drypp-drypp nar det regnte . . .
After that unexpected interlude it was rather disheartening to learn
that "Begynn og Bekjenri" from the show Jubilee, at first scheduled
for inclusion in this production, had been cut out.
The songs that actually had appeared in the original Anything
Goes came through loud and clear with, as I say, certain changes
necessitated by the years. In the interests of those who might be
curious to know how the old hit, "You're the Top," sounds to a
Norwegian, I submitted a few verses for local translation and
these I pass on to you unabridged.
You are great. You are Colosseum.
You are great. You are like Louvre Museum
Like a Shakespearean "ogre," a bride.
A symphonius poem
NOHWAY * 69
So specific, like Saeverad*
No doubt; You are the tower of Pisa
And your smile. You are Mke Mona lisa
I am nothing, Only a zero here on earth.
But even if I am diminutive,
You are great
The action, as you may recall, required a trip abroad, and this
resulted in a pierside scene in New York with signs reading
"Douane-Toll-Customs" and a big red arrow pointing the way to
"McCarran." When the girls of the chorus rolled into the title song
it went Mice this:
Day is night today
Even Chaplin is cheerless today
He is banished today
From his (fear Hollywood
And Trygve Lie is trying to get slim,
McCarran doesn't care a fig
He is screening every man,
Anything Goes!
This concludes today's discourse on the musical mores of musical
old Bergen, I think I had better tell you, however, that the city
calls itself the Doorway to Norway, a slogan that rhymes nicely,
and indeed it is the pleasantest of trips if the North Sea is be-
having to sail over from England directly to the doorway aboard
the handsome motorship Venus. If you are acquainted with tie
usual assortment of coastal ships, the Venus will flabbergast you,
for it offers at modest fees a modern, modish, expansive dcor that
would be hard to beat aboard a transatlantic liner. Once asfaofe in
Bergen, a coinbination of busses and steamers wffl lift you through
the chasms of the Hardanger fjord up to the new hotel at Ulvik, or
through Voss to the Sogn fjord and around to FISm.
On the other hand, a body taking to the air with Scandinavian
Airlines that amicable aerial entente of Norway, Denmark, and
Sweden can fly from London, yea, even New York, and land
directly at the MgMy developed jet air base just outside Stavanger.
Now Stayanger is another Norway doorway south of Bergen and,
although it is up to its hips in fish, it doesn't give a cod's entrails
* HaraM Saevered was a Norwegian cooiposer.
70 EUROPE
for music unless you call music the clatter of sardine cans as they
tumble off the conveyer belt.
Right near the airport there is a fine resort hotel called the Sola
Strand, which occupies a choice location on one of Norway's few
stretches of sandy shore. It is loaded with all kinds of native Nor-
wegian art and antiques, and a quiet life among the tufted dunes
with nothing more strenuous at hand than a bar and a badminton
court costs about six dollars a day in the ordinary room, and that
takes in meals. A one-night stand in the royal corner suite where
King Haakon has stayed, including bedroom, sitting room, terrace,
and bath, will drain you of a flat seven bucks. Anybody looking
for simpler quarters can put up at the Hotel Hummeren, which is
to say, the Lobster Hotel, for as little as three dollars a day, which
includes a simple room and meals. Fresh hummeren crawl about
in a tank awaiting the day they will take the hot-water plunge, but
if you would rather go hunt your own fare, you can put out to sea
in the hotel's own skiff. Among the other accoutrements to life at
three dollars per diem, I should add a view of the cove with fishing
smacks sitting fifty yard offshore, and dancing in the hotel's night
club every evening.
This brings me over the rough-prose road to Stavanger itself,
which has recently built a first-class modern hotel called the
Atlantic with one of the finest dining rooms in the Scandinavian
motif seen anywhere. It also has an unparalleled view of the
Bredevann, a lake possessed of a permanent complement of swans,
ducks, geese, and a number of transient web-feet who pass through
on the way to mild climates. Each year on the first of May,
Stavanger's new ducklings march through town heading for the
waters of the Bredevann. That is the parade day also chosen by
the town's ultra Leftists; and last year while police held back the
crowds in anticipation of the political paraders, a party of duck
and ducklings marched straight down the avenue. The May Day
parade wasn't the same after that.
Stavanger's fish market is a fraction, the size of Bergen's, but it
stretches out by the harbor just the same, and if anything is a little
more colorful. Fruit and vegetable stands are stretched all over the
hilly, cobbled streets surrounded by two-story wooden buildings
in all colors.
SWEDEM * 71
Being a doorway to the fjords for tourists, Stavanger functions
similarly for sardines which come in from the ocean each summer
to spawn, and end up being shipped abroad in a tin casket. There
ought to be a moral there somewhere. There are sixty canning fac-
tories in Stavanger, and I should like to report that sardines are
kept alive for three days to get all the food out of their stomachs,
that they arrive at the tinnery at 6 A.M. and are all sealed up by
nightfall. In the meantime they are soaked in brine, put on a rack
like thousands of shiny tin soldiers, smoked over an oak fire, then
submitted to a mass guillotine.
Things haven't been all roses with Norway's sardines. There was
quite a battle with the French, some years back, who didn't believe
that Stavanger's sardines were sardines at all. The French said
they were pint-sized herring. The British import Stavanger sardines,
but they insist that they be labeled brisling, which is a sprat, which
is a small herring. America imports Stavanger sardines too, and
by law they may not be called anything but sardines. If everyone
let Stavanger call its sardines sardines, that would be real music
in Stavanger.
SWEDEN
Djuiiael dim in Lapland
INSIDE THE ARCTIC CIRCLE
THINGS HAVE IMPROVED CONSIDERABLY UP HERE SINCE THE DAYS
when Amundsen, Nansen, Peary, and other hearties stood on the
back runners (A a dog sled and hollered, "Mush!" For the better
72 EUROPE
part of a week we have been exploring the northlands from the
observation car of a fabulous Swedish train, hollering such lusty
phrases of the Arctic as "Steward!" or sometimes just "Beer!"
A staff of seventeen is on hand to wait on forty-eight passengers;
hot water flows unfailingly at any hour from the tap in each com-
partment; there is a special car equipped with showers, a hair dryer,
and an iron; we have a telephone, movies on rainy days, and each
morn ing the hostess rustles the explorers by wafting ethereal poems
over the loud-speakers, followed by soft matinal music. Ah,
where are the sourdoughs of yesteryear?
This painless scheme for traipsing across the tundra is the in-
vention of the Swedish State Railways, which each summer operates
a series of Sunlit Nights Land Cruises to the Scandinavian high-
lands. Garden-club secretaries, the bridge-and-bonbon brigade,
ladies who remember Lincoln, and other hardy types can plough
across the Arctic on cushioned rails, taking side excursions by
upholstered bus each day, sleeping in a downy berth each night,
frequently at a quiet siding. Newspapers are whisked up from Stock-
holm daily, a bar maintains the proper percentage of alcohol in
the blood, and a minimum of meals are served on the train. Eight
days and eight nights of this kind of high living in the low latitudes
costs between two hundred and fifty and three hundred dollars
depending upon the accommodation you choose.
The excursion gathers steam the first night out of Stockholm
when the explorer's express rolls into Rattvik in Dalecarlia, a
Swedish province where the houses are painted a vivid red and
trimmed in stark white, and the village folk sometimes go to church
in longboats dressed in native costumes whether tourists are on
hand or not. For our pleasure the Dalecarlians put on a picnic at
a fabod, which is a farm cottage in the mountains where cowherds
are kept for summer grazing. A trio of fiddlers met us at the foot of
the hill on the morning we arrived and took us up to the picnic
grounds Dalecarlian-style, marching to a Swedish jig. A bellow on
a long birchbark horn normally used to call in the cattle sum-
moned the tourists with equal effect, and all hands, save the
squeamish, sat down to dabble gingerly in long milk, a sourish sort
of cream that some of the more irreverent were unkind enough to
liken to milk of magnesia. Those thus disturbed could sprinkle
cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, and ginger on top, or turn to the thin
SWEDEN * 73
wafer pancakes rolled with a filling of sour milk and newly toned
butter. For dessert there was a dish of cloudberries, a northksd
specialty resembling a brown raspbeny and served with whipped
cream. Scandinavia would be in an awful fix if there was ever a
blight on cows.
In the afternoon erne could return to the train for a nap, put on
a bathing suit for a swim in Lake Siljan, whkh lay alongside the
tracks, or walk back to the club car and call New York, As the
summer night came to Dalecariia the sun hardly bothered to set
A troupe of fourteen dancers, the men looking modish in chamois
plus-fours embossed with flower vines, the girts in peasant rig,
appeared on the lawn of the Hotel Persborg and danced under the
birch trees with the lake as a backdrop. Thai the dancers, the
fiddlers, and the whole hotel marched us to the station and we
rolled CHI toward the Arctic.
Now we were in the province of Jamtland, and the lumber
floated in big corrals on the river. We rode the basket lift four
thousand six hundred and fifty-five feet up Mount Areskete,
where the international ski championships were to be an emit of
winter, and looked down into the magnificence of the Are Valley.
On a Sunday afternoon the train rolled into Ostersund on Lake
Storsjon, and we rode out to the tiny Froso Church cm an island
and sat in silence while an organ played the musk: of Petersou-
Berger, who was strange and famous and lived nearby .
On the fourth day out of Stockholm, the Sunlit Ni^its Laud
Cruise crossed the Arctic Circle and pulled into the tiny station
called Polcirkeln. The explorers got a speech and a certificate fro
King Boreas, who in more serious hours is the assistant station
manager at Kiruna. The king was glad to see us, and weH he might
have been, for we were enrichening the area not only with our
money but with our bkxxL The blood was for the mosquitoes, who
smacked their lips over the prospect of all those rich American
corpuscles and did gleeful barrel rolls in the heavens as they
zoomed down to supper. A preparation called Djungel OIJa makes
you smell like rotten eggs to a mosquito, but we applied it in heavy
doses so the stingers couldn't get a footing even if they could stand
the odor. It wasn't necessary to venture Into the northern djungek
to find the mosquitoes, for people standing cm the railway station
74 * EtFHOPE
were brushing the young vampires away with switches cut from
birch trees. It's an old north-country custom. That night at
Bjorkliden, on an equal latitude with the middle of Greenland or
the top of Alaska, the sun didn't bother to set at all. We hiked up
to the Fjallet Mountain Hotel, an establishment which maintains
a rack for mosquito switches outside its front door, and signed up
for golf on its course, which I have come to reflect on fondly as
Buzzing Bunkers. At midnight we teed off, driving the ball and
the mosquitoes, with a Lapp in full regalia for a caddy. By full
regalia I mean a blue tunic caught with a great leather belt, blue
knickers trimmed with red, and a hat with an immense pompon.
At any rate, it was enough to scare the mosquitoes away, for they
never raised a Lappish welt on his skin, which was unvarnished
with oil of the jungles.
The greens proved to be really browns, and the Lapp proved
hardly a caddy, since he merely carried the bag, distributed new
balls, and remained happily oblivious of where the old ones landed.
If for nothing else than the sheer novelty of it, the links at
Bjorkliden proved one of the rare places in the world where a
man could in good conscience waltz home at two in the morning
and tell the wife he had come straight from the golf course.
Lapps who follow more natural pursuits than caddying for
Americans who play golf in the midnight sun are more difficult to
find, for up here there are few roads and the sole connecting link
between many communities is the Swedish State Railways. Up at
the edge of the Norwegian border we left the train for a day and,
decked out in knee-high boots, followed a guide into the world of
Lapland. Except for Russia, the Swedish mountain regions form
the largest wilderness in Europe, and civilization fell away abruptly
behind the depot at Vassijaure. We emerged within minutes into a
land of midsummer snowfields, rolling marshes, and four-thousand-
foot peaks dappled with snow. It was a four-mile walk to the first
lake, which lay banked with snow and spotted with icebergs. An
outboard motorboat took us across, but then we had to portage
the motor across two more lakes until, ten miles from the depot,
we found a Lapp camp. It had taken us three hours to get there,
but all we found was a bronzed Lapp woman and a five-year-old
boy, with widespread Asiatic eyes and an elfin look, dressed in a
SWEDEN * 75
red Lapp suit and a black hat that looked like a chauffeur's. Every-
body else had crossed over the next mountain into Norway, fol-
lowing the reindeer herd. There was a pile of clean reindeer horns
and a house that looked ratter like a mud-and-stoae igloo with a
wooden door. Our hostess, who had been wearing her Lapp cap
and an old print dress, disappeared for some minutes and returned
done up in her red and blue Lapp costume, carrying a chunk of
dried meat under her arm. We sat at the table and drank Lapp
coffee with lump sugar and pulled on pieces of dried reindeer,
which in all ways resembles dark red leather.
On the way back home we found another Lapp tost along the
lake filled with a family of five children in bright orange and blue
and red costumes. We braved the family dogs that looked like
Spitzes and acted like wolves, and sat on reindeer skins wfaicfa
covered a carpet of birch branches. An iron pot simmered over an
open fire in the middle of the tent floor, the smoke curling out of
the roof. We got no coffee, probably because the lady of the place
was too busy turning out a red and blue belt CHI a sewing macfaioe
that rested on the birch branches near the portable radio.
We found our train back at its siding some hours later. People
were sitting in the bar drinking beer, reading the Paris Herald
Tribune, listening to the loud-speaker which was dispensing the
"Grand Canyon Suite" piped from a tape recorder in the club car.
On the lawn by the station an old Lapp woman was selling slippers
of reindeer hide and brushing away clouds of mosquitoes, which
should have had more sense since she had skin like a T-34 tank
and the slippers sinelled worse than a man swabbed in Dfungel
Olja. The program called for dinner that night in a nearby resort
hotel, then a trip up a mountain to look at the midnight sun. The
next day we were to look at Narvik, and after that we would shoot
the rapids at Kiruna in a long boat. It was enough to make any man
fresh from the tundra long for nightfall. Unfortunately, the sun
wasn't scheduled to set for another three weeks.
76 * EXJBOPE
The Cutclccr Beys en the Baltic
STOCKHOLM
SWEDEN SPENDS THE SUMMER LIKE A MAN WHO is RATHER
grateful he doesn't turn blue when he sets foot out of doors. It is
infinitely more difficult here to get a seat on a park bench than in
a theater. Diners, drinkers, dreamers, and musicians pursue their
endeavors in the open. If the city itself dresses up for the summer,
the Stockholders who inhabit the municipal parks don't bother to
dress very much at all. Decorating the town is done for matters of
beauty, whereas undecorating the citizens is a question of health.
Northern people like to store up as much sun as possible before
somebody pulls down the shade for the long winter. A Swede and
the summer sun are like a sailor after long months at sea, or so a
Swede has explained to me.
When we passed through Stockholm earlier in the summer, it
was altogether possible to read a newspaper on the street at eleven
o'clock at night. And a big yellow moon that came up like an
overripe Camembert was cause enough for a considerable portion
of the populace to sit up much of the night contemplating it in the
hypnotic way a Japanese contemplates a plum blossom.
The summer was more entrancing than usual because the city
was celebrating its seven hundredth anniversary. In the Kungs-
tradgSrden, a lovely midtown park, plays and concerts were per-
formed under a rippled white plastic canopy that seemed to float
among the trees. An iron fire tree burned with jets of flaming gas
and water sprayed from a glass-tubed fountain. A favorite lighting
fixture here is a Scandinavian improvement of the Oriental lantern,
and clusters of these hung under the elms in the Kungstradgarden
to give a subtle and summary sort of light to an outdoor beer
garden or a tea shop.
Floodlights were shining on the palaces and parliament, on the
sleek white sailing ship Chapman, a floating youth hostel which
rides at anchor in the Saltsjon, or Salt Sea, in front of the Grand
Hotel and charges thirty cents a night for lodging, twenty cents
SWEDEN 77
extra for sheets in case you're fastidious. When the night has
finally come down, there is still a white light of promise glowing in
the north, and the midnight blue of the sky is decorated with the
lacy steeple of the Riddarholmskyrkan, where the kings are buried,
and the sharp lines of Stockholm's city hall tower. On special
nights concerts are given under the arcades of city haH at the edge
of Lake Malaren, and the line of poplars sways slightly, the willows
droop, and fifty yards offshore a spume of water shoots in the air
for added adornment
One nigfrt we walked the narrow cobbled streets of the old town,
one of Stockholm's sixteen islands which divides Lake Malaree
from the Salt Sea* We went down into the cellar of the Golden
Peace, as all Americans must do, and had dinner in the tteee-tam-
dred-year-old catacombs where Carl Michael Beftnan wrote bal-
lads, Anders Zom, the Swedish painter, established the place as a
sort of foundation, donating it to the Swedish Academy, which
turns the profits into scholarships for authors.
It was a short walk up to Junotappan, where the municipal
theater was givm Arleqmns Aventyr, performed in an open square.
The audience sat on wooden planks, and some hung oat erf the
windows of the seventeenth-century buildings. The spire of a
church rose behind the stage, church beHs punctuating the dialogue
every fifteen minutes. We didn't understand a word, but the
atmosphere hung over the square Eke a lowering cloud. Later we
walked down the cobbled hills again and slopped at the Jan&oiget,
where iron down from the mines in the north was weighed befoie
it was sent abroad. The iron market is gone bat Ssjacfoorg' s Koo-
ditori is still selling cakes there, the way it did in 1785, wbe the
Jaratorget rang with the sound of ingots.
Once we went down to the docks near the old iitm market and
watched the traffic swirl around the hopeless puzzle of a doror leaf
built over a set of locks that connect the Salt Sea and Lake Malaren.
White ships bound for Finland lined the quays, and we stood in a
queue for the ferry that takes you over to Sfcansea, aad got lost in
a crowd of German students aH zipped up in blue gym sufts, The
Salt Sea flowed like a river below the palisade, the blue and yellow
flag? of Sweden snapped like a towel in the hands of a locker-room
cavorter, and the good ship Isbrytaren II stood stock and still, with
78 ETJBOPE
nothing to do for months because she is an ice breaker and it was
the season for sun.
We listened to the Stockholm Philharmonic playing on the
plateau at Skansen, the Tchaikovsky bouncing off the formed
wooden bandshell, and rolling across the acres of Swedes who lined
the benches. Up at the Solliden, a new million-dollar restaurant,
the view of the bandshell and the crowd was unhindered through
the giant glass windows, the sound rolled up in waves, and the
dinner was three courses and cost one dollar and fifty cents. If one
preferred simpler music, there was the Bern right in town where a
brassier band played "Way Down Upon the Swanee River" and
other more indigenous tunes, while the waiters brought orders of
Swedish punch and new potatoes dressed in spindly green dill. One
could sit in the better section under the orange canopies, alongside
the reed-filled lagoon. Or one could find an empty seat in the open-
air cafeteria across the way. Noneaters could sit on park benches
facing the bandstand and just listen. The band played for all.
One could sit, too, in the glass-enclosed dining terrace of the
Grand Hotel, have dinner for two dollars, if one stayed with the
table d'hote, and watch the fleet of excursion ships come in an end-
less chain to deposit the sight-seers and the sun-worshipers back
in town. All day long the little boats run out to the archipelago,
past the white gulls that sit on the barges loaded with hills of black
coal, past the strange green contraptions built to hold a wide net
which sports fishermen let down into the Salt Sea to catch a sackful
of nors, tiny fish that appear in spring. A statue of Jenny Lind
sits in a birch grove off the starboard bow facing the American
ambassador's residence and the neighboring British ambassador's
residence, not far from Axel Wenner-Gren's place. Then among
the reeds is Folke Bernadotte's home, where his widow still lives,
and farther on the Djurgardsbrunns Wardshus, a delightful restau-
rant overlooking the Djurgardsbrunnsviken, which is something of
a canal. And when you've done your noblest there with the smoked
salmon, the aquavit, the beer, the strawberries big as plums, and
the whipped cream, there is a horse and carriage to take you home
by way of the park.
In the Kungstradgirden, which is to say the King's Park, glass
cases display the finest of Sweden's handicraft: furniture and fabrics
SWEDEN - 79
which have set the mode for modern design ia tlie United States,
magnificent glass, stainless steel tableware, ceramics, and lamps.
Of all this dazzling display the stainless steel tableware seemed to
me to be the very best buy. Eight place settings of six pieces each
cost twenty-two dollars. The ceramics seemed to lack the uninhib-
ited flair of the work in Denmark and the reckless flair befag
exhibited among the avant-gardists of Finland. On the other hand,
the silly things that tourists buy and cherish the handprinted
modern birds, the roosters with plumes of wood-shavings, the
impressionistic figures of farm folk whittled in wood are done
here with great abandon and artistry. The best of this can be found
in a department store called the NIC, pronounced en-ko, whid* ki
its spare time has done the United States Embassy m Moscow and
some of the U.N. interiors in New York. I should also pass on to
you the added morsel of intelligence that Swiss watches aie an
excellent buy in Stockholm; you can figure on paying no more than
one third the pice of the same makes in America.
If you want to shop another store it would be the PUB, which
aside from its merchandise has the added advantage of bemg
located on a square called the Hotorget, or Haymarket. Opposite
the PUB is the Stockholm Concert Hall decorated in front with
Carl Milks' statue of Orpheus playing his harp while a number of
unencumbered bronze ladies and gents are portrayed in a variety
of postures normally assumed by ladies and gents listening to mosie.
The steps of the Concert Hall are otherwise ornamented CHI good
days with dozens of Stockholmers who sit with their faces lifted to
the sun. The square itself is a mass of fruit and vegetable carts
every morning. Once a year, long after the sun fancier and the
fruit peddlers have fed, a dignified assemblage gathers at the
Concert Hall to watch the presentation of the Nobel Awards.
The perennial thing in hotels in Stockholm is the Grand, which
has some beautiful new rooms with wonderful views of the maze of
bridges, boats, and water. It also has a long-time reputation not at
all diminished by the fact that it sits on a street with the impossible
handle of Sodra Blasieholmshamnen. By the time you say that to a
cab driver the meter has flipped another kronar.
The newest thing in hotels in Stockholm is the Mafanea, an
efficiency operation where the bed folds into the wall, and there is
80 EUROPE
an automatic device along the lines of an egg-timer which you
merely set at the desired hour of reveille and it wakes you with ease
and infallibility by ringing a bell. It should be installed by law in
Scandinavia, where hotels have had the habit this summer of
(a) calling an hour too early, (b) calling fifteen minutes late, or
(c) not calling at all. Aside from this complaint, most Scandinavian
hotels have all the comforts of home, and that includes bath and
shower. On the other hand, I have yet to find one with a shower
curtain, unless it would be the new and tony Park Avenue Hotel
in Gothenburg. There is doubtless some relation between the lack
of shower curtains and the number of lakes in Sweden, which is
ninety thousand.
The only other things anyone ought to know is that in Sweden
sex is six, and if you want to greet an old friend you shout, "Hay!
Hay!" or, more properly, "Hej! Hej!" Also, that Swedes are rather
serious about drinking and driving, never indulging in the former
before the latter. Spot checks are made by Swedish police, and any
driver carrying around an alcoholic blood count is for the work
farm for thirty days. Some hotels operate chauffeur services, dis-
patching drivers to drive home the cars of people who suspect there
is a little moonshine among their corpuscles.
It was with the greatest temerity that Stockholm's elected guard-
ians finally gave permission for the city to have two night clubs
for its seven hundredth anniversary. Figured the populace would
go to rack and ruin, that's what. The worry was needless, for I
looked in the clubs one night just before midnight and things were
progressing as ripsnorting as Zanesville on Sunday. Out in the park,
though, people were having a fine time drinking tea under those
lanterns, business was good at the stands that sell varm korv (a
northern version of a hot dog), and Swedish waffles were sizzling
in the irons. Nothing was gayer than the ice-cream stands, which
are painted blue and white and look like circus tents, and the
crowd around the mjolkbar was swilling glasses of Grade A as if
there would be no tomorrow.
SWEDEM * 81
Hew tc See a Cew Tlircufih
a Porthole
IN THE GOTA CANAL
IF YOU HAVE NEVER SAILED THROUGH A MEADOW, TAKEN A BOAT
down a wheat field, or floated through a forest, you must tiy the
steamer trip through the Gota Canal.
The canal is a liree-himdred-and-forty-seveo-mik waterway
that stretches clear across the peninsula of Sweden from Gothen-
burg on the North Sea to Stockholm on the Baltic. With crackling
efficiency the Swedish State Railways can cover this distance in
something short of a full night's journey, but for vacationists who
have time for three days of lazying along the inland waters in a
rather ancient steamboat, the Gota Canal Cruise is certainly dm
experience. By law we are not permitted to whip along faster than
five knots an hour.
Although the Astrea, on which we are sailing, has sometimes
exposed itself to the rigors of an open lake, mostly it has been
snaking through narrow waterways, the boughs from bofdering
trees dusting the heads of those who lofl on deck. There were times
when the underbrush got so thick one wondered if the hetesrasii
could find the stream. These were the moments that induced
memories of scesnes from The African Queen wihes Humphrey
Bogart had to jump overboard and pull the Queen (not much
smaller than our Astrea) through the reeds. I wont say we aie
traveling slow, but when a man on a bicycle rolling along a canal-
side path leaves you in the dust, well!
The Gota Canal crossing is a logical route for those landing in
Gothenburg aboard ships coming directly from New Yodc and
London. During the busy summer months the five-steamer fleet
maintains almost daily departures from Gothenburg to Stockholm
and vice versa. Gothenburg itself is Sweden's second city and
largest seaport Great cranes rise Eke iron dinosaurs akitg its
harbor, and its fishing craft deposit their catches CHI the wharves
in advance of the lively fish auction that takes place early each
82 " ETTBOPE
morning. Gothenburg's new hotel, the Park Avenue, is so named
because it is near a park and on an avenue. No association with
the fancy street in New York was intended. However, the Park
Avenue lives up to its unintended name and has become in its year
of existence one of the fine hotels in Northern Europe.
Accommodations aboard the Gota Canal fleet will be somewhat
less luxurious than the modern quarters in the streamlined Park
Avenue. The waterway was first opened in the 1830's, and pessi-
mists insist that the same ships are still running. Although this is
a patent exaggeration, it must be pointed out that the cabins are
.small and the enclosed public salon space limited. Passengers are
restricted to about one hundred and fifty pounds of baggage each,
and not all of that will fit into a cabin. All cabins have portholes,
and none have private baths.
A berth in a cabin for three costs about thirty-five dollars for the
trip, meals included. A berth in a double cabin is pegged at about
fifty dollars for the three-day trip, and a single cabin is about sixty
dollars. Despite these seemingly substantial prices and the limita-
tions of space and activity, the Astrea, like her sister ships, is sail-
ing with a bumper list of passengers. There are two sittings for every
meal in the small dining salon on the aft end, and eleven pas-
sengers have elected to go along even though they have no berths
and must sit up for two nights. Several of them have been unable
to find sitting space in the forward closed salon, and since the
summer nights in Sweden are about the likes of October over here,
sleeping on deck is not all starlight and romance.
The first night was spent crossing Lake Vanern, third largest
lake in Europe, which has the same shape as the Danish island of
Zealand, on which Copenhagen is located. A popular legend says
that a king of Sweden told the goddess Gefion that she could have
as much land as she could plow in one day. Old Gef turned her
four sons into a quartet of oxen and forthwith plowed the island of
Zealand, leaving Sweden with a big hole, later called Lake Vanern.
A fiery statue commemorating this adventure stands today in
Copenhagen.
As the ship slips through a succession of sixty-five locks, raising
the ship to two hundred and seventy-five feet above sea level and
then lowering it, passengers can go ashore to sight-see. Probably
the most interesting stop is at Vadstena, where title Astrea pulled
FINLAHD 83
up under the hulk of the Renaissance castle, and passengers went
to visit the Abbey church of Si. Bridget, founded in 1430 and for
two centuries the seat of spiritual power in the North.
But the best sight-seeing of all is just gliding along the quiet
canal, with no interruption except foe the stops made at tiny
hamlets. As the village comes to the banks to watch, the skipper
sends an order down through the speaking tube. The engine stops
while the caretaker on shone pulls back ooe erf the dozens of canal
bridges which sit on rollers. Once we are through he rolls the
bridge back in place again. Then there is nothing more pressing
for the passenger to do but sit on deck and watch the wheat fields
and the pasture lands go by. I would go below and rest for a while,
but I can't get used to the idea of looking out of the porthole and
seeing a cow.
The Scf t-bciled Tourist
en the Edge cf Russia
THE WORLD BEGINS TO CHANGE SOMEWHERE EAST OF STOCKHOLM,
and when you set down in Helsinki, where two hours more would
bring you to Leningrad, you know life is going to be different For
one thing there is no such custom as tipping and for another thing
some places charge a nickel f or a glass of ice water. Swedish may
have seemed about as intelligible as a Patagonian patois, but after
84 EUBOPE
you've seen Finnish, Swedish is easy as pie, or rather paj. Take a
simple road sign such as "Cykling Forbjuden" Now a man with a
pair of aquavits aboard might be able to recognize that as Cycling
Forbidden. The same thing in Finnish comes out "Pyoraily
Kielletty" and where does that leave you?
Finnish is supposed to have some relation to Hungarian, but a
Finn has told me of spending twenty-two days on board ship with
a Hungarian roommate and the two of them never found one word
in common. I don't want Mr. Thor Heyerdahl to blow the dust
off the Kon-Tiki and start another theory-proving adventure, but
there are plenty of words in Finnish that look an awful lot like
Hawaiian. For example, there is kukkakaalikeittoa, which as any-
one knows is cauliflower soup, and mansikkaleivonnainen, which
is another, if impossible, way of saying strawberry tart.
Consider the young Finnish student running off to his first class
in grammar and being faced with the declension of fifteen cases,
among them akkusatiivi, adessiivi, allatiivi, inessiivi, illatiivi, trans-
lattivi, and instruktiivi. The word "house," which is talo, would
run through all these cases and more, but perhaps the only case
you had better be concerned with is the adessiivi, talolla, meaning
"on the house."
I am not sure whether it is to work the kinks out of the tongue
from speaking the language or the kinks out of the intestines from
drinking the local mash (which is made from wood), but a Finn's
grand passion is the sauna, or steam bath. Well, maybe steam
bath is putting it too mildly, for a sauna is something like a
Turkish bath with overtones of sadism, masochism, parboiling, and
Salem witchcraft. When a Finn builds his home, they tell you, he
builds the sauna first. It is a small wooden building at the edge
of the lake. It has a boiler which is filled with stones, and when
the stones are hot enough to melt, water is thrown over them.
Conditions are now unbearable inside the sauna and it is time to
get in. After steaming away your dissipations and not a little of
your skin, you are flailed with a shock of birch branches. Then
you go take a running jump in the lake. This is an idea of a good
time in Finland.
They start goading you into taking a sauna shortly after you
clear customs, and in a few hours in town you realize that if you
don't surrender and let them boil you like a knockwurst in a
FINLAHD 85
brauhaus kitchen, there win b serious reflections CHI your man-
hood, nationality, generation, and mother's family. Thus badg-
ered, I appeared one dismal day on the roof of the elegant new
Palace Hotel, which has the spiffiest sauna in town. Here you can
enjoy an unparalleled view of the harbor through the picture
windows while you turn purple from the heat
Saunas may be taken together by families or otherwise by
groups of one sex. All attendants arc women who qualify for the
job by being old, homely, and muscular. Lady name of Leena
working our sauna had the build and the beauty of Strangfer
Lewis. We hung our clothes on a hook and she pushed us into the
hot box. She went after us with birch brandies and a scrubbing
brush, and every time I protested she went (Hit to find someooe
who could speak English. A stream of cashiers, managers, and
attendants came to visit, and I can't recall taking a bath in front
of so many people since I was six months old.
After a sauna nothing will revive you quicker than two quarts
of plasma, but since it would be a frigjitful gaucherie to suggest
it, youTl probably have to limp along with a robust dinner. One
of the nicest places in Helsinki is the Valhalla, which from 1750
until 1800 was a harbor fortress. It is still in the harbor, of course,
and you will have to take a ferry boat to get there, but it is in the
restaurant dodge new, and serving excellent meals in a delight! ul
atmosphere of rose brick walls, polished brass lamps, and light
wood floors and furniture. Right in town is the Kestikartano, done
up in rustic white pine style rather like the houses of Karelia, an
eastern province now partly Russian.
Thanks to the Olympics, Finland has two first-rate hotels. The
Vaakuna near the railroad station is a modem structure originally
built for the 1940 Olympics, which never took place because of
last-minute commitments on the Russian border. When the 1952
Olympics were awarded to Helsinki the town built the Palace,
which occupies a few floors of a modem glass extravaganza right
on the edge of the harbor. The rooms, the dining rooms, and, aE
right, the sauna are the quintessence of new design, and the fresh
approach that meets your eye gives you, or me, a feeling of con-
tinual buoyance. The tariff in Finland for keeping body and soul
together is perhaps a narrow cut higher than the rest of Scandi-
navia, and it will be necessary to pick one's way through a menu
86 * EUROPE
to keep from running up a national debt. Odd items such as canned
fruit salads and coffee are strangely out of proportion. If money
matters, then stay on the table d'hote.
While on the subject of hotels, I had better tell you that Aulanko,
the resort a few hours outside Helsinki which was Finland's pride
before the war, has become something of a war casualty. The golf
course was plowed for crops and never restored, and the food, the
furnishings, and the service will prove a rather acute disappoint-
ment, especially since there are none of the usual resort divertisse-
ments to take your mind off the tarnish.
However, there is plenty that is wonderful in Helsinki, and for
me one of the most exciting sights is the morning market by the
harbor with the potato boats all lined up each day on their own
quay, the hundreds of ladies with their heads wrapped in kerchiefs
and shawls. Neither do I forget the marketeer who is so effusive
with his English that you must buy a box of his currants, nor the
little man in the fedora displaced from Karelia by the Russian
incursion who sells rinkila, which are oversized pretzels famous
in Viipuri, where he once lived.
If the produce market is primitive, some of Finland's other
wares are among the most sophisticated in Europe. Easily the
most startling work is the ceramics, almost all of it done in a giant
plant on the fringe of town called Arabia for no other reason
than that the one-time peddler who started it had once lived there.
Arabia makes a milky-white china after the ancient Chinese grain-
of-rice technique, and I can report to you that we have bought
half a dozen demitasse cups and saucers at three dollars and fifty
cents each set which sell for ten dollars and fifty cents each cup
and saucer in New York. This, as anyone who can work an abacus
can see, is a tremendous bargain, but the trouble is that I shall
probably be much too nervous to use them. Arabia also under-
writes the land's best ceramicists, whose work it sells, and they
have produced some of the most fantasy-filled pieces of clay you
ever saw while awake. You can find it at Arabia's retail shop or
at Stockmann's, both in Helsinki, and let's not talk about the price.
Finland's aptitude for design is also expressed architecturally.
The railroad station here is the largest in Europe and is especially
interesting since it is the work of the Finnish designer Eliel
FIHLAND " 87
Saarinen, who also put ding chairs in every garret in Greenwich
Village. It is immense, it is interesting, and it is bare of porters.
Helsinki's newest sight is its spare, modem Olympic tower,
which is appended to the beautiful stadium built by the Finns for
the 1940 Olympics. The view from the top is probabfy the best
in town and is not at all hampered by the cap of steel net that had
to be installed after the war when the suicide rate soared alarm-
ingly. Only three officials knew of the arrangements in 1952 when
the final bearer carrying the Olympic torch which had been
brought in relays all the way from Greece burst into the stadium.
The bearer turned out to be Paavo Nurmi, The roar from the
crowd was spontaneous and tremendous, and business in Nunni's
haberdashery shop in town has been good ever since.
One of Finland's popular sports is pesapollo, an interpfetaticHi
at our own baseball. Long skinny bats and Eghtly padded gloves,
known as webs, are displayed in all the department stores here,
but I have been unable to scare up a game since people dent
become pesaptUo-hstppy until the fall. However, I do have in
hand a copy of the rules, and you ought to know that first base is
somewhere to the left of where the pitcher's box ought to be,
second base is where you might expect first base, and third base
is pretty much in place. The missile is a hard tennis ball, and
pitchers rack up strikes by tossing it in the air so that it will land
on the plate. The pitcher and catcher are the same fdlow, the
umpire runs the game by using wooden signs, or by blowing a
whistle. A long and three shorts, for example, means a change of
innings. Runners may be either wounded or kilted, and the rule
book specifically says "uncalled-for use of the voice during the
game is forbidden."
The summertime passion in Finland, aside from taking running
jumps in lakes following saunas, is the demolition of the crayfish.
A crayfish is a lobster who never grew up, and there is a forty-day
season during which they may be eaten. Stores display skyrockets,
paper lanterns, and special tablecloths embossed with red cray-
fish all of which are standard and necessary equipment for a
crayfish party. When the season sets in so does ecstasy. People
throw crayfish parties, the rockets are exploded, and the crayfish
are eaten. Since twelve is par for the course and since one is more
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or less obliged to dispatch an aquavit with each crayfish, these
parties have all the decorum of a riot at the circus. In case you
should arrive in Helsinki during the riot season, maybe you had
better know that Finnish for skal is kippis. There is also another
form of skal which is hei, but that one also stands for good-by,
hello, a cheer, surprise, or offense, and if someone takes it the
wrong way don't come around me looking for any sympathy.
Despite the fun Finns seem to get out of life, the Russian cloud
hangs always in the sky here. Since the Russians have been making
war on the Finns on the average of once every fifty years, repara-
tions have become as inevitable as taxes, the presence of Russians
as inevitable as death and just as popular. The new five-hundred-
mark and one-thousand-mark notes depict a symbolic procession
of Finns marching, unclothed, toward a bright new tomorrow. This
is popularly said to be the Finnish nation after paying the last
Soviet war bill. The Russians have also exacted a long-term, lease
on a tract on the southern coast which is being built up as a military
base sealing off the sea route to Leningrad. Now when the train
from Helsinki to Turku passes through the Russian base, screens
are placed over the windows. The Finns call this the longest tunnel
in Finland.
It is a curious sight at the airport here watching the big Scandi-
navian Airlines plane that will take you westward to Stockholm
and the other world, and seeing at the same time three planes with
Russian markings that could take you down to Leningrad in less
time. The Russian pilots by their own edict must talk to no one,
and they stand together on the runway huddling in their own com-
pany. It is doubtful that anyone would talk to them anyway since,
as I say, they are not very popular. What I would not like to be is
a tender-skinned Russian in a Finnish sauna with Leena handling
the birch branches.
AUSTBIA ' 89
AUSTRIA
Seme Schnitzels f rent Wien
VIENHA
THE FIRST MORNING HERE DAWNED GRAY AND COLD, AND WINTER
winds unimpeded by international restrictions blew down from
Czechoslovakia, biting thorough wool like a new spring moth. The
sheer discomfort of the season, however, proved no deterrent to
the Viennese, who wore bent on the observance of AUer Seeten
Tag, or AH SouFs Day, a day to be spent remembering the dead
and the past
Everywhere one could see the Viennese scurrying through sun-
less streets on their way to the cemeteries carrying wreaths, potted
plants, and cut flowers. The trolley tracks were bumper-to-bumper
with trams, and some cars were decorated with wreaths that htmg
on the outside because there was no room within. Policemen in
greatcoats and peaked hats, lively and authoritative, stood at every
cross-section, and I followed the trolleys, the cars, the bicyclists,
and the motorcyclists on the pilgrimage out to the graves.
Women in shawls and boots did a rushing business HI ever-
green wreaths and pots of flowers; candles were going weH, too.
The biggest crowds clustered, like those in football stadiums in
another world four thousand mites away, around the ^ands that
sold steaming wursts, one foot long. The Viennese bought them
and ate them, dipping them into smears of mustard held on paper,
and taking alternate bites of saltstkks.
Inside the gates candles in glass containers burned at every
grave, and I remembered the sight the night before when the
Swissair Convair bringing me from Switeriaed to the edge of
the Balkan worid had passed a giant field of fire. The steward had
wakened me, for we were cm the outskirts of Vienna and he wanted
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me to see the preparations for Alter Seelen Tag from fifteen hun-
dred feet up.
The crowd was the biggest around the grave of Karl Renner,
late President of Austria, who died on the last day of 1951. A
wreath of orchids gave a certain warmth to his cold stone and
there were bundles of yellow chrysanthemums and delicate birds
of paradise that grow in far-off Hawaii. No crowd stood for Johann
Strauss, the father, now more than a hundred years dead, but in
that charmed circle of the cemetery where the world's greatest
composers lie side by side there was a bustling traffic of Austrians,
many of them in their national dress, which is gray pants with a
green stripe up the side and gray jackets with green lapels.
Beethoven was aglow with candles, and people paused before
memorials to Mozart and Franz Schubert. Johann Strauss, 1825-99,
lay under a headstone dancing with lyres and cupids and covered
with a great wreath sent by the city of Vienna. Next to him, Brahms
was covered with small bouquets and single flowers. And, strangely,
there was honor, too, for Major Franz Novotny, an Austrian major
in the German Luftwaffe who was shot down by Americans and
placed among the Ehrengraber, the honored graves, when the Nazis
were still in control.
With the future a little uncertain it is perhaps somewhat com-
forting to live with one's feet tucked warmly in the past. If this city
is not as lighthearted as it was back in those days when travelers
were comparing it to Paris, it seems never doubtful of its supremacy
as world headquarters for waltzes and whipped cream. Russian
officers in their immense overcoats walk the streets, but even that
sobering unpleasantness hardly seems capable of dispelling the
Viennese notion that life was meant for the sampling of new wine,
listening to the operetta, and the demolishment of the Salzburger-
nockerl, which is a giant puff of egg and air sprinkled with sugar.
One Sunday morning, when in old shirt and old slacks, I might
have been otherwise occupied in keeping junior from throwing the
cat in the fireplace, I stopped by the Cafe Carlton with a Viennese
friend and found myself on premises that were no less solidly male
than the steam room of the New York Athletic Club. Gentlemen
sat at every table sipping hot drinks and puffing looped pipes and
cigarettes that burned with a foreign accent. On Sunday mornings
it is the custom for the head of the house to take his ease at the
AOSTHIA 91
coffee house while the lady is cooking the Sabbath roast, a bit erf
intelligence I circulate here for whatever propaganda value it may
have in my own homestead back in America.
When the tailcoated waiter appeared I ordered a cafe complet, a
simple breakfast, which in most places on the Continent is an
unpretentious affair that includes coffee, roll, butter, and jam.
"How many minutes for the egg?" the waiter asked. "No egg, thank
you," I answered, for after some weeks in Europe I had fallen
into the local habit. "No egg?" the waiter said, rearing back fa
astonishment, "but it's included." "No egg," I insisted. "Very
well," he answered, "then I will bring extra butter." He also
brought a tremendous tray of Danish pastry ( which the Danes
call Vienna bread) . My companion, who had already eaten bleak-
fast, ordered an einspanner, coffee in a gjass with a clod of whipped
cream big as a baseball. Then we set off sigfat-seemg.
The great, ekpfaant-hued bulk of the Hofburg, formerly the
palace of the Hapsburgs, still stands, and the new palace that
rises behind the statue of Prince Eugene of Savoy is now Russian
headquarters. Some effort has been made to improve its appear-
ance by the addition of a red star superimposed with the f aces of
Lenin and Stalin, which can be illuminated at night. Despite this
evidence of the new order, the center portal of the west gate, tra-
ditionally only opened for an Austrian emperor, remains closed as
it has been since 1918. Across the famous Ringstrasse is that
personification of the Austrian heyday, Maria Theresa, surrounded
by her ministers and marshals.
The Ringstrasse runs through Vienna like a big loop, starting
at the banks of the Danube aod returning to it at another point
farther along the shore. As we followed the curve we caine to the
Schwarzenbergplatz and gazed upon Prince Carl of Schwarzen-
berg, Marshal of Austria in the year 1813. Behind him now stands
a new monument to the Red Army, and the Russians wore all for
renaming the place for Stalin in place of Schwarzenberg. A com-
promise was ultimately effected and, in return for permitting the
real estate around the Russian pife to be named Stalinplatz, Prince
Carl's pedestal rests on Schwarzenbergplatz as before.
Nearby is the Imperial Hotel, which was Hitter's choice when
he arrived after the Anschluss in 1938. Across the street is the
famous Grand Hotel, which, like the Imperial, has been occupied
92 EtJHOPE
by Russians since they arrived with the spring in 1945. Of the
remaining good hotels in Vienna, the Bristol is open to Americans,
tourists included, and the renowned old Sacher is open to all
travelers except Russians, who are specifically restricted from
entering any public hotel, restaurant, or coffeehouse. Both the
Bristol .and the Sacher are shiny and substantial despite the travail,
and the Sacher still dispenses Sachertort, a chocolate jelly cake,
from a special store on the ground floor.
In addition to Sachertort, Vienna is also back producing petit-
point needlework, and should there still be ladies who appreciate
the art, the windows are filled with handbags designed of miniature
tapestries that depict quaint eighteenth-century scenes. The other
city specialty is white blouses, topped like everything else with
whipped-cream frills. They cost about eight dollars.
Viennese, visitors, and soldiers from the Volga stroll together
in the Stadtpark, and the statue of Johann Strauss with the blue
Danube flowing around him in a swirl of marble stops them all.
In spring and summer the band plays under a vine-covered shell,
and the Viennese dance in the open. They go as well to the Prater
to ride the giant Ferris wheel and to step when hungry into a
gulaschhutte for a Bohemian snack. After aU, goulash headquarters
lie on the yonder side of the east border. Then they ride down
the fabulous avenue known as the Prater, which is three miles
long and covered with a canopy of chestnut trees all the way.
Wine drinking is done in earnest in the quarter called the Grin-
zing, especially in the gardens during the good weather. One of the
best addresses is Pfarrplatz #2 because it is a charming locale
and also because it is one of the homes of Beethoven. The composer
also lived in fifty-nine other places while in Vienna, proving that
musicians were temperamental and landlords irascible at least as
far back as the eighteenth century. At any rate, within the shadow
of Beethoven's abode, or one of them, you can listen to a pair of
musicians named Rudolph and Louis play the old Vienna tunes.
A bottle of Nussberger Schwarze Katz Rhein-Riesling, which is
to say Nut Mountain Black Cat Rhine-Riesling wine, costs less
than a dollar the bottle, and is, I can attest, unfailingly delicate
and smoky. Up at the Kahlenberg, on the edge of the Vienna woods,
you can drink the wine of the grapes that grow up the hillside and
* 93
on a clear day see across the border into Czechoslovakia. In
downtown Vienna the Lindenkeller, which has been fetching up
schnitzels since 1453, serves such variations as the lindenschtutte,
which is a sliver of veal camouflaged in fluffy e^ batter.
Appearing at any of these places with Viennese, you will find
that they live on the border between the world of wine and the
realm of beer, and so usually take both with their meals. I should
report that the combination may prove somewhat dizzying to
auslanders, but it does put one in tie proper mood to enjoy the
local operettas which Vienna is never without. Taking one of those
immense black patent-leather-looking taxis that were assembled
shortly after the reign of Maria Theresa, I rode over to a theater
the other night to watch a production of Der Beitelstudent, by
Millocker. The thing has been running more or less steadily for
seventy years and the only updating that was noticeable to me were
some hat boxes that appeared at the opening of the second act
marked "Dior." The proceedings, which are probably as well
known to all Viennese as Blossom Time is to the Shuberts, were
thoroughly relished by the audience, which included President
Theodore Komer, a man with a magnificent bald head and great
white beard. As for what was happening on stage, I must confess
it was hopeless confusion to me, accompanied by fine voices and
waltzy music. During the intermission an American army captain
who was sitting behind me was good enough to fet me look at an
English language synopsis of the story which left me, in the
welter of plots and subplots, only slightly more entangled tbaa I
was before. I am convinced, however, that after several hours of
revolutions and mistaken identities the right boy got the right girt,
for the audience came out smiling and humming, and hope flour-
ished for a time again along the Danube.
94 EUBOPE
in the Glcamin*
ROME
COMING IN FROM THE AIRPORT AN OLD ROMAN HAND WAS GOOD
enough to divert me from the customary billboard trail of the
airline busses and we rode down the old Appian Way, taking the
back route to antiquity. There wasn't a car in sight, and here and
there the broad flat cobbles, as big around as a German teller mine,
protruded through the tar and jarred our tires as they had doubt-
less done to chariots a thousand years back. Chunks of marble
ruins found on the spot have been imbedded in brick walls, pieces
of columns that once supported temples lie on the soft green shoul-
ders of the road, and the broken wall of an aqueduct that functions
now as a hazard for the golf course of the Rome Country Club
rises on the horizon. It was Sunday and Roman couples out from
the city sat on the green under the umbrella pines that rise out of
the ground and explode into a canopy of green, higher than trees
should, as if they had been set on a delayed fuse.
We came into the city past the Colosseum. It was four in the
afternoon, the sun struck red against the bricks, and the arches
cast long shadows in toward the arena. "Don't you like to know
the secret passages?" asked a guide. "Nice cameo?" offered a street
hawker, "only three dollars." You shudder. "Speak how much,"
he implores. Two Italian sailors stroll by, and so do German eccle-
siastical students in their scarlet frocks, and the lady who has her
nose in the guidebook and sips a Coke.
We walked the triumphal route down the Via dei Fori Imperial!,
and as the sun fell behind the ruins, a cool damp smell welled up
out of the forums below the level of the street. Zinnias bloomed
down there, among the bits of broken marble, and up above on
ITALY * 95
the sidewalk a lady walked a black poodle. Two soldiers saun-
tered past wearing that outlandish hat of the Italian mountaineers
with a great plume of feathers growing out of the brim and one
side pulled down over the ear. Across the street stood Nerva under
the umbrella pines, baton in hand, with the legend beneath his
figure that reads: "SPQR, IMP. Caesari, Nervae Aug." Crossing
the street to read the inscription, I was very nearly knocked down
by a truck driver who was concentrating Ms baritone on a difficult
passage from Puccini.
Rome's glory shines at night when the pale floodlights make the
Colosseum a gray apparition at the end of the avenue and other
lights play on the immense monstrosity that is the Victor Emanuel
Monument facing the square where Mussolini once declaimed from
a balcony. But the most thrilling sight is the Trevi fountain after
dark, with the lights on the water, and the water rumtfcg 0fer
the figures and overwhelming the square. And it doesat matter
that the legend says if you throw a coin you will return and titet
you know at 4 A.M. the waders will be combing the fountain floor
for evidences of your sentiment.
Aside from the outdoor spectacles, Rome also glows indoors.
There is, for instance, the Biblioteca, which means library, except-
ing that where the books should be there are bottles lining the
walls, ceiling to floor. A trio of musicians stroll the tables white
you eat, and when the urge gets too great, the head waiter drops
everything and joins in the singing. At Ernesto's, which is oa the
Piazza Santi Apostoli, you can order cinghMe, which is roast boar*
fletto di toro, which is filet of bull, or capeUe di peniciiUna twrosto,
which is to say broiled mushroom caps, penicillin coming from
mushrooms and the house having a sense of humor. The menu is
written in Roman dialect, somewhat ribald, and it is funnier if you
bring an interpreter. Romolo's at the Porta Settimiana in Trasle-
vere is a tiny place in the old quarter where a guitar and a tenor
fill the air through the dinner hour and beyond. And if you go
down to Trastevere by day you can sit in the square even now and
have lunch at Galeassi's while the sun streams down and the
vespas thunder over the cobblestones like racing outboard motor-
boats.
The plushest of places is the Hostaria delTOrso, or simply The
Bear, as it is known among doormen and cab drivers, which is
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Continental and candlelit. There is a bar on the main floor that
is all blue and gold and full of piano music, a night club on top,
and in the middle the restaurant, which has a terrace giving out
on the Tiber. At the Piccolo Budapest the violin player will saw
the throbbing strings at the edge of your lady's ear lobe, and at
the Boite Pigalle you will find a guitarist and, almost any night,
one-time King Farouk, obese and gross in a woolly blue turtleneck
sweater.
There is an enclave of 1920 Americana over on the Via Bissolati
where Bricktop, who was a filly of the Fitzgerald era, still sings
those mossy Cole Porter things with great eclat. Standing there in
the dim haze, with her feet apart, belting out the sophisticated
sweetness of Porter's "Get Out of Town" or "You Better Go
Now," from "New Faces of 1936," the piano trickling along
behind her, Bricky has a way of covering the place with great
misty clouds of Scott-and-Zelda nostalgia.
For another voice from home Americans will find a new corner
called the California, also on the Via Bissolati, which dispenses
such un-Roman fare as waffles, hot dogs, and hamburgers. While
the food is not famous, there is a great attraction in hearing the
waiters shout back an order saying, "Datemi una h'appla pie."
Roman food being as good as it is, there is actually no reason
for staying close to make-believe American fare except for quick
snacks. One can, for example, make a meal of the minestrone
served in the Hotel Mediterraneo. The Mediterraneo and the
Hotel Massimo d'Azeglio across the street are known among
local gourmets to have two of the best dining rooms in town. Both
places are a walk from Rome's magnificent new railroad station.
Daring types who want to plunge into the local curiosities may
dabble in fried turkey or canelloni, which is a roll of dough filled
with meat. And fearless pioneers can order mozzarella in carrozza,
a rectangle of stringy cheese that has been fried. If you fail to eat
it before it hardens it can be rather like a wad of Wrigley's done
in hot butter.
If you stay at the perennial Excelsior or at the newly redone
Flora, which has a fine location at the edge of the Borghese park,
or at the Ambasciatori, you take your sun at the open cafes that
string out along the Via Veneto. Doney's gets the tourists and the
ITALY 97
stars, Rosati's across the street is for artists and writers, but to
my mind it is worth going next door to Carpauo's just to sit at the
Roman opulence of its fantastic marble counter in the shade of
its potted palms.
Here you can sip an Americano and observe the Reman ladies
parading the new Roman look. An Americano hasn't much to do
with Americans, being a mixture of Campari bitters and soda,
and while reminiscent of cough syrup and seltzer it has the advan-
tage erf being one fifth the price of whisky. As f or the ladies, this
year's watchword is severity, and also suffering and sadness.
Everyone has to look like Anna Magnani or at feast as if they
had just gotten over the bubonic plague. The ladies are wearing
high-necked sweaters with a modest pin at the throat, a suit, a kmg
and skinny umbrella, and gloves. At night the only jeweby may
be a long rope of pearls. The new hair-comb is supposed to look
as if the lady had recently gotten involved with an electric fan.
Or as if her hair had been set with an egg-beater. She wears a gray
or mauve shade of powder and no lipstick.
I am not here to deny that this costume makes for a kind of
mood, and Rome is nothing if it is not a mood. Wandering dowp
the Via Sistina the other afternoon and browsing in its fine shops,
I got to the Piazza Trinita dei Monti, on the heights of the town,
at that moment of the late day when the sky is scarfet along the
rim of the horizon. The red fades into white and the wMte into
blue that gets darker the higher you look. The dome of St. Peter's
was silhouetted against this drop and two otter cupolas rose like
yeasted muffins alongside. A lone high palm soared out of the
city, too, and stood against the sky, and so did a lamppost which
was somewhat lopsided on top. An organ grinder was there on
the terrace, and from his repertoire he had chosen the compelling
sadness of the music from Limelight. And when the soag was done
and he had moved down the street and the sua was gone and tlie
domes and the palms no longer stood against the sky, you stoed
and moved and started down the long flight of the Spanish Staks.
Down at the bottom, by the fountain they call the Barcaccia be-
cause it looks like a barge, would be the lower sellers, and yew
knew you would buy a flower and hold it in your hand as you
bumped against the crowds oe the narrow sidewalk that runs along
the Via Condotti.
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In Spain They Say*
"Thee* Thee**
MADRID
THE YEAR HAS BROUGHT ME TO MANY COUNTRIES, BUT HERE IN
Spain I have finally become a gentleman. Some airplane tickets
arrived for me from TWA addressed to Senor Don Horacio
Sutton, pronounced Ho-RAH-thee-o soo-TUN.
Everybody lisps all over the place here in Spain. It is a mark
of the true Castilian Spanish, and not to be found in Mexico, Puerto
Rico, or La Habana, the capital of Cuba. When the letter "c"
shows up in advance of an "i" or an "e," you have to say "thee."
This makes the Spanish town come out Va-LEN-thia, but that is
not half bad. The Latin poet Cicero emerges Thee-the-ron. I don't
know what the "n" is for, but the Spanish add it for good measure.
After my first lesson in elocution I have been singing that old hit,
"In Spain They Say, 'Thee, Thee!' "
Also I have gone very local in the matter of answering the
phone. I say "Digame," which literally means, "Tell me," although
it is the expression that passes for the opening hello. Some Ameri-
cans cannot refrain from picking up the receiver and saying, "Do
you digameT' This throws the caller into some confusion, but he
usually responds with the normal "Oiga," or caller's hello, which
literally means, "Listen, here!" This may not sound very polite,
but actually Spain is the soul of politeness.
For instance, when anybody sneezes you are supposed to say
"Jesus!" That's instead of "God bless you." However, all "j's" are
pronounced like "h's," and what people say is Hay-SUS! I was
taken to lunch at a very elegant restaurant called the Jockey Club.
The Spaniards call it the Hock-ee Club and I think I understand
SPAIK 99
why, as lunch for three came to a nifty seventeen dollars. These
were no prices on the menu. In other words, if you have to wony
about the bill don't come. However, the Hock-ee Club is the most
expensive place South erf Paris, and is in no way representative of
the price of things in Spain.
Even the Castellana Hilton is rather moderate iai its way. It has
two doormen, four pages to open the double glass doors, is com-
pletely ak-conditk>oed, and can even offer such American touches
as Arroz Inflado, which is to say, Puffed Rke. Its bar has achieved
an immediate ambiance, and it seems destined to become as
popular a piece of American territory as the Ritz Bar in Para. The
Hilton's table dttdte meals run about two dollars and twenty-five
cents and at that are considered quite expensive by Spaniards.
Indeed, the fifteen per cent tip, fifteen per cent tax, and a bottk of
mineral water will hike the bill over three dollars a fair price for
dinner but downright expensive for lunch. Single rooms are as tow
as five dollars and you can have a sultan's suite for ten dollars.
Room service in a de luxe hotel carries a thirty per cent gOTem-
ment tax, which to my mind is an outrageous levy.
The Castellana Hilton, like 'the new Fenix, is up in the resi-
dential section, and not really handy to anything except the
American Embassy, the route to the airport, and the Serrano, a
boulevard where the elegant Madrilenos parade on Sunday mom-
ings. But they say it is the coming section of town, and I win not
quibble.
The Ritz, which is the grande dame among Madrid hotels, and
the Palace, an immense, white, bustling, efficient place, are m
sight of each other across the Plaza de Neptano. Hard by is
Madrid's magnificent Prado Museum, which some consider better
than the Louvre. The shops, the travel agencies, and the greenery
of the Parque del Retiro are all a walk away. On warm days tables
are scattered around the shallow pool of the Ritz, and at night
the water is drained and dancers glide under the shelter of pines
and palms and a purple Love of Jove tree. What* s more, it is
handy to the Stock Exchange.
In a Madrid era of rising skyscrapers, a new hotel has opened
in a massive twenty-ei^bt-story building known as the Plaza, which
also contains a swimming pool, a theater, and residential apart-
ments. Its tremendous, high-ceiling dining room looks like a wing
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of the Queen Mary, but the prices seem destined to make the new
hotel one of the most popular in Southern Europe. Handsome
single rooms with bath are scaled as low as one dollar and seventy-
five cents, and for an extra quarter you can have one with a ter-
race giving out on an entrancing vista of town.
Hotels like the new Plaza are going to do much to maintain
Spain's reputation for low prices, but it is certainly possible to
run up a hefty tab and not only in the Hock-ee Club. Dinner for
two at Henry's near the jai alai y or fronton, courts costs about
seven dollars. Henry specializes in American foods served at
American hours, since Henry himself once operated a restaurant
called the Alhambra near Wall Street. He also specializes in Wall
Street prices. Jai alai, or fronton, or pelote, is the Basque game
vaguely resembling handball wherein the players throw a hard
ball against a concrete wall using a basket affixed to the arm. A
side-show is the betting, the bookies trafficking with the customers
by throwing the betting slips up to the grandstand stuffed inside a
rubber ball.
While you will have to deposit three dollars and fifty cents for
a simple meal in the best places in Spain, you can eat well for one
third that price in some wonderful restaurants. The most memo-
rable meal I had in Spain was in an old-quarter establishment which
calls itself the Antigua Casa Candido Remis Sobrino de Botin. I
went there not knowing that Hemingway had given it his personal
testimonial in The Sun Also Rises, in 1928, and Hemingway can
do more for a place than Duncan Hines. Three of us had whole
roast suckling pig served sizzling and bubbling in a black skillet
and covered with skin toasted to peanut brittle. With wine, dessert,
and tip the cost for each was three dollars and ten cents. Fame
had done little to spoil the food or inflate the price.
Another dusty corner nearby is the Cuevas de Luis Candelas, a
cave where a Spanish Robin Hood named Luis Candelas held
out against somebody or other. The doorman masquerades in a
sinister cape and gun which, I take it, was the costume of bandits
in Luis' day. The place is a whitewashed catacombs inside, and
packed to the arched ceilings with tourists, Spaniards, and in-
SPAIH 101
credible noise. Directly up a flight of stone step that lead to the
Plaza Mayor is a tiny restaurant of large reputation known as
El Pulpito.
I started sight-seeing the other morning aided by a young guide
and a new Ford sedan from Atesa, the Spanish car-hire agency.
The driver spoke pretty good English. He said his name was Mike.
He handed me his card. The guide handed me his card, too. It
read, "Alfonso Illescas Gomez-Pineda." From this I was in-
structed to deduct Pineda, which was the maiden name of his
mother. It was proper to call him Mr. Gomez or since he had a
college degree and therefore was a gentleman Seior Don Alfonso
Illescas Gomez-Pineda, pronounced Gometh. His card was bor-
dered with a quarter-inch band of black. I offered my condolences,
He said, "It is for my grandfather who died kst year,"
Senor Don Alfonso and I visited the Royal Palace, wfaone Franco
receives foreign ambassadors and occasionally addresses people
from the balcony. Across Oriente Square Franco cotrid view the
hedges that looked like gpeen sand pies, and in the center the
statue of Philip IV on a bronze charger engineered by Galileo from
a drawing by Velasquez. What Franco has told the people in the
past fifteen years has been enough to keep many tourists away,
this cme included. Although at one time I did not choose to help
the cause of tourism in Spain, I now feel that it is the primary
force that will bring a better balance of ideas to the country.
Americans, in the easy way they carry themselves, in what they
say, in their relations with those who work for them, are pcwfflg
to be walking examples of a free world.
Dem Alfonso and I stopped for a drink of Aorc/ia&i and we didn't
talk politics. We talked about horchata, which is a milk drink
made from chufa almonds. One of the best stansds for horchata
is in the Plaza Mayor, which is built like an immense theater with
arcades over the street and ape, balconies above. Sometimes the
show was the Inquisition, which had its biggest day oe JTOC 30,
1680, when twenty-one heretics were burned aMve before King
Charles II; he was said to have enjoyed it because he was feebte-
minded. On other days there were bullfights in the square; and
Don Alfonso, who is something erf a scholar, told me that he
accepted the notion that bullfighting was inherited from the Arabs,
who used to fight the bulls OB horseback. One day the horse of a
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knight was killed by a bull and the knight was required to defend
himself with cape and sword.
Now bullfighting is reserved for the Plaza de Toros, an excel-
lent ring, and the only cries heard in the Plaza Mayor are the
drivers of busses bound for the suburbs shouting, "Carabanchel!
Carabanchel!" and other destinations. There is a stamp market in
the open every day from ten to two, such being the stability of
Madrid's weather, and on Sundays the soldiers come down to
mingle with the maids under the arcades from four until half-
past nine.
We saw the donkey carts of the knife-sharpeners and melons
piled on the street corners like cannon balls and a wagon adver-
tising Exquisitos Helados, or exquisite ice cream. We rolled through
the flea market, where they sell old boilers, old bidets, old iron
gates, and secondhand tombs removed from the graves of de-
ceased persons who have bad credit. We saw blue tram cars with
the sign "Chlorodont La Gran Crema Dental," and passed the
street lined with hotels that rent rooms by the hour and noted
that it is called the Calle Libertad. We stopped in Comar's, where
a pair of Hungarians who arrived less than two years ago make
chic Spanish fashions and hire seventy-seven girls who sing fla-
menco songs as they work the looms. We burst onto the square
called the Puerta del Sol, the doorway of the sun, and indeed the
sun shown on the gardens, on the fountains, and on the white
helmets of the police.
We strolled through the weather-beaten secondhand bookstalls
of the Cuesta de Claudio Moyano, not far from the white bulwark
of the Palace Hotel, and Mike drove the Atesa Ford through the
beautiful Retiro Park. And after all that we fell finally into the
California, a short-order place on the Gran Via that does things
in American style. You can get a hamburguesa or even a perro
caliente, which is a dog that is hot. Also, they serve flapjacks, a
very Yankee dish, excepting that they serve them with whipped
cream and chocolate sauce. Don Alfonso watched a stack go by,
crowned with the cream and drowned in goo. "Very American
place," he said. "Very American," I agreed, "do you digameT
SPAIN ' 103
In Several Little Spanish Towns
GRANADA
THE SOUTHERN STRIP OF SPAIN, INCLUDING THE PART THAT
reaches down as if to meet the outstretched point erf North Africa,
is called Andalusia, a region that is a repository of gentlemen
who wear low, broad hats, ladies who wear high combs, ami grilled
windows through which both parties can look each other over.
Andalusia's cities are among the best known of Spain's names.
There is Cadiz (Columbus' port), Malaga (sweet wine), Cofdofea
(cordovan leather), Jerez (sherry), Granada (Alhambra), and
Seville (barber of). While not having time to get to afl these foun-
tains of wine and culture, I have been waltzing around Granada mid
Seville whither I flew aboard an airplane of Iberia Airlines, Iberia
is the national airline of Spain, and in flying, as in life, the Span-
iards believe in taking things easy. The three times I few with
Iberia, the planes were DC-3's equipped with rigid seats and un-
equipped with a hostess. Of the three flights one carried a container
of water in the cabin and the other two just had cups. If this infor-
mality doesn't distress you, Iberia is a fast means of getting around,
and I am told their safety recofd is rather better than some lines
more formal and famous. At any rate, I am here unscathed, if not
unchastened.
Seville's fame does not, to be sure, rest entirety upon The Barber
of Seville. For orie thing, the barber has had to share operatic fame
with Carmen herself, who worked in a tobacco factory not the
toss of a rose from the front door of the Hotel Alfonso XIII. What
one really begins to feel in Seville is the impression of the Moors,
Alongside the giant cathedral, second in size only to St Peter's, is
the eleventh-century Giralda Tower, where the Moslems called
the faithful to prayer. It has been topped with a belfry finished in
Christian Renaissance which looks down on the Court of Oranges,
an Arab patio lined with orange trees and troughs that carry run-
ning water.
The cathedral itself was built in the fifteenth century on a
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location where the Visigoths, and later the Moors, had erected
houses of worship. It is also to the best of my recollection one
of the three places where Columbus is buried. I recall a guide
taking my money for showing me Columbus* guaranteed tomb
in the Dominican Republic, and I was relieved of a number of
pesos for getting the same news in Havana.
The Seville camp admits that Columbus asked to be buried in
Santo Domingo, and its adherents say that the remains were trans-
ferred to Havana in 1796. In 1891, however, they claim that a
royal decree was handed down ordering Columbus' corpse returned
to Spain, and this was carried out in 1898 shortly before the out-
break of the Spanish-American War. At any rate, Columbus or
somebody reposes in a magnificent tomb in Seville. It is an ex-
travagant affair depicting the four kings of Spain representing
Castille, Leon, Navarre, and Aragon as pallbearers. Columbus
did hear his last mass in this cathedral, and there seems to be no
dispute about that.
Across from the cathedral you get a glimpse of old Spain in
the Santa Marta square, where jasmine spills out of the grilled
windows, six orange trees with white trunks form a canopy of deep
green leaves, old lanterns hang from the walls, and the bells clank
out the flat call of the hours from the Moorish tower a block
away.
Santa Cruz, the old Jewish quarter of the fourteenth and fif-
teenth centuries, is a cluster of squares and charming alleys, espe-
cially the Plaza Dona Elvira, which was named after the first girl
to deceive the arch-Romeo Don Juan, and is shaded with orange
trees and furnished with tiled benches. Pink geranios nod from
flower beds that are tiled in blue and green, a fountain sprays in
the center, straw mats keep the sun from the windows, but the
light beats madly off the whitewashed walls. On the street corner
a lady is making a shawl decorated with birds and flowers in
violent colors, although a policeman is around every few minutes
to tell her that kind of thing is not permitted in the street. On
the bench the park guard is an island of apathy under the broad
canopy of his Andalusian hat,
The clatter is concentrated in the heart of the town, where
trolleys skitter through the narrow streets pulling a flimsy rolling
SPAIN * 105
annex that is hardly more than a framework of open benches on
four wheels. The Sierpes, or The Serpent, is closed to shopping so
people can shop easily and sit in the middle of the street hi front
of their clubs, sheltered from the sun by canvas squares stretched
across the streets from roof top to roof lop. You can buy fans
for fifty cents and fans for four hundred dollars, made of wood
or bone or ivory, decorated with bullfight scenes or Goyas, or
strung with exquisite lace. At the Santa Ana Fabriea de Ceramics
you can buy tiles that tell the story of Doe Quixote for ten pesetas
each, and curlicued iron frames to put them in.
If you like the mWtown life you stay at the Hotel Madrid, still
encased in walls that were erected in 1519, and once the palace of
the Duke of Medinaceli. A sixteenth-century fountain drips in
the patio, and you dine in the open under an orange awning, A
room in the Madrid, a first-class hotel, will cost you one dollar
and seventy-five cents, and luncheon or dinner runs the equivalent
of one dollar and twelve cents. For those who prefer a quieter
quarter and a formal tone, there is the Alfonso XIII, a hotel built
by the king for the Spanish- American Exposition of 1929, a
extravaganza that very nearly broke the Royal Hispank Treasury.
One of the sights of the town is the main pavilion, which still stands
surrounded by a moat. You can hire a boat and float under the
bridges decorated with priceless tilewock.
One night I took a 1925 Citroen taxi from the door of the
Alfonso XIII and drove out to El Guajiro, a night club set up in
a walled-m yard in the gypsy quarter. An Anglo-Spaniard sained
Juan Cortes Hatton, who runs the place, has skimiBed the best
talent from the gypsy caves and presents it in a cofitmiM>m sliow
nightly. He doesn't worry too much about not having a roof since
when I was there it hadn't rained for five months. The bar is
crowned with a stuffed bull's head, and is otherwise decorated
with a toreador's jacket and a ticket to the bulifigiht in Linares,
where Manolete was kiBed. Gypsy girls throw clusters of jasmine
blossoms to the customers, fierce flamenco heels stamp the boards,
and in one number, the Sevillanas Rocieras, an ambidextrous
musician plays a flute and a drum at the same time while a platoon
of dark-eyed gypsy men keep the beat by clapping.
Back in 1829 Washington Irving made the trip from Seville to
Granada ,by horseback, and the saeans of bridging the short gap
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of a few hundred kilometers has not improved very much since.
The regular tour by the busses of Atesa makes the roundabout
route by way of Jerez, Cadiz, and Malaga, or else by way of
Cordoba, a matter of one hundred and ninety miles. In one of
Atesa's new Ford sedans, however, with an English-speaking
driver, I cut straight across by way of Antequera, and it was a
wonderful ride. The olive trees begin almost immediately out of
Seville, and they seem to go on forever, dotting the bare brown
hills with patches of pastel green. The villages are blinding in their
whiteness and surprising in their cleanliness, and except for
being so clean are replicas of Arab villages across the straits,
Once we passed a stagecoach that makes a short run between two
towns; it was crammed with passengers and loaded with baggage
and looked as if it had just ridden out of another era. Coining, as
Irving did, by way of Antequera, I felt that many of the sights
that met my eyes were hardly different from those that met his
in 1829.
After four hours we were in Granada, and the car swung up
to the heights over the city where the Alhambra sits, magnificent
and secure, looking down on the plain. If you can manage to get
reservations, and you are not fussy about having a bath with your
room, there is a lovely little parador, a government-operated inn
up on the hill where the food is good and cheap and the atmos-
phere is quiet and Spanish. A few minutes away is the Alhambra
Palace, one of the most beautifully situated hotels in the world.
It was late afternoon when I checked in. Swinging open the doors
to the balcony, I saw the sun disappearing behind the twin humps
of a distant ridge at the end of the plain. Overhead a long swirl
of clouds split the sky like a fishbone. Night was already in the
eastern sky, turning it a deep blue, and the half moon that hung
in it was so white and silver it was almost green. Far down below,
the streets of Granada settled in a haze of red dust and the salmon-
tiled roofs gave no reflection. Then the sun fell, and its last fleeting
reflection lighted the white sides of the houses that grow up the
Sierra Nevada Mountains, under the moon, and it drew a pink
response from the slopes which in a few months would be covered
with snow. The fishbone flushed pink, dust rose on the plain, and
down below on the terrace the guests were having cocktails, but
SPJUII 107
they were hushed by the view and aH you amid bear was a clink
now and then.
The Alfaambra, which I saw next morning, was established on
this crest as the reigning Moorish palace. It survived until the
Moors were defeated by Their Catholic Majesties, King Ferdinand
and Isabella, on the second of January, 1492. Now every Janu-
ary 2, Granada's girls come up the hUl to ring the beOs in the
Torre de la Vela, a rite which improves their chances of marriage.
Although Charles V moved into the Alhambra in 1526 and
decided to enhance the Moorish magnificence with some Renais-
sance trimmings, not excluding oil paintings and fireplaces, there
is much evidence to show that the sultan was living quite comfort-
ably. For one thing, hot-water pipes ran under the floorboards,
providing a sort of radiant heating. The sultan's bath included a
resting room where bathers could remove their clothes and ndax
on great divans. Musicians, who were blinded so they cook! not
gaze upon the disrobed sultana, and eunuchs, who weren't rater-
ested anyway, played tunes cm a balcony above. The bathing
room still has two bathtubs and spouts for cold water, hot water,
and perfume.
The wonderful Court of the Lions, with the sun casting the
shadows of its one hundred and twenty-four columns and the stone
lions holding up the fountain in the center, is not at all altered
from the day of Irving, and probably is quite the same as k was in
its thirteenth-century heyday. Says Irving: "Through the ample
and fretted arch of the portal I behold the Court of Lions with
brilliant sunshine gleaming along its colonnades. . . ." Hie Court
of the Abencerrajes, which leads off the Court of the Lk>m, is
named for a noble family one of whose members was trifling with
the sultana. The sultan did not know which Abeucerrajes was the
romantic one so he invited them all to this court and chopped off
their heads.
The Court of Ambassadors is equally famous, if less bloody, for
here early in 1492, the Alhanibra having just been won, Queen
Isabella gave Columbus the money for the first transatlantic voyage.
The view from the court is striking. Irving talks erf using the place
as an observatory from which to view Andahisian life: "... as the
naturalist has his microscope to aid him in his investigations, so I
have a small pocket-telescope which brings the countenances of
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the motley groups so close as almost, at times, to make me think I
can divine their conversation by the play and expression of their
features."
In the frame of the Moorish windows is the Sacro Monte, a hill
covered with the whitewashed caves of gypsies. The route of the
gypsies lay from India to Egypt, and then across to Hungary,
where they became known as tsiganes. They were brought to Spain
as mercenaries to fight the Arabs, and after the war the Catholic
sovereigns invited them to stay and live on the Sacro Monte. The
gypsies on top of the hill make baskets, brass, and copperware,
those in the middle sell livestock, below are the dancers.
There are no falcons left in the Albaycin nowadays, unless you
count the cab drivers, who charge triple what the meter reads with-
out posting any warning, and the dancing gypsies. According to
state law, gypsies are not permitted to charge tourists more than
ten dollars and fifty cents for dancing before one to six persons;
and I saw a sign to that effect posted in the cave from which
Carmen Amaya danced all the way to Broadway. Despite the con-
trols, I have been warned that it is a sharp tourist sextet that gets
away for less than twenty-five dollars. The hofel prices, on the
other hand, are more than fair. For those who want to stay down-
town instead of on the hill, at the parador or the Palace, there is
the Victoria, which charges about one dollar and fifty cents for
a single room and bath and serves a lunch for one dollar and ten
cents. The San Francisco can offer a single room with bath and
three meals for three dollars and thirteen cents.
One hotel has shown its debt to Washington Irving by calling
itself after him, admittedly a daring name for a hotel in Spain. All
Granada owes its debt to Irving for that trip in 1829 which he
made, incidentally, with a Spanish bodyguard to keep off the
bandits and a Russian friend from the embassy. For if it hadn't
been for the Tales of the Alhambra, which was a world-wide suc-
cess when published in 1832, the Alhambra might still be smothered
in ruins and frosted with the Renaissance trappings of Charles V.
In view of his service I am prepared to forgive Mr. Irving the
indiscretion of consorting with Russians.
SPAIN 109
New Yerker in Majorca
PALMA
THE REASON SO MANY PEOPLE ARE COMING TO MAJORCA IS
because it is cheaper than staying at home. Smce price is (me of
the two main attractions here, the other beiag climate, I think we
had better get down to cases right off white there is still tioae to
stop the milk, cancel the newspapers, and set up housekeeping m
the Balearic Isles.
It is generally conceded that the two best hotels on the island
are the Maricel, just outside Palma, and the Fomentor, some forty-
five miles from where the ships and planes come in. A sight's
lodging in a cedar-paneled room of the Maricel, imder a floating
chandelier of Majorcan glass, and a full day's eating in the dining
room, with the doors swung open to the sea, has cost me one htai-
dred and eighty pesetas, or four dollars and fifty-two cents, pte
the usual fifteen per cent for service. The Tormentor's rates are
higher by a matter of one (foliar and twelve cents; but aside from
its lovely beach, it could hardly be better, even by a dollar twelve.
Full pension at the Maricel means hors d'oetivres, fish, meal, and
a fancy dessert, and although I am as good a tra^dheimaa as the
next I have been forced to skip courses at the risk of having to find
a new tailor.
White the Maricel is directly on the sea three mies from town,
and (me of those mammoth European halls calted the Meefitemaeo
Gran Hotel is cm the edge of Palma, hotels are spmgtag up aH over
the seaside fringe. One of the newest is the Bendimt, a delightful
little place five mites out of town, with space for fifty guests.
Spanish-owned and Danish-operated, it nestles in a pfae grove by
the sea. There wont be much reason to travel the five miles into
town anyway as long as there are the sun, the water, and the
seclusion, and as long as you have eEtaugh in the kick to part with
three dollars an,d seventy-six cents a day, which is the tariff, meals
included.
It is not actualty necessary to spend all that money if you don't
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mind life in a small pension. Majorca's best pensions charge one
dollar and fifty-one cents a day for room and meals, with the bath
down the hall. Second-class pensions are about forty cents less,
plus about fourteen cents a day for service.
You get to Majorca in about two and a half hours if you fly the
direct service from Madrid, and in less than an hour if you fly
from Barcelona. Air France now has service straight out of Paris
in something less than five hours and something more than forty
dollars. Ships will bring you to Palma in ten hours from Barcelona
and twelve hours from Valencia, which is to say overnight.
The island attracts a coating of lighthearted, colorful romantics
of the sort one associates with Capri, although here there are fewer
freaks and more of the handsome-chic-and-arty set. The air derives
perhaps from Frederic Chopin and George Sand who, although
they came here together one hundred and fifteen years ago, are
unqualifiedly the most famous visitors, licit or otherwise, to descend
on the island.
Aurore Dupin, the Baroness Dudevant, alias George Sand, with
her two children, Maurice and Solange, and her friend Chopin,
arrived in Majorca in the fall of 1838, Maurice was suffering from
rheumatism; Chopin was suffering from consumption, an unhappy
affair with Maria Wodzinska, and the pangs of a new enchantment
with George Sand.
The sojourn on the island which promised such warmth and
hope turned out to be a melancholy affair, recorded by Sand in
A Winter in Majorca. Three years before the strange menage from
Paris arrived in provincial Majorca, the Mallorquins had evicted
the chartreuse monks for taking care of too many tuberculars and
perhaps for producing too little chartreuse. Chopin's condition, and
Sand dressed up in men's clothes and wearing a man's name, didn't
make the party much more popular than the monks. It didn't help
when they moved from town and carried their informal relationship
to a suite of rooms in the vacated monastery of Cartuja.
The villagers turned downright hostile. Wrote Sand: "They
leagued themselves together so that none should sell us their fish,
their eggs, or vegetables save at outrageous prices. We were not
allowed to quote a tariff, or the current rate. The slightest observa-
tion drew a 'So your worship does not want it?' from the peasant,
giving himself the air of a Spanish grandee as he replaced his
SPJL1H 111
onions ... in his bag. . . . They made us fast, in penance for
having tried to bargain. And fast indeed we most; no vendor would
undercut another. The second to appear demanded double, and
the third three times, so that one was at their mercy and was forced
to live the life erf an anchorite at the cost of what would have kept
one in princely state in Paris,'*
Despite these inconveniences, and the rain which fell endlessly,
and the lack of teat in the monastery celk, Chopin turned out an
incredible amount of work, including two polonaises, a ballade, the
Scherzo in C Minor, and most of his preludes. He worked on an
ancient Majorcan piano. When he ordered a new piano seat down
from Paris it lay trapped in customs until three weeks befoine he
and Sand left. He sold it to one M. Canut, whose descendants now
own the monastery, and the piano currently reposes on a red-
carpeted dais. A rose is placed on the keyboard every day.
Most of the monastery is now a museum, and much of it has
been arranged according to sketches made by Maurice Sand. There
are (tolls bought by George Sand and returned to Majorca by
Maurice's daughter, Aurore Sand, along with the origbal manu-
script of A Winter in Majorca. Maurice, who was a pupil erf Dela-
croix, did a sketch of an orange grove, and a nostalgic inscription
notes that here Maurice and Solange ate oranges and got sick.
There were books, too, but people burned item so that Chopin's
infection would not be spread. Outside, the garden in which they
walked is crowded with giant dahlias, pumpkins, branches heavy
with peaches, with lemons and oranges, all replanted according to
Maurice's early sketches.
Merle Oberon, who was Hollywood's George Sand, came to
Spain for the opening of the Hiltoa hotel and dropped down to
Majorca for a look at the real location. She thought it outdid
Hollywood's set. Cornel Wilde, who was Chopin, has been to
Majorca, too, but he stayed on the sands of FonBentor, never visit-
ing his cinematic love nest.
For those who stay in the hotels along the seaside fringe, there
is a Toonerville trolley which has been running into Palma skice
shortly after the invention of the wheel. For a peseta or so (about
two and a half cents) you can ride down from the Maricel, a matter
of three miles, in a matter of an hour. Stops are made for passen-
gers, or to shoo goats off the track, or since it is a single-track
112 ETJHOPE
railway to wait at the by-pass for the trolley coming from the
opposite direction.
Palma is a frantic hubbub of a town, a dusty, crowded place
filled with the babel of a dozen tourist tongues and also Mallorquin,
which is a mixture of the more incomprehensible elements of
French, Spanish, and Italian. I wouldn't know why one should
want to be caught up in the constant mix of noise and traffic, but
there are hotels downtown such as the Alhambra, which charges
three dollars a day for a room and full pension, or two dollars and
fifty cents for half-pension, breakfast, and one meal.
Palma has beautiful and original things to buy which are a relief
from the fan-and-shawl business that fills the shops of Madrid and
Seville. For reasons that are unknown to me, Majorcan works are
simply not exported even as far as Madrid, and if you see some-
thing you like, take it with you. In the first place there is La Casa
de Hierro on the Calle del Conquistador, a shop devoted to iron-
work. It has imaginative bellringers, oil and vinegar sets, artistic
key racks, and some wall hangings in iron that are handsome and
different. Giordola, next door, is a master craftsman in Majorcan
glass, a famous product of the island's artisans. Hand-blown drink-
ing glasses, just imperfect enough to have great charm, sell for
about sixty-five cents apiece. Swizzle sticks topped with glass ani-
mals are a nickel each, but to my mind the best buy is the great
lop-sided vases in that cool Majorcan bottle-green that cost about a
dollar. As if I haven't got you carrying enough, it seems a Majorcan
practice never to leave the island without carrying along an out-
sized box containing an ensaimada, a round doughy cake filled
with a sweet paste. In smaller versions ensaimadas have a habit
of cropping up in the morning as Danish pastry, and I might add
staying with you for the rest of the day. Anyway, if you know
someone on the mainland who enjoys sugar-coated ballast, it is
just the thing, and the sheer immensity of the box is rather
overwhelming.
Once the night descends on Majorca there is little to do except
to repair to bed or to a unique establishment doing business under
the name of Jack el Negro. Jack's, or Hack's, as the Spaniards
prefer to call it, is a night club perched on the bluffs over the
harbor, and there is little more to the premises than a broad stone
POBT0GJLL - 113
terrace and massive stone windmill. The night I was there the
entertainment included a woman singer wearing a Who-me? ex-
pression and a dress with a slit up to here; but, savingly, a mag-
nificent troupe of Majorcan dancers filled the evening with a local
folkloric whirl that was not far from a highland fling. The music
came from a pair who played between them a fife, a drum, and the
bagpipes simultaneously. Relaxing CHI the terrace on a starry night,
hearing that strange wail of the pipes and the lute, watching the
happy Mallorquin dances, the ships in the harbor far below, and a
castle bathed in floodlights high on the heights aboe, it seemed
like a long way from New York.
PORTUGAL
Me the Sad Scntfs
LISBON
IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR SOME PLACE DIFFERENT, HERE EN
Portugal people go to the night spots to have a good cry. You will
have to admit, that is pretty different.
The great popular pastime, along with catching sardines and
swilling coffee, is a musical melancholia known as the fado. A jado
is a very sad song sung by a very sad lady who is accompanied CHI
the guitar by a melancholy tune. People stay up half the night
having the sobs, and I can't quite figure whether it is because they
want a good cry or whether they have spent the whole day drink-
ing coffee and aren't sleepy.
114 * EUROPE
You can walk through the streets of Lisbon at three in the
morning and see crowds of people hanging around in front of the
jado houses and also strolling the avenues. An itinerant foreigner
explained the crowds to me by saying that it simply wasn't their
turn to sleep yet, but this was undoubtedly the observation of a
cynic and not to be taken as a social explanation. Television hasn't
arrived in Portugal, and the movies are in English or Italian since
the cinema companies apparently don't find it profitable to dub the
mouthings of Martin and Lewis and other United States exports
into Portuguese.
That leaves the fado, which is in Portuguese. A fado singer must
have the voice of a lady who smokes four packs of cigarettes a day.
She must wear a black shawl while singing, and it is better if she
looks as if she had just gotten over pneumonia. When the lights are
dimmed the guitars start to play and the jadista sings of how things
are rather blue at her house since her son broke his leg stealing
third base and her husband has been dallying with a girl at the office.
I made the fado rounds the other night, and if there is one thing
I would rather hear no more about it is somebody's troubles. We
visited the Restaurante Festa Brava on the Pra$a de Alegria, which
is a place decorated with the heads of bulls and lighted by green
bulbs. A very sad lady named Marcia Condessa sang about a girl
named Severa who had a very tough time, and then another about
a Colette Encarnado, whicfi means red waistcoat. You would
be surprised the trouble a red vest can bring some people. Later
we went to Adega Machado, where the jadista sings "April in
Portugal," which was a jado song long before it arrived on the
American hit parade with lyrics in English and a happier aspect.
There are some purist /ado-philes who insist that Machado's has
grown fat and touristy, but I found none of that. The fan in the
ceiling spins slowly, the candles on the tables drip, the smoky voice
of the jadista rumbles through the wine-filled air, and the unrelent-
ing beat of the accompanist on the back of the guitar is enough to
boil the blood of a pernicious anemic.
Romance is really the only thing that should increase the blood
pressure in Portugal. If anyone feels the count mounting due to
other causes, he has merely to retire to the nearest coffee shop and
wait for the feeling to go away. Coffee houses are spaced like drug-
stores at home, but they are much more relaxing. You can write a
PORTUGAL - 115
book, do your homework, contemplate your destiny, or indulge in
almost any effortless indoor sport save flirting, since coffee houses
are seldom invaded by women.
If you axe a politician (progressive), you drink at the Brazileira
do Rocio. If you are a politician (conservative), youll be at home
at the Martinho. If you have a literary bent, try the Btaaileira do
CWado. If you like your coffee with milk, you order a garoto*
which is to say, a "young boy/' A carioca is coffee with hot water.
A blca is coffee in a cup, and just plain cafe means you will get it
in a glass. If you like a second cup, order a gcdao in the first place.
It means gallon, although what you will get will be a large glass of
coffee with milk added.
Coffee will be about four cents a cup except maybe at Lmo,
which is a coffee house that also features fado singing- AmaBa, tbe
prima fadlsta of Portugal, used to sing at Luso, but she was so good
they brought her to New York and installed her in a nigfat drf>
called La Vie en Rose. Coffee runs to more than four cents a cup
at La Vie en Rose too.
In Lisbon, where the cab meters drop at seven cents United
States, money is not exactly a primary concern. The local currency
is the escudo, a word you must pronounce as if you were trymg to
say "scooter" while swizded. It should come out "shkoota." Any-
way, an escudo is worth three-and-a-half cents American, and two
of them will, as I say, get you a short cab ride, and a dollar's worth
will be enough for a ratio: ample meal almost anywhere in Iowa.
I had better mention that the Portuguese are in the habit of using
the dollar sign to indicate the esctido, a habit which has bee
giving palpitations to Americans who take one hasty loci: at a check
and collapse on the floor. If the dollar sign follows the figure tbe
sum is escudos not dollars. Thus a hotel which advertises a room
for 60$ is charging $2.10 in U. S. currency.
We managed to toss a way a fast 100$ or so oo dinner for three
at a place called A Quinta, which means farm or estate. The form
was perched on the top erf a five-story tower built by M. Eiffel m
1902 as practice before undertaking the other job in Paris. Nearly
My years later one Fred Wuffi, once erf Moscow, decorated the
top of the tower with an excellent restaurant serving codfish S. la
Benedictine, sole farci, and steak and kidney pie, the kst in defer-
ence to the British track.
116 - EUHOPE
Anybody coming to Lisbon between spring and fall ought to
look in at the Feira Popular, which is supposed to be an amuse-
ment park but actually has more restaurants than amusements. It
may be that the proportion is perfectly valid in Portugal, where
eating is considered more fun than almost anything else. In between
the roller coaster that shoots through the water and the local version
of the tunnel of love, there are dozens of booth where chickens turn
slowly over glowing charcoal embers and others where giant
sardines are grilled to a pungent crisp. At a branch of the famous
steak house with the rather emphatic name of O Lacerdal I had
a steak dinner with French-fried potatoes for sixty cents, although
a bottle of water ran the price up another quarter. A large glass of
fruit juice made from pulverized grapes is a nickel and a whale-
sized sardine off the charcoal grill is exactly a cent and a half. For
dessert you may stop at a stand that sells farturas, a long rope of
dough which is coiled and dropped into deep fat, then sprinkled
with sugar and cinnamon. Anyone emboldened by food or drink
can climb into the Feira's most popular attraction, the amateur
bull ring, bearing in mind that in Portugal, unlike Spain, one does
not kill the bull. One suspects that the bull has never been
inculcated with the same refinements.
Since a good deal of the national life centers about the sardine,
it seems quite fitting that one of the most exciting places to be on
a Lisbon morning is the Santos dock, where the sardine boats come
in. The sails are down, but the wooden hulls slip swiftly along the
edge of the wharves. Sailors stand in the bow to throw a line, and
kids run apace with the ship. When the lines are fast, a bucket
brigade is organized, the sardines being thrown in small baskets
from ship to wharf. Barefoot ladies give the fish a bath of rock salt
and others pack them in wooden crates. Fishwives who sell at
retail come down to fill their flat straw baskets, which they carry
on their heads.
Fishermen carry baskets of sardines hung on yokes, and young
boys skitter all over filching sardines one by one. When one of these
apprentices has stolen enough sardines he may go into business for
himself on the handiest street corner. Guarding sardines is also a
chore of the young, and I watched a girl of ten box a young man
of similar years about the head with a tin can for making suspicious
moves in the direction of the family fish lode.
POSTUGAL II?
Farther along the wharves tMn^ are cleaner and quieter whene
the colorful fragatas are tied up. A fragata fa a drip which plies the
Tagus River. It has a slanted mast, a curved bow, and most erf them
are decorated with colorful legends, like the donkey carts of Sicily.
When we inquired about the frescoes on the bulkhead of one
fragata, the crew invited us down the iron ladder for a closer look.
Then they insisted we sit down with them fear grilled sardine sand-
wiches, which they cooked over a charcoal braser and served on
brown bread. We sent wit for a bottle of wine and settled down to
a party at eleven-thirty in the morning. Two days before I sat and
ate sardines on the deck of a fragata in the Tagus, I had beeo sitting
at my desk in New York eating my nails. Things are a good deal
more relaxing in Portugal, and TWA has you there in what amounts
to an overnight ride. You leave at nine-thirty in the evening and
fly without a stop to the Azores. From there it is hardly more than
two hours by Constellation to Lisbon.
If you look for luxury you find it at the Aviz Hotel, a former
castle that now offers twenty-eight double rooms to the public
and employs a staff of a hundred to keep everyone comfortable. An
old carriage with windows and curtains is the elevator which will
carry you upstairs. A single room is as low as five dollars for the
night, but if you are well heeled, I mean up to the point of twenty-
six dollars a day, then take the Don Joao suite. It has a bath with
ample room to stage the Dublin horse show, all done in lavender
plumbing, with wood nymphs running about the walk in jjlded
mosaics. It is two lavender steps up to the lavender tab.
On the other hand, the earthy air of Lisbon steams ike smoke
out of a manhole from the section known as the Alfama, a name
heavy with intonations of the Moors. The alleys are hardly wkk
enough for two men to pass shoulder to shoulder, and on the walls
above a mass of blue flower pots are suspended, looking upward to
steal the fragments of sunlight before they fafl into the charcoal
gray of the streets. On the last two weeks of June the Alfama bursts
into a fortnight of festival in honor of St. Anthofjy, St. John, and
St. Peter. There is dancing in the streets, no sleep in the beds, many
flowers cm the windows. Between times there is just the outsized
palm tree crowding the square, the blue pots, and the long lines of
wash that hang between them.
118 EUROPE
For those who would cart home a remembrance of the land, the
Casa Regional on the Rua da Misericordia has collected some
entrancing items, among them bright blankets from the plains of
Alentejo at twelve dollars, some carpets and hand-embroidered
bags in an uncontrolled assortment of colors from Minho, north on
the Spanish border. Portugal produces a considerable quantity of
cork, and the Casa das Cortigas on the Escola Politecnica can offer
you a cork anything, from beehive to calling card. It is run by one
A. Gama Reis, who likes to go under the alias of Mr. Cork. You
may be able to forgive Mr. Cork his American promotional flair,
but, let's face it, the price for having one's calling cards printed on
cork is rather fancy no matter where you put the dollar sign.
Kings Cack tc Cack*
AIM Eig Casinc
ESTORIL
IN THESE DAYS WHEN IT IS ALTOGETHER POSSIBLE FOR A MAN WHO
thought he was knocking down a princely sum to find out he is
living like a pauper, it warms the ventricles to find a place where
ex-kings live like kings on very little money.
In Estoril, a sunny seaside suburb about fifteen miles from
Lisbon, the world's unemployed kings are living on what it costs
a coachman to keep skin and bones together at home. Estoril is
decorated with such unemployed royalty as Umberto of Italy, Don
Juan of Spain, Archduke Franz Joseph of Austria, and Princess
Helena, widow of the late ex-King Carol of Rumania. There are
also a number of pretenders to former thrones, including Don Juan
of Spain, the Count de Paris, and Don Duarte, who pretends to the
throne of Portugal, a job of pretending that ought to qualify him
PORTUGAL * 119
for membership in Actors Equity. This collection of tarnished
crowns has even drawn Admiral Horthy of Hungary, though he
falls in the singular category of ex-regents, a rare species. About
the only dukes who seem to be missing are Windsor, who ptrfers
the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, and Snider and Ellington, both
of whom are occupied with gainful employment elsewhere.
The best hotel in Estoril is the Estaril Palace, and I must say
that, like the king habit, it is a little seedy. However, you can
repose with comfort if not elegance in its expanse focus ittfe as 80$.
Putting the dollar sign after the figures indicates the cwrraacy is
escudos, which is a very good plan since rooms in the Palace are
not worth $80. With the escudo pegged at .035 oats, a king or a
carpenter can put up at the best hotel on the strand for a fast
two dollars and eighty cents.
If the Estoril Palace is not as $oigne as the layout at Bucking-
ham, which is also still in business, at least it is merely a two-
minute walk from the sea. Here in the good months the beacfa m
spattered with square awnings stretched between parallel ropes.
Old burnished women with bare feet tramp the sands selling water
by the glass, dished out from an earthenware jug carried on the
head. At the top of the stairs that lead down to the seaside an old
man sells cheese cakes from Sintra, a nearby town that is also a
favorite of the kings. "Queijadas de Sintra!" shouts the cheese cake
man. "Muito Boas! Mirito Baratas!" Very good, very cheap.
Were I an ex-king I would not bother with the beach at Estoril,
but I would go instead a few miles up tte line to Giiiacfao, which
is a fabulous expanse of sand of the sort of acreage tliat Dietrich
preferred when she tramped the dunes in her stockmg feet m pic-
tures about North Africa. There are very few actresses tramping
in shoeless feet at Guincfao, and as a matter of feet there are very
few people at all. You can rent ewe of those cabanas tliat look like
the tent of a sheik for fifty cents a day, aad the beach that fronts
on the Atlantic is broad and clean. If you have not broegjte yotir
lunch it is procurable in osie of a half-dosoen places that sit on the
cliffs by the sea. The Monte Mar, fen: instance, has an. unda^n^HMl
pool of milky green sea water eddying in a limestone cave. A waiter
will Eft up the slats that cover a catwalk and haul up boxes of live
120 EUROPE
lobsters or santolas, which are giant red crabs. While your choice
is broiling you sit upstairs in a lattice shack hanging over the sea
and contemplate the Atlantic. A lobster reclining in a bed of
buttered rice comes to thirty escudos, or about one dollar American.
The fishermen who trap these fish live in the metropolis of
Cascais, a port between Estoril and Guincho. If you want to tell a
cab driver to convey you there you say "Cash-cayash!"; you will
probably come to the right place. Fishing boats and sailing boats
ride the anchor side by side in Cascais, and when the fishermen are
not out catching fish they are sitting on the wharves mending nets.
And when the nets are being mended the net markers, which are
really the inflated bladders of pigs painted every which color, hang
from poles and look like balloons at a carnival.
A place where kings go to pick at fish is a restaurant called Fim
do Mundo. Now, that expression when translated becomes End
of the World, an idea that the proprietors, who are Antonio, Jose,
and Steve, never intended. Fim do Mundo sort of corresponds to
Out of this World. You can imagine the panic that ensues when a
caller who has received the wrong number hears Antonio pick up
the receiver to say "End of the World.' 5 Aside from kings, Fim do
Mundo also has been discovered by Americans, a fact I found out
when Steve advised me that his martinis are "very dry, seven to
wan." Steve also brews something out of American whisky, rum,
lemon, and orange Curasao. "After you drink it, Fim do Mundo,"
Steve says, and I'm not sure whether he means "out of" or "end of."
If you get around to eating, try the lobster stuffed with cheese and
white sauce or the Portuguese bouillabaisse.
On Sundays near Estoril a great market comes to life on the fair
grounds at San Pedro de Sintra. Wizened old Portuguese farmers
come in barretes, which are black stocking caps that look like the
tuques worn in French Canada. Here they are worn by the saloios
who have strong Moorish strains and prefer black. Dancing along
the road on the way to market will be a flock of turkeys kept in a
bunch by a herder who flicks them lightly with a long willowy
stick. Fine ladies come to market too, carrying black umbrellas to
keep off the sun, mingling with the ciganos, who are gypsies down
from the hills to trade a horse. The livestock men sit on their sticks
in a curious balance, smoking and waiting, and the pig-keepers
- 121
add to the racket by palling their young pigs oat of wooden coop
and holding them up by a hind kg while they mark their hides with
a snip of the scissors. And when it is time for mass, the fanners
come to church festooned with strings of garlic, ajxl sometimes
accompanied by a random goat or saw.
If a king gets homesick down on the Portuguese Riviera he can
as most tourists do take a spin up to Sinfxa's Peaa Palace, a
tremendous hilltop monstrosity built by a German poace who
married into Portuguese royalty. Moorish motifs run barefoot
through the stooe ramparts, and from the path that runs around
the great walls you can look out to a rocky hillock where the ruins
of a true Moorish castle remain. Beyond, across the soft roll of the
plain, are the beaches and the sea.
At nigjit the lights come on in EstoriTs elaborate casino, whidi
spreads over a hilltop looking down at the hotels and tbe sea. One
of the casino's night clubs is decorated like a yacht, a particularly
popular place with tbe king coterie, who enjoy whiling away the
hours on the stationary deck and dreaming of the old days. Another
night club in the casino is merely decorated like a nigjht club, b3t
both offer dining and dancing. All of this is, of course, a side-show,
since the main attraction Iks in the click of tbe chips beyond the
curtained doors.
One may not merely walk in and toss a wad of escodos to the
gods. First it is required that one pay for that privilege at the door.
Having deposited a small fee for the opportunity of risking my
capital, I was then required to surrender my passport and tell the
black-frocked door-keepers in which hotel I was staying. My name
was checked against a card index, which I presume was composed
of confidence men, double agents, narcotics runners, and people
who win too often. It turned out I was none of these. I wasn't evra
Lucky Luciano. I was issued a green card numbered 16692. I felt
the way I did tie day I got my diploma from prep school Being
as public-spirited as the next, I was happy to see that it isn't just
any king who can walk into the gaming rooms of the Estoril Casino
and squander the subtreasury.
Beyond tbe curtained doors a small crowd was occupied with
roulette, baccarat, and the quietest crap game I ever saw. I have
never been able to understand all the rules laid down by these
122 EUROPE
establishments even when they are in English, and to play when
the palaver is in Portuguese proved unthinkable. However, I shall
treasure green card number 16692. It is a trophy I shall keep along
with some stubs that prove how I once got into South Pacific, and
some matches from the day I had lunch at the Union League Club.
NORTH AFRICA
Alter IA
I Wouldn't Walk a Mile
en a Camel
TUNIS
I HAVE DALLIED AWAY A WEEK OR SO IN THE STRANGE LAND OF
North Africa where a sheet is a suit and every day is a Shriner's
convention. The route has taken us from Algiers across the
brown hills to the oasis of Boti-SaMa, by jolting bus over
lands to the Roman city at Djemila, to the metropolis of Constantino
pasted against the side of a ravine, and finally by all-day train
across the border into Tunisia. I have climbed the Casbah and
ridden a camel and watched a belly dancer. I have traded cigarettes
for Roman coins and bargained in the souks and seen an American
give a fat cigar to a Berber tribeswoman. I have sat CHI my haunches
to eat barbecued sheep with my fingers and seen flies duste OB a
ribbon of mucus as it seeped from the nose of an Arab infant, the
mother watching contentedly.
A casbah is a fortress, but in Algiers it has come to mean, too,
the native quarter. In any event it was singularly free of swoony
swashbucklers the likes of Charles Boyer, and even freer of any-
thing that looked like Hedy Lamarr on her very worst of days,
Scraggly cats nibbled fish heads served than cm slimy cobblestones.
Arab men wrapped in a swiri erf sheeting sipped mint tea and
played dominoes at tables set up in the already cramped alleys.
Kids with hennaed hair sucked oa the red seeds erf pomegranates.
From a doorway came a strange sort of chant I peered in and saw
perhaps thirty beys jammed into a tiny cell erf a room with neither
126 * NOETH AFRICA
window nor light, repeating the recitation of the teacher as if it
were a litany.
We were taken, as indeed all tourists must be, to a Moorish
house in Algiers, and ushered into a shaded alcove traditionally
provided so that the guest may await his reception in coolness and
comfort. The walls gleamed with tiles, and where there were no
tiles the color was a rich blue since blue, as everyone must know,
keeps away mosquitoes. Women sit on the ground floor, for some
reason that escapes me, the men, upstairs. At night when the whole
house might be hot everyone ascends to a terrace on the roof. For
sleeping the bedroom is provided with a bed of iron lattice-work,
and this one had a cradle suspended from the side. An acquaintance,
who must have made it a practice to burst in upon Moorish domi-
ciles, reports it not uncommon to find baby in cradle, father in bed,
mother on floor.
No less different customs prevail, too, once an Arab is dead. He
is wrapped in a veil, buried without a coffin, his head facing Mecca.
Cemeteries are closed on Fridays to all except Arab women, who,
although they come in no spirit of sadness, spend the day wailing at
the graves, or so a source tells me.
On a Sunday afternoon, when the living room would normally
be awash in the Sunday papers and I at sea in it, I found myself
on the Rue Henri Martin in Algiers at the entrance to a restaurant
called El Harbours. We drank sweet minted tea, which one could
flavor with droplets from a silver shaker containing an essence of
orange blossom. If one was polite, in a local sense, one could drink
with huge slurping noises that would induce a boogie beat in the
pulse of Miss Emily Post. With the tea came rahat lokoum, white
blocks of sugared rice starch; sam sam, made of almond and
pistachio, filled with honey and fried like a fritter; ketaif, a petit
four of shredded almond and honey. Tea has a way of knocking
the hell out of dinner.
One bright morning we left the Mediterranean seacoast and
bumped by bus one hundred and thirty-five miles south by east
into the desert. The land was dry and grubby, with neither trees
nor grass, as if it had in its entirety been peeled and laid bare for
some gigantic planting. Then suddenly we would roar through an
opening in a wall and burst upon a tight little village crawling with
hundreds of robed figures, lie a horde of white ants on an un-
covered hill,
ALGERIA * 127
Bou-Sada is part white ant hill and part resort Back in Roman
times, the legend says, a shepherd lost his flock in the MUs. The
shepherd had a dog named Satda, which means happiness. Sakfo.
found the sheep lapping at the water oC an oasis, which was given
the name of Bou-Sa&da, the Place of Happiness. Bou-Saada is
more of a place of happiness these days than ever before, foe it has
pleasant weather and several hotels, one erf which the Trans-
atlantique has its own swimming pool. For a view Boe-SaJkla can
offer palms, desert, and mountains stretching in that progressive
order from the edge of the Transatlantique's pool.
For anyone who caies to brave slipping a disk there tne camel
rides in the nearby desert, eight hundred francs the whole day*
three hundred francs a promenade, at three hundred aad ifty fco
four hundred francs to the dollar. All day long a camel acts m if
he had just gotten out of bed, and in order to control this stale of
continual ill humor a camel boy attends the beast by the halter.
Besides tending the camels, the boys fatten their take by selling
knives fashioned from camel bone, and they urge you to make
payment surreptitiously to avoid a tax that would otherwise be
levied cm the profits by the camel master.
Double rooms at the better Bou-SaMa hotels will nm between
three ami four dollars a day, lunch and dinner between one dollar
and fifty cents and two dollars depending upon where you buy
your francs. For groups the management will gladly rig up an Arab
feast known as a diffa. One in which I took part was held in an
expansive, carnival-sized tent which had been cowmJ cm tbe roof
with palm fronds to keep out the African mn. The floor was pai?d
with a mass of bright, soft rugs, and the tables were just hagji
enough when you Sopped on a cushion and doubled your legs
underneath you.
Waiters in white uniforms and red Moroccan boots streamed m
with a lamb soep called cheurba, and couscous , which & mixed
vegetables dumped on a pile of rolled wheat. Two sheep liad been
barbecued on. a spit, and they were wheeled in now. The dish is
called agneau en m&chow; you pill off the flesh with your fingers,
and never mind if it bums.
For the Scandinavians, the Swiss, the Dutch, the few Americans,
and the French who come down from Algiers a troupe of accom-
modating ladies from the Outed Nails tribe maintains a station in
128 * NOBTH AFBICA
town. The tribe specializes in teaching its young girls to dance,
sing, and perform other entertainment for which men will pay
money. They wear sack dresses of choice Montgomery Ward
fabrics which they enhance with great silver belts. Around their
necks they cany loops of black cord strung with gold louts, which
represent their current bankroll. Their dance is a controlled but
violent series of undulations of the abdomen further sensualized by
the wail of a horn called a rhdita, and the near-jazz beat of a drum
and tambourine.
The whole troupe will dance under any tent you name for about
ten dollars, but you can watch them chet les danseuses for about
thirty cents a person. Here they also dance dshabiltt, the object
being, of course, to entice the gentlemen to the upper stories.
A friend of mine with a clinical interest and a zest for bargaining
had the price down to the equivalent of a United States quarter
before he broke off negotiations. Any tourist who has viewed this
disrobed dancing, incidentally, has seen more than any of the
Arabs, who are denied the privilege by Moslem teaching. That also
goes for the musicians who must play for the spectacle with their
backs to the dancers and their faces to the wall.
TUNISIA
Tunis* Anyone?
TUNIS
DISPATCHING THE GLEAMING STAINLESS STEEL EXPRESS ACROSS
the top of North Africa is sending a fishtail Cadillac across the
tundra. The seats are comfortable, but it's a fitful ride from Con-
T0KISIA * 129
stantine to Tunis, and it takes from sh in the morning until night-
fall to cover the two hundred and ifty miles. If the stop and starts
Jarred our nerves and dreams, they never bothered the chef who
produced a magnificent souffl initialed with powdered sugar for
each table in the diner.
We crossed the border from Ae French protectorate of Algeria
to the French protectorate of Tunisia at Gbardmaon, a foraotaity
which required a strict scrutiny erf everyone's passport and forty
minutes. Algeria is a huge chunk of land both bro@d and deep, birt
Tunisia is a narrow, vertical morsel slipped in between Algeria and
Tripolitania. Were you a bird possessed with a sound sease of
direction and the desire to head straight north, a penchant doubtless
shared by many of Tunisia's refugee citizens, you woold strike in
turn Sardinia, Corsica, and Genoa.
A catchbasin f or dissatisfied souls who drifted westward across
the Mediterranean, Tunis can count among its three hundred and
fifty thousand citizens Arabs, Berbers, Greeks from the Greek
Islands, Jews from the East, Italians from Sicily, Maltese, and
even White Russians. They gather in a bubbling goulash each
evening for an aperitif in the big outdoor caf6s that flank the
Place de la R6sidence. Since Arab merchants do not work o
Fridays, Jews close their shops on Saturdays, Christians observe
Sundays, and some lassitudinous Tunisians are pkms on al tiwee
days, shopping for the newcomer or the hurried visitor can be
a trial.
One buys best at the souks in the native quarto. To visk Tarns
without shopping at the souks is to pause in Rome wfthont seeing
the ruins. The souks are stalls, one after another, emd on end,
cramped and crowded, tunneling every which way Hke ancient
catacombs. There are five streets of souks running along an avenue
known as the Grand Souk des Chechias where nothing is sold
except the fez. Virtually all the fezzes of the world's nearly three
hundred million Moslem population are made ami. sold in these
five streets.
The original asking pice in the souks win frequently be about
double what you should pay, but ofie who buys without haggling
fails to enter into a zestful, often witty exchange, and is, what is
more, gypped. One can buy the great silver bockk aad the masy-
hued rope belt of the Bedouin women; a djeba, a man's cloak,
130 NORTH AFRICA
strictly Tunisian, half open at the top with kimono sleeves; hooded,
heavy burnooses for the stiff North African winter; the velvet
stuffed hands and stuffed fish glittering with sequins which one
gives to one's friends as a symbol of friendliness.
Of all the souks in the Arab quarter of Tunis, the one I shall
always remember is the stall at lumber 2, Souks El Attarine et
Blagdjia. It is the place of business of a strange and smiling little
man known as Allala Belhadj, Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur,
Parfumeur de S.A. le Bey de Tunis et de S.M. Cherifienne le
Sultan du Maroc. As it may be determined, M. Belhadj is a per-
fumer of some renown, but he deals only in essences since he is
forbidden by his religion to have any truck with alcohol. His
most famous and effective scent (the former because of the latter)
is a volcanic aphrodisiac called Ambre Antique. It costs sixty
francs a gram, and brides are inclined to plunk a drop in the
bridegroom's coffee at the wedding feast. M. Belhadj explained,
and he would, I am sure, swear on a stack of Korans, that Ambre
Antique is made from three ingredients: the gland of a gazelle,
the sick liver of a shark, and the perspiration of a Persian cat. A
particularly circumspect American lady in our party was assured
by our Arab guide that one drop of this essence placed behind her
ear lobe and she would be able to command from any gentleman
of her choice a price far above what might otherwise be considered
fair market value.
A hundred years ago the souks were also a thriving slave market
where Negroes up from central Africa were put on the block and
sent off by sea to the United States. A courtyard on which the
slave pens opened was filled when I saw it some days ago with a
team of weavers operating a loom. A big African, happy with
hashish, lay smiling and smoking on the stone floor. From outside
came the drumbeat of a Sudanese I had seen panhandling among
the stalls. He wore a strange costume of the skins of jungle animals,
with fur slippers, and a weird leather mask.
It is a morning's bus ride down to Kairouan, the Holy City of
the Moslems and the burial place of Mohammed's barber. The
Grand Mosque is set on a great quadrangle, and one may enter
the prayer room, empty except for the dozens of columns and the
straw mats on the floor. Kairouan is also famous for its rugs, and
TtJHISIA 131
in the bazaars one is given a chair and a cup of mint tea wWk
the rugs are displayed like gowns in a Paris couturier. On the road
back to Tunis the bus shares the highway with caravans of Bedouins
on their way to work the olive groves. First comes the leader, cm
foot, followed by a procession of camels carrying tents, cooking
gear, and firewood. Then come the women aiad children on don-
keys. The ladies are done up in flaming colors, massive chunks
of silver jewelry banging cm their chests, gieat silver pendants
swinging from their ears. Children ride fore and aft of tbeir mother,
and runny-nosed infants joggle along in saddle ba|^ dung CHI the
donkey's flank.
Ten miles out of Tunis by the electric tram that rum to the sea
will bring you to Carthage, born in 814 B.C., great Mediterranean
power in the fifth century B.C., home of Hannibal ia the tiriid
century B.C. Now it is a collection of crumbling ruins inhabited in
daylight by crumbling men and barefoot children, who lie in
ambush for the tourist and then attack with a handful of Roman
and Byzantine coins and relentless salesmanship. American sol-
diers digging latrines and slit trenches opposite the Bey's summer
villa during the war uncovered yards of mosaic flooring. After
the GIs came the archeologists, and they, digging farther, kid
bare the steam baths of Antonio II, according to CHIT guide, a
bizarre Roman governor who practiced nudism. Measuring three
hundred and twenty-five yards long and one hundred yards wide,
the baths are said to be the largest of the Roman worIA Long
after the GIs returned home, civilian diggers came upon a swim-
ming pool, trougihs that carried the waste water into the sea, a
decorated gallon jar believed to be the personal drinking crock of
Antonio himself.
Some two thousand, eight hundred and thirty-three American
men and women will never leave Carthage. They are buried in
the American Military Cemetery there, in the strange laad they
read about in history books in classrooms in Carson Cfty and
Fort Wayne. Many of the graves are unmarked because in the cold
of winter natives burned the temporary crosses that marked men's
graves where they fell. After all, the wood was of BO value to a
dead man, was it? And it is said that even today an Arab woman
is occasionally found with the dogtags of a dead GI slung around
her neck as jewelry.
132 * NORTH AFRICA
North Africa gives you wanderlust of the mind. A place to dream
is the lovely little Arab resort of Sidi Bou Said alongside Carthage.
The buildings are painted white, the shutters and the grillwork
are a bright blue. Artists come in the summer, and people like
Barbara Hutton hide away for long months in villas there because
the life is far from the lacquered salons of Europe, a world away
from the antiseptic USA, and four degrees east of reality.
I went in the late afternoon in Sidi Bou Said to the teahouse of
Dar Zarouk and sat at the tiled tables on the terrace to watch the
sun flicker out on the peninsula of La Goulette, where the French,
the Italians, and the Jews bathe separately in the sea. And the
Arab women bathe apart from everyone else, furtively, at seven in
the morning or in the evening dusk, wearing white wrappers over
their bathing suits.
ALL AT SEA
At the Stun cf the Clue Fish
THE CLASSIEST, FLASHIEST FLOATING HOTEL IS TO MY MIND THE
brand new Italian liner, Andrea Doria. I can't recall any hole! in
town, or in Italy for that matter, that looks like the inside of this
ship. The only thing it resembles is some of those dream sequences
from Hollywood's mammoth musicals with Geoe Kelly.
Take the Zodiac Suite. It is all blue and white. Where the waBs
are blue the signs of the Zodiac are white. In some places Ae
decorator has reversed things with littk white serpents and cea-
taurs running over blue walls, across the bookcases, the chairs,
the bedspreads, and into the bath. A design of blue ish, so help
me, runs all through the white plumbing fixtures, appearing in
places you would least expect to find a fish, much fess a Hoc one.
For those who have reserved the Zodiac Suite and fed impelled
to take the pledge, the chapel is just two doors away.
More reserved is the Rita Haywortfa suite, an apartment whose
name is not exactly official. The walls are of quilted satin; tbene
are satin bedspreads, satin draperies, and low Egfrts, Another
stateroom, as yet unnamed, has lavender banquettes along the
window, blue satin spreads on the bed, a felt-coverai doorway
that swings oo, a pivot, a dressing room with wMfe leather walls,
and another waH completely covered by a giant tapestry. These
staterooms are equipped with fully tiled baths based CHI a heritage
passed down from the spleadocoos baths of Rome. Bell cords with
a sketch of a maid or a valet hang witlm arm's reach should signer
or sign&ra be in need of aid,
A magnificent first-class lounge has an heroic bronze statue
of Andrea Doria himself, who was a famous admiral when Genoa
was a republic. Doria in bronze stands before a mural that re-
136 ALL AT SEA
sembles a Genoese street, as a similar statue stands before an
actual street in modern Genoa.
Andrea Doria was a young man of twenty-six when Columbus
discovered America. In 1513 he headed the Genoese fleet that
swept the Mediterranean seas of Barbary pirates and fought against
Francis I of France to maintain Genoa's liberty. In a monastery
to spend his last days, Doria was recalled to service at eighty-five
and won his last sea battle in defense of Corsica.
The young American republic was so impressed with Andrea
Doria's long fight for freedom they gave his name to an American
brig. On November 17, 1776, the USS Andrea Doria of the First
American Fleet sailed into St. Eustatius, Dutch West Indies, and
received the first salute an American ship ever got in a foreign
port.
Italy's new Andrea Doria is a long, far cry from the American
brig, and the sight of this thirty-thousand-ton liner would pop the
eyeballs of the old admiral. It has three outdoor swimming pools,
one looking down on the other, each with a poolside bar. Instead
of the ordinary diving board, which can prove dangerous on a
ship, the Italian designers have improvised a water slide, which
is reached by a double stairway. In the second-class pool the chil-
dren will be delighted with a gangplank stretched across the tank,
which gets narrower as you approach the middle.
After working up an appetite at this endeavor the kids can
repair to their own dining room, where a mural wishes them "Buon
Appetito" in an atmosphere of smoking frogs, flower-munching
pelicans, and ostriches that resemble pineapples, all of which are
painted on the walls.
Elsewhere on the floating premises the Doria has a fifty-car
garage, a bank, a gym to work off the pasta, and four movie the-
aters, one of which is an outdoor walk-in. The irrepressible Italian
imagination has even crept into the sheltered promenade deck,
normally a bare companionway set with steamer chairs. Here the
designers have fashioned a winter garden with light wood walls,
potted palms and other greenery, giant mosaic stones for wall
decoration, and tucked away in the ersatz forest, a Ping-pong
table and a piano.
The whole place is air-conditioned, including the garage and
the crew's quarters. Or as a steward with a heavy Italian accent
A YENTLEMAN'S AGHEEMENT * 137
explained, "When you have the mam weather outside, we have
the cool weather inside." la winter the Andrea Dorm enjoys that
very state of affairs, since she sails through tic Caribbean on West
Indies cruises. In summer, however, she buzzes back and forth on
eight-day express service between Naples and New Yodc. She is
frequently sold out, especially the Zodiac Room, where life among
the stars fen* two costs one thousand dollars apiece for the crossing.
A y entleman*s Aareement
THE GERMANS, WHO HAVE FREQUENTLY ACQUITTED THEMSELVES
with great 6clat on the briny, have begun all over ag^iin with the
acquisition of the old Swedish liner Gripsfaotm. Perhaps they wffl
consider it a modest start, for in the days before they got huffy, the
Germans were cutting the Atlantic with the Bremen, the EimajM,
the Hamburg, and other memorable steamers. The new German
owners will find, I think, a loyal club of Gripsholmers ai over tie
world who will feel the start is not just modest but iBagnifcea^.
Probably the Swedes don't need the Gripsho&n any more, faavkig
built the handsome Stockholm and the magnificent new Kimgsholm.
If life aboard these two new ships is anything like the old one, thoa
taking a Swedish American liner CHI a trip to Scandinavia must be
viewed as a pure choice of what the Swedes like to caB yenius.
Having sailed o& the Gripsholm during its Una! summer as a Swedish
ship, I looked back on my notes of that voyage recently aad through
the clouds of nostalgia I read the following:
We are in effect a floating smorgisbord table, carrying as addi-
tional cargo a capacity load of returning Scandinavians, tourists.
138 * ALL AT SEA
an uncountable number of Swedish consuls from North and South
America, a flock of sunny blond children belonging to same, and
what seems to be an unlimited supply of herring in some fifteen
delicious flavors, including sillfile i olja, kronsill, and vingasilL
We have Svensons and Swansons, Lindstroms and Ljungquists,
Olsons, Ohlssons, Olssons, and Olesens. Also thirty-three Carlsons,
forty-three Johnsons, fifty-one Andersons, not to overlook two
Andersens. There is Mr. Gunnar Abrahamson, building superin-
tendent of Winchester, Massachusetts, going home to Sweden with
his wife for the first time in thirty-four years. His brother when
he last saw htm was sixteen. Carl Gundersen, of Edmonton,
Alberta, is coming back to Denmark for his school's reunion after
fifty years. There is Gunnar Dryselius, Swedish consul in Houston,
with his wife and their three blond youngsters, Anita, Guinilla, and
Jan, who wear blue jeans and drawl like the belles and buckos of
Amarillo. There is Hjalmar Procope, charming European, who
was wartime Finnish Minister to Washington. On other days the
gamut has run from Garbo to Jake Malik, erstwhile irascible of
theU.N.
The old-time Vikings have been teaching the American travelers
the fine art of the skoal, how to extinguish the liquid fire of aquavit
with cool draughts of beer, how to eat five meals a day, and other
strange habits of the northlands. Informal language courses have
been in progress, based on the more popular of the ship's signs,
notably the one in front of the hairdresser's which says Dam Frlser
SaLong (American interpretation: damn freezer saloon), and on
the traditional morning salutation God Morgan (accepted pro-
nunciation: goo moron) and thanks so much which is tack sa
mycket (American corruption: thanks for the mickey). One
struggles the first day with the unfamiliar names on the plumbing,
and it is admittedly unnerving to look down at the basin first thing
in the morning and read the legend varmt.
In the dining salon American tourists are introduced to the
Swedish custom of reserving favorite dishes for special days. Tues-
day is for Kottbullar, Stekt Flask, Bruna Bonar, or meat-balls-
fried-pork-and-brown-beans day. But a bona, one is warned, is
also, colloquially, a girl or, so to speak, a dame. Thursday is set
aside for Artsoppa Flask Korv, which is pea soup, pork, and
A TENTLEMAH'S AGBEEMEMT * 139
sausage. The meat is servo! separately but eaten along with the
soup. And if you cane to be wholly proper about it, you sip from
a glass of hot Swedish punch after each spoonful. There seem to
be two schools of thought among the Swedish punch initiates,
those who think it approximates hot nail polish and those who
think it tastes like warm benzoin. Both opinions are viewed with
unlimited scorn by those whose tastes are more cultured along
Nordic lines.
The more courageous of the tourists are exploring the field of
the smoked eel, smoked salmon, smoked herring, smoked reindeer,
smoked mackerel, and stewed smoked haddock on toast Scandi-
navia must have the busiest smoke houses this side of an Algerian
hashish parlor. A sortie into such strange fields as j9ndk tmemos
reveals merely fresh pineapple, skinka och agg is hain and egg&, and
omelett med bjornbarssylt or maybe med jordgubssylt is an
omelette with blackberry or strawberry jam. For the wary ftee
is Long Island Anka & L'Orange, ugnsbakad Idaho potatis, and
grapefrukL Those on bland diets better stick to havregrymgiiM or
mannagrynsgrot, being nothing more sinister than oatmeal and
Cream of Wheat. No day seems to go by without Swedfafa pancakes,
which vary only in size, being alternately as large as a diver dollar
or as a silver platter. They are similar, a steward has assured me,
to American flapjacks, and are best when sprinkled with sugar,
of which the kitchen carries two types, a Swedish brand and Yack
Frost.
Eating aboard the Gripshdm leaves very littte tme for
else, and those who linger at tea may find themselves baid-pcessed
for dinner, and ooe must hurry through dinner so that the liour
for the evening snack will not arrive too quickly. The Scaadiia-
vians can eat five shipboard meals a day, probably because tiiey
repair to the Aquasanium, where each afternoon at five one can
see the consuls from Bogota, Ottawa, San Prasosco, New York,
and Houston sitting like Roman senators in sheets, steaming
themselves bade to normal Two masseurs and one E0^$sense ad-
minister the Swedish massage, and thane is a gym ftiH of mectoaical
horses, bicycles, and oars to convey you bad: to your original
shape, Hie indoor pool has mixed bathing part of the day, but
diflferest hours allotted to men aad wonjea permits swimming
140 ALL AT SEA
without the encumbrance of a bathing suit, another old Swedish
custom.
Up above, the fine paneled public rooms in first class (one with
a glowing fireplace) are replicas of salons in Gripsholm Castle, a
famous cMteau built by a titled Swede name of Grip late in the
fifteenth century. It is located three hours outside Stockholm and
is famous for its two thousand paintings. The rooms of its sea-
going counterpart have many paintings, too, among them portraits
of Washington and Lincoln. Another wall decoration is a scroll
awarded to the Gripsholm in 1946, signed by James Byrnes, then
U.S. Secretary of State, in recognition of the ship's mercy trips
during the war. As a neutral ship the Gripsholm made eleven relief
voyages, swung down to Portuguese East Africa and later to
Portuguese West India, covered one hundred and forty-three
thousand, five hundred and seventy miles, carried over three hun-
dred thousand Red Cross packages which had to be forced upon
the Japanese skipper at the exchange point. It brought reluctant
Japs part way back to Japan, came home again with tattered Yanks,
including Ambassador Joseph C. Grew, out of the barbed wire
cages of the Orient.
Her commander in those days as now is Sir Sigfrid Ericsson,
captain of the ship, Commodore of the Swedish American Line.
Elegant in monocle and mess jacket, the captain can sit in these
peaceful days and recall sailing for Africa with fifteen hundred
Japanese envoys picked up in New York and Rio, of the one
who jumped overboard, the one who asked him to show the pic-
ture Yankee Doodle Dandy, and the two Nipponese girls who
hid in a bathroom when the time to march aboard the Japanese
ship had arrived. He remembers the Japanese baby born aboard,
named Takeo, which means warrior, and the gaunt Americans he
took home, building them back to health with barrels of fresh
sweet milk which were kept on deck all day. There were the
Japanese artists and engineers who spent their time copying furni-
ture, upholstery, and paintings, and the elderly Japanese ex-
professor at the University of Chicago, whom he caught one day
tracing a world map on strips of toilet paper.
After the war much of the ship was rebuilt, including a huge
ballroom in second class, called the Rotunda, which has tables
A YEWTLEMAH'S AGBEEMEHT - 141
and chairs for three hundred and fifty. There is dancing cry
other night in both classes, and when the band has gone off to
bed someone usually appears with an aceofdJo to start the
Swedish-Americans in a ronstag beery, teary chores of **Gneet
Your Mother and Father," especially written for atoning expa-
triates. Then everyone daiaces the hambv, a native dauce which
involves whirling your partner around with both hands and stamp-
ing soundly on the floor.
And who has lived until he has played bingo in Swedish; or at
least in Swedish-English? The rates are the same, but it is some-
what unnerving to the unaccustomed ear the first time tlie caller
says, "N-trettiosju," which sounds like N drat-tew-sche rad means
N-37. Or try G-48, which comes out gay-fuer-tee-ot-ta, and 1-24,
which lodes like I-tjugofyra and emerges ee-^ii-go-fir-ra.
To my mind the best days are the last days, the ship rounding
the top of Scotland, slicing into Pentland Firth with slieer cliffs
to starboard and the Orkneys to port. Here amid tbe shelter of
the islands is Scapa How, where the German fleet was scuttled
in Worid War I and where in World War U a German U-boat
commander repaid the embarrassment with a daring escapade
that raised havoc with the British naval station. Now the waters
are serene, with nothing to ripple them but us and a few white
birds and an occasional black fishing ship, its slanted funnel and
strange triangular sail drawn sharply against the pale horizon.
Then with the night, as the sky turns to midnight btoe font sever
quite gets black, the captain's dinner commences below. As a smash
finish the lights go out in the dining satoa and twelve waiters appear
one by osae, each carrying a sculpture of ice with colored fights
gleaming from some hidden source. A steward's toidi fights a
wick on top of each mound of ice and the waiters scatter to their
tables while a violinist strolls through the crowd puffing romantic
Finnish love sonj^ from the strings,
Then there is dancing in the ballroom and a performance of
the Gripshohn Folk Dance Team, four couples in briffiant costene
dancing the scfaottish, the windmill dance, and tlie ox dance,
wherein two boys bargain with great amity over the pice of an ox
and end up belting each other around the HOOT.
142 ' ALL AT SEA
No night is complete with a smorgasbord laid out on the
ship's veranda. There among the hydrangeas and the potted
Japanese elms the Gripsholm's passengers pick their way through
the fields of herrings, over the mountains of cold pig's feet, and
the green salad forest, the great piles of Swedish meat balls, and
the log-jams of sausages that float in tureen rivers. If you are a
rugged Viking, you finish this off with a belt of aquavit and great
gulps of beer. If you are the simple American tourist, you are by
this time back to the innocuity of ginger ale, or, as the Swedes
say, yinyer ale. Nobody will question what you drink aboard a
Swedish American liner, but anyone who goes to bed on an empty
stomach is no yentleman.
The Zee Around Us
NOT LONG AGO WE TOOK THE RATTLER OUT OF NEW YORK AND
lurched our way overnight to Montreal, there to board the SS Moos-
dam, newest ship of the N.V. Nederlandsch-Amerikaansche Stoom-
vaart-Maatschappij, also known as the Holland- America Line.
The Moasdam, we hasten to explain, is not just another ocean
liner, but rather the second edition of a daring and successful
experiment begun with the arrival here a few years back of the
SS Ryndam, a ship which provides more than ninety per cent of its
cabins and its deck space to tourist-class passengers. The Maasdam,
an improvement over the Ryndam, follows the same scheme, with
eight hundred and forty-two of its eight hundred and eighty-one
berths set aside for that former untouchable of the Atlantic, the
tourist-class passenger. The other thirty-nine bunks are more ele-
gantly outfitted and occupy a penthouse section on the boat deck.
Each has a private bath, and its passengers dine in private elegance
THE ZEE AROUHD US 143
together in a small, carpeted salon and bend their elbows m a
private lounge up forward, just underneath the bridge.
We found ourselves assigned to Cabin 203 in tourist class, a
cheerful compartment on the main deck with two beds and & dis~
appearing upper berth and a porthole giving out to sea, or at that
moment to the dockside in Montreal The cabin also contained a
full closet, a pair of storage bins, stowing space under the beds
for hand luggage, a washstand, and medicine chest, full-length
mirror, combination make-up table, and desk mad two chairs. The
baths are directly across the halL In the summer season Number
203 will be ferrying tourists between Manhattan aad Southampton
at one hundred and eighty-five dollars each, three ki the room.
The rest of the year the berths will cost one hundred and aiaeiy-
seven dollars and fifty cents each if there are two passengers, o&e
hundred and seventy-two dollars and fifty cents if thane are three.
There are other tourist-class cabins, perhaps smaller and without
immediate optical liaison with the sea that begin at one faiisdmi
and sixty dollars.
With some three hundred members of the press, travel agents,
freight shippers, shipping executives of rival lines, and a pak of
admirals of the U.S. Navy aboard, the Maasdam edged away from
the Montreal dockside near noon of a late August Saturday and
headed down the St. Lawrence. It was a route that the Maasdam,
or any other passenger liner, would not soon again follow. The
new ship had sailed on its maiden westbound voyage directly to
Montreal as a gesture of friendship to Canada, which has lately
been supplying a considerable amount of HoflaBd-AjBefica Liae
business. Now she would roll down the river, head across tibe GnK
of St Lawreiice, slip past Cape Breton Island, nm down tie coast
of Nova Scotia, cut through the Cape Cod canal, and show herself
to New York Harbor four days later.
By Saturday afternoon we were past Trms Riviferes, aboi& mid-
way between Montreal and Quebec. The villages of French Canada
slid past the rail, each marked by a great pile of logs, and a church,
the steeple and slanted roof gtmtmg silver evta in the gray weather.
The lowlands of the river valley, sliced into fertile green strips by
the waterway, must have sfered deep and hcraesidk thon^Hs si
the breasts of the two hundred aad forty Dutch crew member
whose duties or curiosity fed tfaoa to a railwaid took.
144 * ALL AT SEA
Dinnertime and Quebec City arrived virtually together. A great
white electric cross gleamed out of a portside porthole. Then, some-
where between the Gorton Charlemagne 1947 and the Chateau
Palmer 1943, the Chateau Frontenac appeared, on the opposite
shore, an immense displaced skyscraper dancing with lighted
windows, high up there on the bluff.
Sunday we rounded the top of the Gaspe, a series of recurrent
whalebacks glowering through the smokescreen of a fog. Gulls
followed us with the tenacity of Arab beggar boys meeting the
airlines bus in Algiers. A sandpiper took refuge with us on the
prom deck, looked in at the mortals dancing in the Palm Court, a
tropical expanse set with rattan chairs and rubber plants and
sansevieria.
The weather broke clear and bright next morning. The ship ran
the Nova Scotia coast. The Americans lay back in deck chairs coax-
ing a sunburn. The Dutch came out in long, nubby bathrobes,
bared themselves to the chill Canadian wind, and jumped into the
open air, all-class swimming pool, where they made noises like
seals. A Canadian corvette followed by a Canadian submarine
hove to off the starboard rail to provide a conversation piece for
dinner. Sunlight streamed into the Palm Court, which became for
some fleeting moments a continental cafe on the Rokim. Waiters
played cymbals with the teacups. A soft rhythm of phlegmish
Dutch, a roll of French, an undercurrent of English welled up from
the tables. And over it all was the soft film of a three-piece Dutch
orchestra making a mathematical exercise of a strain from ancient
American musical comedy.
The long shaft that stands in Provincetown to recall the first
landing of the Pilgrims loomed out of the misty horizon Tuesday
morning. We veered sharply to avoid the net stretched out behind
a fishing boat clearly marked by a thousand gulls who clustered on
it like flies in Cairo. Then the Dutch did a pleasant and unex-
pected thing. They served lunch on the open deck just as we slipped
into the entrance of the Cape Cod Canal. It was a strange experi-
ence coming out of the suspended world of the sea, dipping for
perhaps a remindful hour into that other world of Gulf stations,
red trailer trucks that moan over state highways, and orange-coated
Howard Johnson restaurants. They all stood out on either side of
THE ZEE ABOUND US * 145
the Cape Cod Canal, and so did the GIs manning a radar station,
and summer tourists, ami yachtsmen who ran alongside us, and
motorists who stopped their cars, all erf wiiom waved at this five-
hundred-aiKl-three-foot hulk as it slid through the narrow cut, a
fullback in a nursery.
Then there was the open sea again until aigfet feB and Coney
Island lay suddenly off the starboard, a glittering string of yellow
sparklers. The parachute tower was an umbfelm owr all, and a
man with a discerning eye could pick out the tiny gray parachutes
being pulled slowly up to the top then released to drop quickly
back to earth. The sky gjowed from the excitement of the lights
and against it stood the black unlit hulk of the Half Moon Hotel.
Montreal to Manhattan bad taken four days, over a tfaktee-
hundred-and-eigjhty-mile course. Manhattan to the channel ports
would take passengers eight days, because the faster a slip timvdb
the more expensive it is to operate, and it is the Mc&sdom's idea
to keep its prices low. Staterooms without baths requkc fewer
stewards, and the dining room, which can be set with long tables,
employs fewer waiters. Nine- and ten-course meals are served
course by course rather than by individual order. Explained an
official of the line, "We try to keep the prices (town; we consider
it's a nice thing to do/' Accordingly a man caa have his bak
trimmed for thirty-five cents, spend the whole afternoon "m the
barber shop for less than a dollar. He can sit in a 1Mb gem of
a bar or in the gjass-walkd cocktail lounge (both tourist-class),
sipping two-bit highballs or sixty-five-cent French champagne.
For a slim U.S. dime he can, if hardy, swallow a sizable hooker
of Holland gin, which is followed by an extended period of warmth
well-being, camaraderie, and delusions erf great streogtk
is hardly anywhere that a dime wiH do more f or you.
146 ALL AT SEA
The Calcrie Express
WHEN YOU TRAVEL BY AIR THE FAREWELL is QUICK AND UNCERE-
monious. Zip! You're off. Like the quick pull of adhesive tape
from your skin. But the pageantry of departure by ship is designed
to dampen eyes and tighten throats. You edge ever so gradually
away from the dock. Slowly but perceptibly now the rift widens;
the tugs add a melancholy moan; sometimes there is music, and
always there is the sensation that you are off to a faraway place
for a long time.
After five days, nurtured and nourished by the French, it
feels as if this good, rich, indolent, self-indulgent life of the ship-
board passenger has been going on forever. Perhaps way back
there in the hazy past taxis honked, people pushed, and telephones
rang. Cut adrift from time and linked to reality only by the wire-
less or an occasional reflective thought, one has nothing to do but
sleep, plan, and visit a fine French restaurant three times a day.
The dining room is a lovely, quiet place the first day out. But
by the second night everyone is done up in evening clothes, and
the salon is suddenly transformed into a flaming den of crepes
suzette and baked Alaskas. Would m'sieu like for tomorrow
perhaps a chocolate souffle? A Mont Blanc, made of mashed
chestnuts and whipped-cream snow? For the honeymooners there
is a spun-sugar tree with creamy desserts hanging from the
branches, and their names carved on the trunk. By the night of
the gala the pastry chef has made baskets two feet high, with
broad flowing ribbons of sugar candy. The French Line to Europe
is the Calorie Express.
In a somewhat more restrained degree the same thing goes on
meanwhile in cabin and tourist class. Although the choice of dishes
is rather restricted, the third-class passenger can run through eight
courses for breakfast including onion soup, alors. Dinners run
to ten courses and include wine without extra charge.
THE CALORIE EXFSESS 147
To cross the Atlantic each time, the Jubertt requires, aside
from fuel and a staff of over a thousand, five thousand, eight ten-
died bottles of champagne, four t<ms of meat, eight terns of fowl,
and sixty thousand eggs.
To keep from growing out of one's clotibes by the tme we put
into Le Havre, there is an activity program that would sap the
strength of a decathlon champion. One may appear on the boat
deck each afternoon at three for the Ooficcmrse de Tir Am
Pigeons, a clay-pigeon shooting competition, day disks ane flung
out to sea while you fire at them with a shotgun,
One may even work off the poundage by kweback riding or
rowing on mechanical devices in the gymnasium. The array of
athletic equipment aboard has been the delight on other voyages
of Sugar Ray Robinson, who has crossed four times on the Ub&rt6>
training en route. His picture han^ facing the punching bag. Ad-
joining the gym is a swimming pool that would be the showpiace
of a Caribbean hotel.
Previews of new moving pictures are shown each afternoon.
French and American productions are played on alternate days.
Occasional concerts de jazz symphomque are given in the after-
noons, and a cocktail dansant is scheduled every early evening
from six-thirty until half-past eight To keep everyone apprised
of this bubbling array of events, a magazine which includes the
latest news and features about Europe is shoved under the door
of every stateroom each day.
For those who didn't choose the sea trip for the rest, a formal
party begins each evening at ten. It is preceded occasionally witifa
horse racing or Bingo games, which have produced seme eijgfely-
thousand-franc winners (about two hundred and fifty dollars).
For the gala party, usually the next to the last nigjit aboard ship,
the entire Don Cossack Chorus, en route to Europe for a toor of
singing engagements, was prevailed upon to appear. Played for
the benefit of a French seaman's fund, the afeir tasted a giter
of jewels and Paris creations which adorned the elegant assortment
of French, American, and Sooth American women who aie aboard*
Tourist class, a few decks below, has pcwed to be a sort of
floating Latin Quarter. Aside from the Cossacks, wto aifc trav-
eling third class, there is a colorful collection of writers, pbotog^
raphers, musidaBs, and even a troupe of singing Mexicans. The
148 * ALL AT SEA
entertainment below decks, informal and continual, has attracted
a stream of visitors in evening dress from first-class quarters. While
the swells have been slumming, enterprising members of third
class have gone stepping to see how the other half lives upstairs.
The good Atlantic air is a tonic to all hands the next day. One
has nothing else to do but collapse, semi-extended, in a deck chair,
wrapped up against the chill winds in a gay plaid blanket. For
further insulation the deck steward appears at eleven with bouillon
and at four in the afternoon with tea and cakes. If a man is either
lazy or tired, and I am both, there is nothing to do while sipping
the bouillon but contemplate lunch; nothing to do while sipping
the tea but contemplate dinner. If the dinner jacket needs a brush-
ing the room steward will take care of it. He even puts the studs
in the shirt. He doesn't polish your shoes, however. There is a
special man who does nothing else. If this is what they mean by
going to sea I don't blame Columbus.
The Lamest Fireproof Aspidistra
in the World
WE WERE AMONG THE TWELVE HUNDRED MALE STALWARTS WHO
traveled down to Newport News, Virginia, to sail back to New
York aboard the SS United States on its shakedown run, and it
was a trip that will live long in our memory. As we climbed the
long wooden staircase, bag in hand, she stood waiting for us at
her roadstead, that Saturday night, twinkling in the blackness like
a well-groomed date.
THE LARGEST FIHEPBOOF ASPIDISTRA * 149
The ship stirred before we did the next morning, and long
before we were on deck she was octt to sea, sailing a big U-shaped
course on her way to Gotham and a mammoth welcome. We spent
Sunday finding out that she is nine hundred and ninety feet tong,
which is somewhat less than the Queen Mary or the Queen Eliza-
beth. A few feet longer, however, and she couldn't slide through
the Panama Canal, a trick she may have to perform in case she
is transformed into a troopship during a war. At fifty-three thou-
sand, three hundred tons she is also considerably Kilter than tbe
eighty-thousand-ton Queens, principally because the btiUdm went
bog wild in the use of aluminum.
She has two aluminum funnels, one miEioo, two hundred and
fifty thousand aluminum rivets, twelve hundred aluminum deck
chairs, and an uncounted collection of aluminum sfaeffleboarf
pushers. Tbe shuffleboards, however, proved to be wood, a dis-
concerting note as presailing publicity avidly pointed out that the
only wood on the ship was in the butchers' blocks and the piano.
Even the orchestras' batons, an eager publicity man stressed, are
made of aluminum, inspiring a notion from Mr. Robert Co&sMine
that some mighty nasty fires had started in batons. He was last seee
descending to the ship's library to see if it wasn't a spark in a
baton that started the blaze aboard the General Slocum.
The United States is the largest ship in the world to be com-
pletely air-conditioned and she is also tbe most expensive tub
ever built. Probably she is also the safest and fastest passenger
liner around. As f or the air-conditioning, every cabin has & and
you can pick your temperature from an individual control ewe
if you're traveling steerage. As for the money, the tab caiae to
seventy-three million dollars, whkh Uncle Sugar and the United
States Lines split. Uncle came up with an eightetawoaillioQ-ctollar
chit as a subsidy and an extra twenty-seven million dollars for
defense features incorporated into the ship; the line paid the other
twenty-eight million dollars. This produced quite some bellowing
from both tbe President and the Comptroller General, wbo felt
that the citizens got something of a hosing in this contract On
the other hand Secretary Sawyer and the United States Lines both
say a contract is a contact and if the government made a lousy
erne, they should be stock with it jest Hfce anybody else.
Much of the money doubtless went into expensive safety factors
150 * ALL AT SEA
and into the engines which, it has been darkly whispered, are
capable of pushing the ship through the Atlantic faster than any
other liner. She carries two thousand passengers and one thousand
crew members as things stand, but she could transport five thou-
sand soldiers without converting, and about fourteen thousand or
close to a full division, with some changes. Moreover she can ride
ten thousand miles without stopping for gas, and her double hull
will leave all but the sharpshootingest enemy submarine com-
mander completely frustrated.
But judging her as a transport for tourists, which is more in the
purview of this department, her decorative scheme seems unimagi-
native, unrepresentative of a national or an individual personality.
No brilliant force shines through the expensive, utilitarian insti-
tutionality which she exudes. William Francis Gibbs, the ship's
designer, who has been responsible for some of our renowned war-
ships, has said that there was no compromise between Navy speci-
fications and commercial, or passenger, appeal. "This was not
supposed to be a fancy ship," Gibbs told the New York Herald
Tribune. "Her simplicity is much more attractive to Americans,
The difference between this vessel and a fancy ship is similar to
the difference between a modem, efficient yet comfortable Pullman
car and the old-fashioned, ornate Pullmans of a half a century ago."
There are some sprightly exceptions aboard the ship. The obser-
vation lounge has been done in a daring combination of blues and
green with metallic-threaded draperies to match, and a blue and
green chart that shows the currents with gleaming golden arrows.
A small first-class cocktail lounge has been decorated by Peter
Ostuni with striking reproductions in enamel on copper of Navajo
sand paintings. There is an a la carte restaurant for those who have
no cares about extra charges and prefer not to worry about time.
Enlarged snowflake designs gleam from dark walls. There is a
smoking room, a lounge, and a dining salon for each of the three
classes.
Indeed, there are some handsome staterooms and suites espe-
cially around the rim of the upper deck, and all rooms in first and
cabin class have their own enclosed bath. The inside rooms in first
and cabin class have been done in neutral shades with a bright
bedspread to provide the color, and Pullman berths which come
THE LARGEST FIBEPBOOF ASPIDIST & 151
out of the ceiling should things get crowded. In case you're cu-
rious, a first-class berth to Le Havre aboard the United Slates in
the off-season will leave you lighter by three hundred and sixty
dollars. Cabin class starts at two hundred and twenty-seven dollars
and fifty cents and tourist, where the bath is in the hall, at one
hundred and seventy dollars.
Undoubtedly it is the size and speed of the United States that
has taken the country's fancy. After afl t we last captoed the Blue
Ribbon of the Atlantic in August, 1852, and a hundred years is
a long time to be out of the league. Ask the Pittsbtur^i Pirate, The
title was delivered by the side-wheeler Baltic of the Coffins Lfee
which sloshed the water east to west in nine days and thirteen
hours, averaging thirteen and thirty-four ocie-fatiiidredtfas knots
an hour. She snapped the record of the Cunardor AMa f and lidkl
it until 1863. Our last champion weighed in at three thousand toss
and cost eight hundred thousand dollars.
Whatever greeting the Baltic received when she paddle-wheeled
up New York harbor, it was a popgun in a camioeade to what
wont cm the morning the United States eased up the Hudson. When
we stumbled up on deck still munching a breakfast biscuit we
f ound two gray destroyers in front of us and two bringing up the
rear. A flotilla of small craft surrounded us ike fleas around a dog,
and when the fleas beeped three tinaes, the dog bellowed a low
and mighty roar. Off the port side McAUteter Tug #44 and the
tugs Grace McAllister and Charles D. McAUi&er executed a
schottische in the sea. A green tug called the C. H&fwml Mejadfc
had a buffet table spread on the aft deck and two waiters in tuxedos
were serving liquid breakfast to the early morning greetors wiio
had come up tbe bay. There were pungi boats ia with a catch of
flounder, poigy, and cod; a steamer, the Amencma* loaded wkh
twenty-four hundred members of the Propeller dub.
The din was mounting. "It would be quieter if they aH seat
telegrams/* a man from the cable company said. The Seas beeped
and the dog bellowed and a steward wearing a disptteii ease over
his shoulder marched up and down shouting, **Mr. MacKoazfc,
Mr. Rollins, Congressman Short, Senator Tofoey, Mr. Ryan **
A jet screamed out of the cesMoo of the gray cotton sky. A pair
of police department flying boats lumbered over. Police helicopters
floated overhead. It occurred to us that the City erf New York could
152 ALL AT SEA
have licked the City of Venice when that metropolis was in its
truculent heyday. The fireboats moved in, throwing a spray that
looked a miniature and mobile Versailles. The beeping and the
bellowing came almost without pause now. "Does this remind you
of the Chesapeake and Ohio rolling down the valleys?" a man
asked Thomas Deegan, who is vice-president of that railroad.
"Hell," said the tartan-capped Mr. Deegan, "this ship has let off
enough steam to run the C. and O. for a week."
On the enclosed prom deck the full Meyer Davis orchestra was
playing a loud but danceable score from The King and L The
whistles shuddered against the window panes. As we edged toward
the pier, the band of the Merchant Marine Academy on the open
end of the dock began to play. The steward with the dispatch case
picked his way through the men, the musicians, and the luggage.
"Mr. MacKenzie, Mr. Rollins, Congressman Short, Senator Tobey,
Mr. Ryan," he shouted. We approached him. "Do you have tele-
grams for them?" we asked. "No they sent telegrams and each of
'em owes me four dollars and fifty cents," he said.
With the gangplank in place an eighty-piece band from the
New York City Fire Department, drawn up at the dockside, began
its own symphonic rendition, Meyer Davis notwithstanding, of the
score from The King and I. The twelve hundred males, many of
whom had lost a week-end somewhere at sea, began filtering off the
ship. We worked our way, bag in hand, out to the street feeling a
little weary. There was a big crowd out there, held back by police-
men. "Who are those men who were on the boat?" a little girl
asked her mother, as we came by. "Diplomats," the lady said
uncertainly.
CHIHESE HO LIKE CHEESE * 153
Chinese Nc Like Cheese
STANDING UNDER THE FORT WING OF THE BRIDGE AND WATCHING
the phosphorescent excitement of San Francisco glow against the
autumn sky, you could hear the low, sure voice of the skipper,
Captain Joseph Cox. "Slow astern port," it said quietly. Tbeie
was the sound of a bell as the order went along the drip's tdb-
graph. "Slow astern starboard." Then, "Half astern both esgiaes.**
"Full astern starboard." Finally we had backed away bcm the
pier, and were heading forward. We slipped past Coit Tower, slid
under the Golden Gate Bridge (strung with amber shirting stones),
and headed into the Pacific.
Assuming that the skipper got good marks in arithmetic, we
are cutting up the North Pacific, two days cmt erf Yokofama.
This is a cruise ship and a passenger transport. It means busi-
ness and pleasure. There are those on board wiio have come to
enjoy the sun of the southern route, and we have had <fey after
day of it, the pool full of swimmers through this whole final week
of November. But there is also the Lutheran missionary going
to Kowloon who reads each day from his Bible printed in Chinese.
There is the Episcopal missionary going back to Japan wifa his
wife and four children. And there is also his bishop, who is Japa-
nese. There is the young Congre^tionalist with wife, two e&idi%
and another on the way, going to Hong Kong after eighteen months
under the Communists on the mainland. He had masteied Man-
darin, but now he has to learn Cantonese, and between games of
deck tennis he has whittled away at a Cantonese primer pebiished
by the Harvard University Press for just such
Returning from a higjh time in Europe is the weB-fed German
and his wife who run a restaurant in Manila, and who are care-
fully avoided by the members of the American Manila colony
sailing home after a summer m the Sales. The cooperative spirit
of the Axis partners is remembered with ustempered bitterness.
154 ALL AT SEA
Looking down toward the fantail, you can always get a view of the
Sikhs sitting on the benches there, their faces crowned with turbans
and underscored with a beard.
Then there are the neat, pretty Army wives off to join their
husbands on alien shores, especially the happy little blonde from
Tampa who has crossed a continent and a great sea to spend a
two-week furlough with her husband, a surgeon in Korea. "If he
doesn't make it, I'll just see Japan, that's all." And the Orientals
smile faintly and say, "Ah, so," just like in the movies, and the
matrons from Chicago, going around the world on a tour, buzz
and purr and strut oif around the promenade deck where twelve
laps make a mile.
We have had our days here on the President Wilson. Like the
one when the three-year-old Army brat pulled the white spade
beard of the Reverend C. J. Beurms of Belgium, thirty-two years
in the Philippines, and said, "I know who you are, you're Santa
Claus!" There was the night of the gala gymkhana when three
passengers were called out on the floor, given a saltine and a piece
of cheese, told to start eating at the first signal, and the first man
to whistle is the winner. The contestants proved to be the Canadian
consul-general to the Philippines, a six-foot-five-inch Scotsman
selling housewares in the Far East, and a five-foot Chinese who is
assistant chief of police in Singapore. The chief brought down the
house when he said, "Chinese no like cheese." But he nibbled the
cracker all right, and when he was through he barked like a dog,
because apparently Chinese don't whistle either.
There was that wonderful day in Hawaii, five days out of San
Francisco, when the President Wilson edged up to the dock to the
music of the Royal Hawaiian band and Hawaiians came on board
and kissed us and put leis around our necks. We walked off the
gangplank up to our ears in orchids and heady with the carnations
which had been scented with a strange oriental fragrance.
Then we swam at Waikiki, rode the waves to shore in an out-
rigger canoe, had the magnificent buffet on the lanai of the Royal
Hawaiian Hotel while the warm sun burned our backs. We saw
the town, bought coconut hats, had lobster tails at Don the Beach-
comber's, and when we went back to the ship there were hula
girls on the dock, music of guitars and ukuleles. We threw
CHINESE HO LIKE CHEESE * 155
streamers to friends cm the quay and held them tiU the ship moved
away and the paper snapped. Then we took off our leis, tossed
them over the side, and watched them drop gently cm the water.
And so we were assured of coming back, which is tommyrot if you
are crass and lovely if you are sentimental.
The next morning the ship was bkxnnmg with the fruits of
Hawaii. The chrysanthemums of the Calif bmia autumn were gone.
Now OQ every dining-room tabfe there were bouquets of orchid
sprays, stalks of red ginger, red and green crotoa leaves, and scarlet
anthurium. The menus blossomed with fried maM-mahi and fresh
Hawaiian mackerel, Hawaiian pineapple fritters with white wiae
foam sauce.
Cruising began in earnest. Invitations to join the Ping-pong,
shuffieboard, deck golf, and deck tennis tournaments appeared on
the bulletin board. People stayed up on deck for lunch, faces
turned red and healthy from the Pacific sun. Tfaeiie wane movies
every few nights, and on the last Saturday before Yokohama tibone
was a giant costume ball, followed by a show, followed by hang-
overs, followed by bloody marys and other sure-cures. Sunday
arrived gentle and peaceful. In the afternoon, when we migjbt
otherwise have been walking the heir in the park, we fotuxl our-
selves in the forward lounge of the President Wilson listening to
the ship's orchestra do pleasant things with the score from South
Pacific while the Pacific rose and fell easily, like a matron's bosom.
Invitations to private cocktail parties appeared under the door
each morning as surely as the electric biH comes each montlt. CM-
chi people had them printed by the ship's typesetter. If a man
wasn't careful he could eat six times a day, and there were notices
passed around by American President Lines that room service at
no charge was available twenty-four hours a day. Fifty iems appear
on the average dinner menu. When we wane stffl near the West
Coast you would find native things Mfce Oregon cheddar and Mon-
terey Jack. Now, off Japan, there has been an outbceakiiig of
umeboshi, which are pickled phims; tokuwm* which are pickled
turnips; fukuzin wke, or Japanese relish; sod fried Japanese
prawns with shayu sauce, which couM burn a hole through granite.
You could have your choice of nearly sixty things for breakfast,
and I have liked them all except Toadied Pickted Salmon Beffies
156 - ALL AT SEA
in Cream or Drawn Butter/' which, with singular inappropriate-
ness, appeared on the card the morning after the big gala night.
Some nights the stewards have prepared Italian dinners for indi-
vidual tables, which were covered with gingham cloths, the
passengers with gingham bibs. The Japanese, meanwhile, were
given charcoal braziers and they prepared their own sukiyaki right
at the table. The North Atlantic was never like this.
THE U.S.A. AND
CANADA
Lay That Water Pistcl Down
MJLBIE
WE TOOK OUR FIRST TRIP FREE OF OUR PARENTS' LEASH WHEN Wl
were nine, boarding the special train at Grand Central Station for
Kamp Kohut in Oxford, Maine. We went back to camp for a
good many summers after that, and although we were kter asso-
ciated in one way or another with a number of other institutions
none left us with so many memories.
We have, to be sure, long since grown out of CHIT Hoe shorts
with the red stripe down the side, but camp fever in the form erf an
acute nostalgia still hits us when each new summer rolls around.
This year we decided to take the situation by the boras, and after
a consultation with the directorate we appeared at Grand Centml
on the last day of June, bag in hand, to ricie the camp train op
to Maine.
Following instructions we descended to the tower level of the
depot, and there, east of the information counter, we found a sign
reading "Camp Kohut Meets Here." At Koto vktealy all tite
words that Webster commences with a *V* are spelled with an
alliterative "k," and accordingly the printed V m camp fatd teem
crossed out and a "k" was added in pencil.
First man we spotted was Mr. Harry J. Kngel, one of the dfec-
tors, a short, bald, erudite gentleman who speaks m biirsts of
polished, academic English. The **k w with which fais name begins
is coincidental rather than coofoonatim "If s proely a matte of
reflex," Mr- Kugel told os when we noted that lie looked busy.
I've been going up for forty-six years," lie said. "Yesstr, every
year since 1909, excepting one year erf absence spent in service
abroad,"
160 THE XT.S.A. AND CANADA
A cluster of parents, their offspring in tow, had gathered around
a bouncy man in a brown glen-plaid suit and a white sport shirt
open at the collar. He turned out to be Harry Reder, an associate
of Mr. Kugers, Little fellow in a blue cap with two red "kY* on it
said, "Hiya, Mr. Reder, what caramyin?" "Ask Mr. Kugel," he
said, "he's got the train assignments."
Then Mr. Reder turned to greet two parents. "He's all yours,"
the mother said to him, pushing forward a small boy who was
carrying a fishing rod, a tennis racket, six comic books, and a box
from Schrafft's. "WeTI do well by him," Reder assured the couple
aiKi turned to a father who was handing him a doctor's prescrip-
tion. "Put this in your pocket," the man told Reder, "they're
Stuart's instructions," 'Til put these with the other twenty," Reder
told us s&tto voce, meanwhile pulling a handful of notes and en-
velopes half out of his pocket. Lady bustled up and said, "These
two boxes have to go CHI ice immediately, Warren gets two of
these every " "Come on over with me, I want you to give these
to the nurse," said Reder, disappearing in the jungle of suitcases,
golf clubs, ball bats, parents, grandparents, fishing tackle, and
campers.
A bey carrying a bow and arrow tugged at our coat and said,
"You a junior counselor?" We said "No," thanked him warmly,
and sidled up to a clump of parents and children, where we
recorded the following assorted bits of conversation:
a He gives an eight-year-old a bloody nose, that's a real accom-
"You catch this year, Buster, you catch!"
"I would certainly like to meet his counselor."
"Waddabuneha newcomers!*'
"You're getting lipstick all over my face."
"Isn't Ed Radbell here this season?"
"You ain't goin' to sing this year, are you, Buzzy?"
A counselor with a crew cut shouted, "All right, Kohut, let's
move," and after considerable kissing all around, the campers and
coimselors with a few parents still tagging along began to move
toward the train gates. We hung back and watched them trudge
along the platform. Their legs became obscured by the baggage
LAY THAT WATEB PISTOL BOWH 16!
wagons, and soon they looked like an animated battalion of cfotib-
cased fishing rods and golf clubs maichiag along.
The procession trooped past a girf s camp ("This is Fernwood,**
a young Amazon told us), past a lady with a suitcase who was
looking for the train to Pougfakeepsie, and came to rest is from
of a string of darkened cars. After the campers bad been pet
aboard we followed Reder inside the cars. We'd no moce than
burst through the door before we were ambushed by a boy wiio
said, "Mr. Reder, I've been coming to this camp for two years
and Fve had an upper every time/' "You've got a good argument
there," Reder told him. "But wait a minute, the way Mr. Ktigd
works this out if you get a lower going up you get an upper ccwakg
home." "But Mr. Reder," the bay persisted, "I've oftwyj- had an
upper both ways. "Then you've got a great argument there, fella,
great argument," Reder told him and slapped hkn on the back.
With Reder leading the way we ducked into Drawing Room A
in Car J, which turned out to be the command post. Inside we
found Mr. Kugel, Mr. MacCormick, the bead counselor, and a
number of group leaders. The problem up for discussion was being
offered by a counselor named Bert, who said that he had two kkfa
who said they get sick in uppers. 'The way to do that, if you wil,
sir," offered Kugel, who was sitting by the window with a lapfal
of diagrams, "is to take Robert Lee out of Upper 4 in Car M and
put him in Lower 8 Car J. Take Bensinger oat of Lower 8 Car J
and put him in Upper 4 Car M. Now, wait, please, who is going
to effect that change?" "What's the change?" asked a cOTnselor .
"That's Lee from M4U to J8L and Bensinger from J8L fa M4U, W
said Kugel. The men started to move toward the door.
"Gentlemen, before you leave," said Rector, takmg the loor,
"Mac is going to give out a list of instructions OB what to do M
camp. See that the other men read it. Secondly, I have a fat of
bunk assignments in camp. Don't give them out tooigbt because
youll get a lot of griping. Thirdly, k>ofc through every berth after
we arrive in the morning and throw everything off the tad. Also,
remember that homesickness starts on the train. Send some of the
older boys through. Ill make a round of the cars myself k a few
minutes. All ri^it, gentlemen, thank you very much. Stay with us,
now, fellas." The counselors moved toward the door and Kugel
started to pill up the window shade. "From all indications," be
162 * THE 0.S.A, AND CANADA
began, **w are by now . . Oh, my, we're still in the upper
Bronx,** he said and slammed down the shade.
A sliort time later we accepted Mr. Reder's invitation to accom-
pany Mm on his tour of the train, and soon we were plowing south
through a lash forest of feet that grew in profusion from the green
Pullman draperies. We met a stout lad named Herbert, who was
chewing an enormous wad of gum and clutching nine comic books;
collected seven gum drops, four chocolate kisses, two lady-fingers,
and three cinnamon Life Savers; found a ukulele in every car; and
heard a boy say: "Another year without fireworks because of the
lousy state law."
We ducked into a smoking room to collect our notes and we
weren't there two minutes, relaxing, when a boy came in with the
biggest damn water gun we ever saw. He was followed by another
camper aimed with a pistol who let us have a spray riht in the
kisser from ten f eet out "Are you the new group leader, by any
chance?** the one with the happy trigger finger asked us. We said,
"No,** and he said, **Thank God; we don't want to go around here
hitting new grodp teaders.**
la the meanwhile two other pistol-toters had barricaded them-
selves ia the kvatoy. The lad with the huge water pistol it was
shaped like a Thompson machine gun and was only slightly smaller
sat on the black leather sofa near me and sent sprays winging
through the ventilator, drenching the men locked inside the toilet.
The pistol-toter sallied back and forth, shooting through the ven-
tilator from close in, then retreating to refuel Every now and then
the besiegers sent a barrage of laden water cups against the venti-
lator screen, but the men who held the men's room failed to sur-
render. One of the attackers chanced to look up on the wall. "Oh,
a fire extinguisher," he said with exultation.
We dashed outside and down the corridor, heading for the
sanctuary of L9U, where Kugel had put us for the night. Local
skinnistes ranged far into the night as the train grumbled into New
England. Couple of times a counselor shouted, "All right, sack
down out there." They sacked down for a while, but the excitement
of the impending arrival burst all restraining bonds along about
four forty-five in the morning. We rose early, not vary bright, and
ONE-HOSS SASHAY * 163
waited for two hours until the train finally pulled into the station
in Maine.
Later that morning, safe ia camp, the boys made up their bunks
and then trooped into the assembly hall for the first meeting.
"People came to me during the winter," Reder wts telling them
when we tiptoed in, "and said, 'Mr. Reder, last year was the year.
Best time we ever had.' We all had a good time last year, that's true,
but it was not a peppy camp. This year I want action* AtmoH.
And I'm going to spell it out in great big letters.* 5 Sbottly there-
after we witnessed a general stampede for the baH diamonds the
likes of which has not been heard since buffalo ronmed the prairie.
As for us, we retired to our tent to sack down, perchaiiee to dram,
One- Hess Sashay
PHOENIX, AEIZON A
THE WRANGLER WHO BOOIS THE FILMS AT THE T BAR T THEATER
in nearby Scottsdate could hardly have picked a more dioice ten
than the current offering, Crazy Over Horses. Thfc corner of the
Union, to put it so that no one misraderstaids, is absolutely psy-
chotic over horses, and that especially goes for Jim Fiedeodfs
Auto Livery Stable, a local gas station, and the One-Buck Barber
Shop in Wickenberg.
A near-crisis developed recently at Oee-B^cik, w&eie tie wia-
dow is decorated with a backing bfoco, wfaea ffee jprioB of haircuts
went from erne buck to oae buck and a qoarter. The ecpestrian-
minded tonsorial artist maintained the local theme and his reputa-
tion for accuracy by ackiug sfcetdbes of two liooes* fete to the
window.
The most popular mode of conveyance hereabouts not iadod-
164 THE U.S.A. AND CANADA
ing the hocse, which is used more for recreation than utility is the
station wagon. Virtually aU wagons are embossed on the door panel
with the name of the ranch to which they belong. One unaffiliated
and self-cotiscious wagon carries the legend, "Got No Rancho."
Another, whose owner Is devoid but aspiring, states, "No Rancho
Yetto."
Most of the local gentry, whether they ride station wagons or
bracking broiicos, have adopted the raiment perfected by that
whirlwind of the purple sage, H. Cassidy. This involves, first off,
the hat with the outsized brim and, by day, levis, known in the
ontlands as blue jeans. Shirts for both male and female are rather
tightly fitted, are frequently patterned in stripes, and are decorated
with dozens of pearl snaps. For ties the men wear little string jobs,
although recently there has been a movement toward a device of
short leather braids caught at the collar by a clasp of silver set
with a turquoise stone. This new motif in cravats is so far the sole
creation of one artisan near Wickenburg who dispenses the item at
nine dollar and fifty cents each.
Ladies, regardless of whether they are only recently displaced
from Buzzards Bay or Minneapolis, wear finely tailored frontier
pants, spiked boots, or hand-sewn, soft squaw boots. There is a
fiwly market, too, at Porter's or Gene Autry's, stores in Phoenix
given over boot and saddle to the sale of Western paraphernalia,
m slip-over squaw blouses with silver buttons, and squaw dresses.
A fancy evening party, like an early spring sun on tulip bulbs,
brings forth a whole crop of Indian jewelry, which Arizona women
wear cm their ears, throats, fingers, and arms. Although Indian-
ware may be dismissed as costume jewelry by the unknowing
visitor, Porter's sell ordinary Navajo squash blossom necklaces for
two hundred dollars, black inlaid work by the Zunis for four hun-
dred dollars, and other Indian embellishments for as high as one
thousand dollars. Men also wear Indian jewelry, and no small
advertisement for Navajo work is a turquoise and silver ring the
size of a half a dollar which Governor Howard Pyle sports on his
third finger left hand.
The governor said he got it from a young man who came to
Arizona to die. Pyle used to sit with the boy cheering him up. Fre-
quently he would admire the sick man's ring. The man promised
to gjve it to Pyle when he died. A year later the sick man recovered
ONE-HOSS SJLSHItY - 185
in the Arizona sunshine, walked into Pyfe's office one day, and put
the ring on the governor's desk. "When you kkk off,** the cured
man said, "I want it back."
The Navajos used to make silver ornaments for their cm
amusement, shaping it from United States silver currency. Whoa
the mint raised an objection, the Indians switched to Mexican
pesos, and finally to raw Mexican silver. One of the rarest Indian
ornaments is sets of silver tinklers called Mother-in-law Bells, stfll
to be found on infrequent occasions in the pawnshop. Hammered
down from silver United States quarters, the bdls were sewn by
Indian women into their sashes. According to a Navajo custom
that may yet be adopted by the white man, braves wero not sup-
posed to see their mothers-in-law, and the belte warned of the
women's approach.
With silver and turquoise on every pinky, the toa-galaa bat on
every head, and the ranch brand as the favorite decorative motif,
Southwestiana invades every facet of life. The Wkketibiirg Stm? m
newspaper whose byword is "All the News That Fits," writes ki
cowboy slang and prints its headlines in old circus type. On the
day that I arrived there with a group of other journalists Sown to
Phoenix by Trans- World Airlines, the Sim broke out a full-page
streamer headline which read:
DEADLINE FUGITIVES
COME A VISITOR
Up Our Way. Tbey
Should Have Pknty To Write Abotit
When They Get Back To Their
Frigid Homes
The Sun advises in a masthead box that it is circulated *tfaroiigfo-
out Wickenburg, West Central Arizona, Thirty-Eight States,
Canada, and South Wales."
The entire back page of the Sun in the issue dedicated to our
arrival was taken by a full-page advertisement of Brayton's general
store on Frontier Street, an emporium which dispetises SkmsliHie
Krispy Crackers and dynamite stkfcs with equal geniality. While
it attends the needs of the housewife used to the seal-p@ced, handy-
package ways of the East, Brayton's also keeps a pair of scales on
166 THE 0.S.A. AND CANADA
band on which It weighs the gold dust of bearded miners who still
pan the streams and pick at the nearby hills. The gold is assessed
and packed off to the San Francisco mint, and credit for the miner
goes on the store's books.
Wkkenburg's ranches, except for one magnificent expanse of
|Jass, whitewash, and modern desert design known as Los Cabal-
feos, are inclined to be less formal, less elegant, and less expensive
than the resorts of the Phoenix area, fifty-four miles away.
Remoda Ranch, which opened in the Twenties and was the first
m Wickenburg, now the Dude Ranch Capital of the World, main-
tains such standard Wickenburg equipment as a rodeo field and a
Wtoe-tinted, heated swimming pool. Like other local ranches, it
oifers the standard recreational equipment of resorts anywhere,
but specializes m such Western embellishments as breakfast and
niocmiigfat rides and chuck-wagon picnics held in the desert in the
shade of the tall sagoaro cactus. Barbecued spareribs and grilled
steaks are the favorites for these meals in the mesquite, and the
cowboys dish up pinto beans and Dutch oven biscuits made in the
open fee. Btae gambel quail rustle through the arid underbrush,
and an occasional deer floats across the brown earth. In spring the
btig|y-whif> cactus blooms with bright flowers on the ends of its
slender tips, and the hedgehog cactus bestows orchidlike blossoms
of deep red and yellow. At eventide the still of the desert is pierced
with the eerie shriek of birds. Some say the scream is the call of
tiie cactus swallow; others insist it is the cry of a guest who has just
received his bill.
Actually Wickenburg guests have little to scream about. The six
ranches in the environs charge a minimum of about fourteen dol-
lars a day single and twenty-five dollars a day double, American
plan, a fee that includes three meals and all facilities not excepting
riding. Phoenix, cm the other hand, offers a collection of luxury
resorts scattered in the suburbs of the city. Horses are on hand but
there is no pretense at ranching, A prime example of the sybaritic
Southwest is a retreat called the Casa Blanca, which makes a
conscious effort to live up to its name with an immense white
minaret rising up from the desert flats, and a white Moorish wall
sttrrotmdiiig the lush green court around which its rooms are strung.
Outside the walls is a stable with pink doors; inside the guest rooms
CHE-BOSS SJLSEJLY * 167
are separate closets for riding habits which might still be reminis-
cent of horses. On the reservation is a landing strip for those who
come in private planes. For bourgeois travelers without private
planes TWA will have you in Phoenix in ten boors &om the East
Coast, six hours from Chicago at Kansas City, and two hours finds
Los Angeles.
Resorts lite Casa Blanca and the swank adobe social reservation
known as Camelback Inn facing Camelback Mountain extract a
fee of some twenty-five dollars a day per person, anywhere from
thirty-six to fifty dollars a day for two. But the rows of orange
trees, the branches sagging with grapefruit, the fields of cotton,
and the fantastic sunsets belong to everyone, even to those who stay
at motor courts, a thriving Phoenix development. Some, Kkc the
Circle K, have blessed themselves with horsey names. Others Bfce
the Stagecoach Motel offer double room, private bath, aad kitchen-
ette for eleven dollars a night complete. Western Village has tbkk-
carpeted sleeping rooms with wood-burning fireplaces at nine dol-
lars a night, offers TV in the patio, an open-air swimming pool. A
radio show is broadcast from its dining room daily. Even m the
scorching summer heat Western Village has been running utoety-
seven per cent foil.
Phoenix, which was first settled by the Hohokam Indians, now
has a bustling population of two hundred and twenty-five thousand.
The city and the Valley of the Sun which surrorods it claim an
average of two hundred and thirty clear days a year, a figure which
compares favorably with a well-advertised metropolis m southern
California (one hundred and eighty-one days) and a ceftaki nesort
in Florida (erne hundred days). For Phoenix and its vaiey, wMdi
has shown a seventy-seven per cent increase in population since
the 1940 census, a little Hofaokam and a tot of sraishitae fase gone
a long way.
188 THE 0.S.A. AMD CANADA
Garden ef Grapes
EDGARTOWN, MARTHA S VINEYARD
BLUFFING AND RUSTICATING REALLY MADE A RESORT OUT OF
Martha's Vineyard. The Methodists came to rusticate and the
younger folks to bluff which meant walking with a girl along the
bluffs. In between times the Methodists took to religion. They first
began holding their big camp meetings in 1835, setting up tents in
a grand circle around the prayer grounds. But the cool winds off
the sea must have chilled the marrow of many a Methodist, for soon
slats appeared to augment the canvas tents. In time tents became
bungalows and the village took the name of Cottage City.
In those days the big industry on the island was whaling, but the
Civil War put a crimp in commerce. Besides, a good whale was
becoming hard to find, and the market in whale oil was hit by the
mtroductkxi of a new product mineral oil. It was for those gen-
eral reasons that Martha's Vineyard slipped gently from whales to
vistors. Not that it has ever lost its insularity. There are at least
six families on the island who have been there for more than three
hundred years. The Vineyard telephone directory still lists eight
Peases, thirty-three Mortons, eleven Vincents, and seventeen May-
tews. It was Thomas Mayhew who bought Nantucket, Martha's
Vineyard, and a few lesser islands for two hundred dollars in 1 641,
which is about the cost of a two weeks' stay on the Vineyard now-
adays. Mayfaew had a daughter or a wife named Martha, some
sources say. About the grapes, the early settlers reported "incredi-
ble" stores of them growing wild so that 4t we could not proceed
for treading on them." Some wild-grape jelly is made on the island,
but no attempt has ever been made at exploitation, the world of
the billboard and the copywriter being absolutely incompatible with
pleasant living in the minds of the Vineyard people.
Martha's Vineyard is more than twenty miles long and Man-
hattan island if dropped on top would hardly reach from the
fishing village of Menemsha to the old whaling settlement of Edgar-
GARDEN OF GHAPES ' 169
town. The old blubber berth h no less touristy these dap tfaan the
Champs lys6es in July, in a salt~and~sea-air sect of way, of coone,
There is, in the first place, the handsome Harborskle Hotel, which,
as you may gather, sits by the side of Edgartown harbor. la eSbet,
it is a collection of old homes that once belonged to wtefing cap-
tains the Captain Tristam Ripley House built in I860, the
Chappaquiddiek House of Captain John Fisher, and tfae Captain
Thomas Milton House built in 1840 aad shaded now by a Chinese
pagoda tree the skipper brought home from the Orient is a flower
pot. Added to the main house is a brand-new dining room fmmcd
with picture windows, with a sundeck built cm top. The view gives
out on Harborside's harbor and its thirty sailboats, aD for hiie, and
on its magnificent gardens, which are all the talk of the island
ladies. Its lettuce-sized roses have made such a hit that tlie botd
now keeps an expert gardener cm the permanent payroll Said be
on viewing a deep red rose early this summer, "Why, damn yo
you were supposed to be pink/*
Few: a swim Harborside's guests may jump off the deep end of
the dock, take the five-minute ferry to Chappaquiddick Maud, or
a twenty-minute car ride to magnificent South Beach, a great stretch
of sand sixteen miles long. To be sure, there is bottom fishing and
surf fishing, not to mention gravestone-reading in the old cemetery
nearby. Of all the rhymes chipped into the headstoiaes of the ancient
mariners and their kin, islanders like best to chuckle orcr one tablet
in particular, which bears the legend:
Here lies the body of our beloved Charlotte
Born a virgin, died a harlot,
For sixteen years she kept her virginity
Which is a very good record for this vidbity.
For a sturdy roof over your head, three meals a day, aad the
easy island life, Harborside extracts from twelve to twenty dollars
a person until Labor Day, twelve to sixteen dollars a day uetil
September 12, the aid of the season. Its rates compare with Harbor
View Hotel, which overlooks the lighthouse at Stobuck's Neck.
Once a famous hostelry, the Harbor View has been almost com-
pletely overhauled. I say almost in deference to the veteran patron
170 * THE 0.8*&. AHD CANADA
who refused to have her old room modernized in any way. There
is something vary explicit about the names of the hotels on Martha's
Vineyard. Harbor View Hotel definitely has a broad view of the
harbor, m& to mention the lighthouse, which stands at the entrance
to Edpurtown. It also boasts its own beach on a private sand bar
in front of the hotel. Not only is the Harbor View the largest hotel
on the island ((me hundred rooms), an auspicious note of singu-
larity in itsetf, but also it lists among its stockholders Miss Emily
Post, aa island resident. Her home is nearby and contains, like
book ends of the ages, a widow's walk crowned with a television
aerial.
Cottage City, which, as I say, really started bringing the tourists
to Martha's Vineyard, is still thriving. Long ago it changed its name
to Oak Bluffs, bet the camp-meeting grounds are still there, four
of than now Trinity Park, Washington Park, Forest Circle, and
Montgomery Square. Each has a perimeter of wood cottages all
trmuied gingerbread fashion. In the center is the tabernacle for
the prayer meetings* Next to the last Wednesday every August is
nitnaination Nigbt, wfaea the cottages are festooned with strings of
Chinese lantern, many of them handed down as family heirlooms.
Oak Bluffs has a wide assortment of lower-priced accommoda-
tioasy and you can get a double room in town for thirty dollars
a week. Atkjs0gh a shore dinner at the Oak Bluffs Lobster House
would cofc about four dollars and fifty cents, there are a number
of places in town serving average dinners for one dollar and a half.
For anyone who wants no golf, no tennis, no juke boxes, no
huriy, no btniy, I would suggest the Stony Squaw Inn at Gay Head,
which is eighteen miles from everything else. Run by Viola Mac-
Diarmkl, who is indeed an authentic squaw, though not at all stony,
the inn has no more than seven double rooms. When the mood
strikes hear, Mrs. MacEfermid spins her potter's wheel CHI the porch,
fashioning the Gay Head day into an assortment of jars and bowk.
It is hardly a five-minute walk to the day cliffs which rear up,
multicolored, from the edge erf the sea. Gay Head clay is found in
black, red, gray, and yellow, with occasionally a petrified shark's
tooth or a whale bone mixed in proof enough, they say, that the
cliffs were thrown up by some undersea volcanic eruption.
Train travelers coming up from the East will find that the New
Havm Raflimd runs ri$it up to dockslde at Woods Hole, whence
WILLIAMFB0BG IH THE FPBIWG * 171
a ferry will whip them across the water. Northeast Airlines ffies
from New York and Boston, landing at Edgartown Airport
Should you be coming up in your own car youH find the roads
good, the routes well mariced, and an unpleasant surprise awaking
you in Woods Hole. The round-trip fare for two persons and one
car on the island ferry comes to twenty-six dollars and shdy cents.
It was formerly a practice to charge an extra dollar each way for a
reservation. There are those who say that the summer rale is
purposely inflated to keep the island from txdtag overrun. And
there are others who insist that the high summer rale m the only
measure that could financially insure ferry service aH year around.
At any rate, there isn't anything Martha's Vineyard needs more
than a good five-dollar ferry ride.
Williamf bum in the rprimi
WELUAMSBUEG, VIRGINIA
THE CITY OF WILUAMSBURG, VIRGINIA, REPRESENTS Qt<fE OF THE
greatest feats of restoration e*ver undertaken outside tfae salons erf
Helena Rubinstein. Capital of Virginia and a political hob of
English America from 1699 to 1780, colonial Wlffiamsfcsmg fans
been ref ashioned througjb the efforts and tie eaocfeeqiier of one
John D. Rockefeller. As of a few weeks ago the tab for the faobfcy
which he undertook in 1926 was boferiag arorad Hie thkty-^iilkm-
dollar mark. For that iiid of money you can get rmd authenticity.
Colonial WiffiaiBsbfirg, as tfe profect is calted, tolerate no
spurioijsiiess. Houses sM where they sat in the eighteenth ceutey.
To verify the locations, historians haw gone as far afield as Bog-
172 THE TJ. S. A. A3fD CANADA
land to sqirat through ancient records. Williamsburg's bricks are
made on the grounds, by hand, according to colonial methods. In
town there ait pewterers, perukers, blacksmiths, weavers, cobblers,
cabinetmakers, and candlemakers, all in costume, and all hard at
work in their respective shops being antiquated artisans. Also
roundabout, disguised in the red brick and white-shutter trim of
Eariy American, are such eighteenth-century shoppes as the Great
Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., the Rexall Drag Co., and Howard
Johnson's.
WiBiamsbtirg likewise suffers from a predilection for the Old
English *V which is not to be confused with a modern "f ." Signs,
menus, and pamphlets are often so printed. One such announce-
ment, tacked on the wall of the museum, reads as follows:
Whereaf my wife Agnef has eloped from my bed and robbed me
of thingf of coofiderable value and I expect her to endeavor to
run me into dd)t, I therefore forewarn all perfonf from dealing
with her oo my account of I will pay no debtf of her contracting.
Wdl, things haven't changed fo very much.
King's Arms Tavern, an ordinary (all you Minute Men know
what a ordkaiy is), even serves favorite dishes of the 1700's
made, of course, of twentieth-century groceries.
The mam usually includes such durable delectabfes as fruit shrub
(fruit jukes with ices), Sally Lunn (a feathery, yeasty bread),
peanut sotip, green gage ice cream, and tipsy square. The china-
ware was copied from some andent pieces found in the basement
Someone also unearthed a wine decanter at Williamsburg recently,
a unique discovery inasmuch as the vessel still held some pre-Revo-
lutk>eary wine. 44 GodawfuF was the unanimous verdict erf the
winetasters, arcfaeotogists, and daredevils who imbibed.
Whoa it came to rebuilding the capitol building, a hall which
cuce rang with the preachments of Patrick Henry, the Rockefellers
went to original English quarries to get the same stone paving. A
British flag which was used in colonial times flies from the tower.
Guides to the capitol and other exhibition buildings are pleasant
ladies with soft Virginia voices who wear farthingales with col-
lapsible hoops. They are not permitted to carry a handbag or wear
WH.LIAMFB0HG IN THE FPBIKG 173
an overcoat but must carry the ilhisioii to the extent of umig a tky
basket as a purse and a 'throw" to ward off the chill.
On Saturday evenings these genteel tours are conducted by
candlelight through the capitol. And just so they won't forget their
heritage, every two years the general assembly of the state legisla-
ture holds an honorary meeting where the House of Burgesses and
later the Convention of Delegates first convened. The Virginia
Supreme Court also journeys over from Richmond for a session
in the courtroom where twelve colonial statesmen passed on tlie
very laws which they themselves had previously made in another
chamber upstairs. In those days the judicial and the legislative
branches of the government were in the same hands and jtiiy trials
were only for criminal cases.
Any hapless citizen found convicted of a criminal or civil oHense
was liable to be remitted to the Publkk Gaol, a colonial clink which
has been restored in all its unpleasant austerity. The pillories and
stocks, once a place of repose for those who trafficked in adotoy,
now provide a favorite pose for amateur photographers who come
to Williamsburg. Such indiscretions as arson, piracy, horse steal-
ing, forgery, aid burglary couM bring the death penalty. A first
offender might escape the gallows to be given the lesser penalty of
burning in the hand. The jail also hoiised the local taeatks; all
residents were fitted with leg irons, and the food was less than
elegant. One prison bill of fare described a ration as **saM beef
damaged and Indian meal." The barred but ungiazed windows per-
mitted the Vir^nia winter a grand entrance. lacarceraled Indians
often had to be outfitted with overcoats, and owners were advfaed
to pick up offending slaves before they could take 3L la 1738 fee
assembly passed this resolution:
Resolved, That an Allowance of Thirty Pounds Currant Money,
be made to Peter Hay, for a Negro Man Slave, belonging ^e
Estate of William Johnson, deceased; who being committed for
Felony and thereof acquitted, by a long Coofe^aent in Prison,
became so exceedingly Frost-bitten, that a mortiicatioe ensued*
whereof he died.
White the hapless were incaic^ated, hardly a Mode or so away
the privileged were taking their pleasure at RaMgfr Tavern, the
174 THE tKS.A. AND CANADA
HKBt farfdonabfc bistno in town. For one thing it was the only place
for miles around that had a Withdrawing Room for ladies. Jefferson
danced with Belinda at the Raleigh, and some worthies from Wil-
liam and Mary CoBege are said to have organized Phi Beta Kappa
tbens the nigfrt of December 5, 1776. It's one of the few taverns
in which Washington never slept, but he did eat there once, in one
of the back rooms. On the wall is a French map of the area used
fay Lafayette during the campaign against Yorktown. Among the
other kafckknacks on hand are tables for loo, an early form of
canasta, a wheel and dice for the royal game of goose, and an
eighteenth-century bar suitably equipped for an eighteenth-century
toot. Among its glassware is an ale tankard cut from the bottom of
an old feather boot. Smokers could take a public church warden
pipe, knock off a piece of the stem for sanitary purposes, drop an
English penny into the Hoodur Box (still on the bar) and get a
pipeful of totecco.
About half a million Americans every year come down to Wil-
BaaE^b^g to trudge in the footsteps of the Founding Fathers. When
they arrive they can sk in cm a forty-minute orientation film, get
irfomatioa about visiting the buildings, buying combination
tickets* Mid Hading accommodations. The cypress-paneled Wil-
liamsburg Lodge IMS scene two hundred rooms at three dollars and
Sly cents t0 seven dollars for singles, five to ten dollars for doubles,
Tiie swankier Williamsburg Inn has one hundred rooms and a
number of handsome guest cottages. Singles are seven to fourteen
doiais, doubles from ten to eighteen dollars. Swimming pool,
tennis coctrts, and golf course are all near at hand.
The Common Glory, a symphonic drama played in the outdoors
depicting the insurgence of Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia
patriots against the British rule, is presented each summer. Written
by Paul Gfreen, the pageant first opened in its magnificent setting
by the shores of Lake Matoaka in Wiffiamsburg in June of 1946
ai*d received a rousing send-off from the New York drama critics
who breached the Masoa-Dixon Line for the occasion. Brooks
AtfcmoQ, who write for the Times, a New York daily, was
entranced not only by the performance but by the setting tfc under
the stars by the waterside and among the trees, the whole explained
and edged with significance by a narrator." The Common Glory
is now as permanent a summer feature as the oak leaves, and per-
THE BAY WIMDOW 175
fonnances are given nightfy, except Mondays, through Labor Day.
Although Williamsburg is open all winter, the show shuts up sfacip
and the replica of the British warship goes into drydock to rest up
from a long summer spent sailing tip Matoaka's waters and hurling
broadsides into "Yorktown" across the bay.
The Bay Window
SAN FBAHCTSCO, CAIIFt^MIA
IVE SPENT THE LAST FOUR DAYS LOST IN A SAN FRANCISCO FG
which is as nice a fog as any if you are going to be tost m one. **We
don't have fog all the time,** local citizens insist, but there is a siga
along oae of the approaches to the city, large and permanent, that
no matter the current state of the weather reads, "Caution Fog
Ahead." Probably no city can boast such a symphonic collection of
fog horns. They start to groan their calls as the gray nrist lois HI,
and my favorite is the cue you pass cm the ferry from San Rafael
to Richmond that moans "B. O. w
Perhaps it is the ever-recurring presence of the fog titot makes
the view so dear to San Franciscaiis. Some say the city bait higber
and higher oo its bilk the better to see the land aiid sea. Here is
hardly a house in town, Victorian to avaat-gaide* rapossessed of
broad picture windows. The biggest attraction erf Saa Francisco k
San Francisco. Men build on the hseigjhts above Berkeley across the
bay and look dowa on Berkeley-town with a pflof s eye view. Aad
people inhabit Telegraph Hill, which has wooden catwato around
the hillside to lead you past your neighbors place, and he and you
took down cm the Embareadeio where the ships come in and otit
to tite Navy base on Treasure Maud.
But the topper of a! views is from the uplKtetered aow*s nest
176 THE tf.S.A. AHD CANADA
knows as the Top of the Mart:, a glass-walled cocktail lounge on
the nineteenth floor of the efegant Mark Hopkins Hotel, which sits
atop Nob Hill in the lush and lofty section of town. On football
nights gisat crowds form in the lobby to get to the Top of the Mark,
aiid in summer the tourists come in battalion strength to file past
the view, as if one resident put it it were a bier. Lovers, sopho-
mores, and visiting Ceylonese look out to the delicate towers of the
Golden Gate Bridge that holds hands with both sides of the harbor,
and over the big-city buildings and past Chinatown to the Oakland
Bay Bridge. The sunsets are magnificent, but when the fog rolls in
it makes for a sort of chuminess, and even Alcatraz, an island in
the bay, is camouflaged with glamour.
like the rest of Nob Hill, the Mark Hopkins was once crowned
with the digs of a baron who hit it rich in the ore deposits that run
like underground rivers througjh the north California earth. He
moved out of his nineteenth-floor castle in 1936 and three years
kter the Top of the Mark was opened. Among those who have
copied the idea is the tiny Mark Twain Hotel in Sacramento, which
has a bajr in the cellar fcoown as The Bottom of the Mark.
San Francisco is built on seven hills, I read somewhere, but
tterc must be more than that. They rise in great inverted V's, tear
the clutch out of your car, and if you walk them, the blood will race
la your veins like alternating current. So you take the cable car,
which stffl rolls uphill in defiance of gravity and of the normal laws
of pit>gress which rendered them obsolete a long time ago. But
Sao Francisco is sentimental, and at rush hour the cars still bulge
with citizens; local acrobats hang from the handrails and teeter on
the ninning board as the vehicle climbs the dizzy heights taking San
Francisco home. The motorman taking us up California Street one
night was busier than an organist with poison ivy playing "The
Sabre Dance/' He pulled down on the track brake pedal, yanked
the grip lever, jumped up and down on the wheel brake pedal, and
beat a rhythm on the bell cord. "My, you're careless," he told an
automobilist who got in the way. "I haven't hit a car all month and
I'm overdue."
The city's greenery is Golden Gate Park, a great expanse where
ferns and fan palms and eucalyptus grow, and there is an Oriental
Garden where you sip tea from Japanese cups, stroll through
THE BAT WINDOW * 177
pagodas, and look at Buddhas. There are windmiUs along the Great
Highway that runs aside the beach, set there to trap tibe breezes off
the Pacific. And the coarse green hair of the stunted cypress trees
is brushed back against the hills, wind-blown by the breezes that
lately caressed Hawaii. Seals play OB rocks scant yank from shore.
From the Cliff House, which is a restaurant, you get a striking
panorama of the waves stacked up and waiting to make the lasl ma
to shore and unravel themselves on the broad beige beach.
When San Francisco isn't admiring itself, it is eating, and some-
times it does both at the same time. The internaticmal hodgepodge
has created places like Fong Pong's Bakay-Lmidi and that icfic
of the frontier, Hong Log Inn, a Chinatown chop sney joipk It has
the greatest Chinese settlement outside of China, and tibe local
housing project has a Chinese arch* characters on the walls, and is
called Ping Yuen, which means Tranquil Garden.
Take Ernie's on Montgomery Street, clothed in wals of red
damask and where all the lights are candles. Its bar came around
the Horn in *94 when the restaurant was the Frisco Dance Hal
and the floor upstairs boused an establishment of dubious repute,
Now the atmosphere is elegance personified, and Mario, who makes
the crepes suzette, breaks into the romantic tenor strains erf **ViaBe
Su," a song, like Mario, born in old Italy.
You can singe your ulcer with Quesadilks or CMles ReBeaos at
the Papagayo Room at the Fairmont Hotel, which offers parrots
with the tortillas. Tropical birds walk the tiny streets erf a miniature
bird village past a typical city monument dedicated to "The Wrong
Brothers, Wilbur and Orvilte. First Birds to Walk." You cm lest
your spelling and your pancreas with souierbn&en and
pjannkuchen at The Shadows, on Telegraph Hill, which is
wich Village with a view. Skipper Kent's decks out tibe head water
in a white linen suit, has that Tahiti look including a watefal,
not to mention the best fried prawns encountered up to press tii^e.
The Tonga Room, also in the Fairmont, goes the aippor one better.
Its dance floor is set alongside a swimming pool, and osee eiy
half hour a storm comes up out of the machinery across tlie bay
and rain falls from the ceiling into the pool
Also in the Fairmont is La Ronde, a cocktail lounge made to
look, like a French carousel, which actually goes around with the
178 THE tf.S.A, AHI> CANADA
tables and tbe customers aboard. Toulouse-Lautrecs are pasta! on
the wMtc brick waUs, tbe waitresses are done up k abbreviated
bloomers and net stockings, and there by tbe door is a gendarme
with ical bearf and mustache. "Bonjour Monsieurs, 'dames" he
says as be swings open the portal. "Entrez> je vous en prie. On
m$ ffitend," which of course means, "Get inside y*bums, we're
|pt waiting to get your scratch."
Tbe Ritz-CHd Poodle Dog has that wonderful Paris smell, and
wben anybody orders fried cream flambe, a bell rings and the
bouse lights are lowered in a genuflection to French gastronomy.
Tbe Domino Club in an alley at Trinity Place is absolutely covered
with nude oils, indudmg one known as Gloria, who exhibited her-
self at tbe Golden Gate Exposition of 1939 and through a trick
in lighting was made to appear as if she breathed.
There is a place on Broadway called the Boccie Ball, where yo*i
bear operatic arias in front or step in the back room to watch
wriakled Italians play boccia, which is sort of like bowling on the
, Oi you take Golden Gate Bridge lined with amber bulbs
Sausalito aad stop at the Valhalla, a Victorian fantasy by the
aix&d up with legends of Jack London and operated by
Mtae Sa% Stanford, a lady renowned in these parts because of
her former occupation, And when the eating is done in San Fran-
cisco k's tine to bead for Larry's for a cappucino, which is hot
chocolate emboldened with rain or cognac.
For those seekmg the lusty San Francisco immortalized by
M-G-M, the original Barfoary Coast still exists along one street
known as the International Settlement. Some of those saloons that
cateed $o buccaneers still exist, and it is said that there is still evi-
deace of some trapdoors leading to the harbor through which
bouncers erf a hundred years ago were fond of dropping inebriates.
Waiters are still done up in green striped shirts and handlebar
mustaches* strip stows abound, and tbe main difference between
tfeoa aad now seems to be that these days it is the prates who own
the places.
THE AHQEL'S BOOST * 179
LOS ANGELES
AFTER A PERSONAL TOUR OF INSPECTION i WISH TO REPORT TO
those who may be waiting iservously in the East that the wide
open spaces are just as wide as they were when the piooecrs got
out here. The only thing is that they're not open any more. Los
Angeles is less of a city than it is a landscape filled up with stores
and houses. The brickwork, trimmed with neon, has spread wer
the acres like a multihued grass fire, making enclaves of townships
Eke Santa Monica, Culver City, and Beverly Hffls.
You can ride for twenty miles and still be on WikMre Boofevwd,
and a man without a car in Los Angeles is a man adrift m the wilds
of an enormous metropolis. If you plan to take a cab, you had
better bring yoor checkbook. There is no subway, but municipal
tosses course the streets, and what they don't offer m frequescy
they make up in thoughtfulness. Beaches with broad backs are
placed two-by-two at every stop. Aside from gjviag cosnfoct to
the populace traveling to the corner store, a few miles distant, the
benches also advertise such local services as Pangbocn's Phimbiiig,
which usually gets space alongside Malinow's Mortuary. Ardeu's
Milk is teamed frequently with Groman's Mortuary, and Schaefer's
Air Ambulance often gets the bench space next to Dr. Beauchamp,
credit dentist.
Doctors, dentists, and undertakers suffer no repressions out in
the palmy West. The classified telephone directory carries the bold
advertisements of 'The Woman MIX Afl Cases Low Fees*
Women's Diseases, Reducing, Pregnancy, and Pre-Marriage Tests.**
Says another:
Eye Ear Nose Throat
Sinus Asthma
The Wonder Drags
penidffin cortisone aureomyciQ
180 * THE tT.S.A. AMD CANADA
used in treatment of
Sinus Asthma
Tonsils Removed by Radar
no cutting no pain
Low Professional Fees
A third offers to treat, perhaps to cure, everything from scalp dis-
eases to hernia. The doctor and his staff perform surgery, fit glasses,
and administer colonies. Results of pregnancy tests can be had in
two hows. A special department handles ulcers, Hollywood being
nearby. Treatment can also be had for rashes, wrinkles, and fall-
ing hair.
As for the dentists, most of them invite you to make your own
terms foe payment. And several, like fast-service shoemakers,
promise to repair your dental plate while you wait. The town's
morticians, whose number has doubtless been swelled by the pros-
pect of so many elderly couples migrating to southern California
dtirmg tbeir declining years, advertise with the vigor of a breakfast
food purveyor. AH of them must be living at the moment in abject
cmj of the mortician's firm of Utter-McKintey, which during
Christmas week decorated its lawn with a life-sized tableau depict-
ing the procession of the three wise men, camels included, Christ
in the manger, and models of a full modern choir with mouths
open. Bathed in brilliant spotlights, it made a startling effect after
passing the many fields of Christmas trees, which in Los Angeles
come in dusty pink, powder blue, and pale, frightened green.
Not only can you die with great theatrical flair out here, but you
can eat that way too. There is, for instance, the Farmer's Market,
a huge bazaar that sells everything from out-of-town newspapers
to Mexican jewelry. Mostly, however, it sells all kinds of food
which you can eat CHI the spot or take home. A bar at the market
dispenses forty-two kinds of jukes, including coconut, boysen-
beny, and potassium. The potassium is fairly bubbling with vita-
mins AAA, BB, G, D, and E. Another stand called Bill's Bread
Bin does as much for bread. It offers Swedish pumpernickel-raisin,
New York corn-rye, salt-rising bread, and home-made white cinna-
mon. "Buns But No Bananas," says the sign, "Bread But No
Broccoli"
THE AKGEI/S BOOST * 181
But the big talk out here in Ba%lM>o-by-tbe--Sea fa stars and
pictures. If you want to see where the stars live, you drive out CM
Sunset Boulevard under the tall, skinny palms whene for a dollar
you can buy a map of their homes aini their pools. If you want t
see where the deals are made, then you must sit by the pools erf the
big hotels and wait for the tycoons. The ptesby Tow House, for
example, has an elegant expanse of artificial water right m its awn
back yard, not to mention a lanai where the elite meet to eat ind
talk about big money and colossal ptctoes. It has a room where
you can sip a cocktail underwater and get a isfa*$~eye ww of the
swimmers.
A landmark of comparative local importance ts the ruins aie
to Rome is the late Sid Grauman's Chinese Theatre. As you erast
have heard by now, the esplanade in front of Graumaa's is deco-
rated with memories of the movie great who hwe come lo dip
their extremities in wet cement. Immortal as the Temple erf the
Vestal Virgins are prints of Durante's nose, Jobotfs knee, Joe E,
Brown's mouth, Harold Lloyd's glasses, Gem Autry's torse's hoofs,
and Bill Hart's pistol print. Scrawled atej^ide one shapely depres-
sion are the woids, 'Thanks Sid, Betty Grable, My Leg, 2-15-43.**
Another says, 'To Sid, In Sincere Apprraatko Jean Hariow,
September 29, 1933." Beside the tegead are two tiny hands, and a
pair of incredibly small high-heeled feet AIM! who knows bi& what
the world needs the cement memorial to remember* for I passed &
woman who pointed to a famous name and said to bar little
daughter, **See there, Fredrk March, he wrote all tfaoe
To achieve a true appreciation of the manufacture of &
and of a star, one ought to visit a studio, a moce difficult trick for
the casual tourist than getting an audience with the Pope, Stm-
mooing the resources of journalistic intrepidity, feowr^er, I did step
behind the celluloid curtain of the TweBtiethX^toy-Fm tot one
morning to see the filming of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, tte telly
Anita Loos perennial which features both MariJya Monroe and
Jane Russell. A sign said "Hot Set," and a publicity Him hastened
to explain that this meant the scenery was still being used and ms
aot to be dismantled. Marilyn Monroe ambfed by wrapped up in a
pale blue wool bathrobe aad looking as tf sfae tmd Just gotten up,
which isn't a bad way to look if you aie Marilyn Monroe. THEM I
SPOKE TO MARILYN MONROE. I said I was fine and ste said she was
182 " THE U.S.JL. AND CANADA
fine, but she said Jane Russell wasn't fine. As a matter of fact she
said Jane had just left the set very ill with a cold and they were
ghnfeag her penicillin. I don't know how much the penicillin cost but
the waiting time was setting back the company $7,000 an hour.
Tbfe dramatic sequence on the Fox lot left the director, Howard
Hawks* extremely calm. A lean and bony man with bristling gray
hair, he said the production would cost about two-and-a-half-mil-
fioa dollars, that it was to be shot in fifty-two days and actually
would be brought in ten days late. Jane Russell had been borrowed
from Howard Hughes, who owns her contract, for two hundred
thousand dollars. He said Jane lives out in the valley and had to
get up at fivt or five-thirty every day in order to be at the sttxlio
at seveo-thirty to be made up in time for shooting which begins
daily at nine. Leaning on the rail of a Fox ocean liner called the
lie de Pms, Hawks told me that when this was over he would meet
Caiy Grant in Europe. He didn't mention getting married, which
be has since done, aid although be is bound for Europe the papers
<&Wt B^Etkm if he would still meet Gary Grant.
Later we looked in on the set of White Witch Doctor, a film of
the 1950 Louise Stinetorf novel about the Bakuba tribe in the
Belgian Congo, featuring that eminent woman M.D., Susan Hay-
ward. **Snsan Just delivered a baby yesterday," the publicity man
told nie as we tiptoed into the African scene, "I don't know what
sbe does today." Several thatched-roof huts had been built on an
immense tanbark, palms sprouted out of pots hidden in the ground,
savages from the Los Angeles Negro colony lounged about in loin
cloths, cables ran underfoot in a hundred black rivers, and the
entire scene melted into an African mural that ringed the set like
acyclorama.
There was a cluster of talent around one hut where Henry
Hathaway was directing a scene in which a rival tribe steals a sick
native out of Susan's thatched hospital. Hathaway yelled, "Quiet!"
The assistant director blew a whistle. "All ready, quiet/* the assist-
ant said. "All right . . . roll 'em/' Hathaway ordered. Two spear-
carrying natives plunged into the shack and started to pull the
sick man away. Susan shouted, "You can't take him! You can't
take him! He's too ill to be moved!" Hathaway cut in, "Hooey, it
sounded just wonderful," be said, "but this time with a little more
body. *You can't take him! He's too ill to be moved!' Like that."
THE ANGEL'S BOOST * 183
Hathaway breathed fire into the tine and all but climbed into the
scene on the retake.
Although he may run into difficulty gaining a studio, the traveler
who steps lively can buy a ticket to a Hofiywood opening, an
obligatory field exercise foe the student erf the movie industry. With
great fortune I was able to obtain a pak of tickets to the pmsifcre
of Moulin Rouge, and arriving in front of the theater before 8 P.M.
I found five Klieg lights and uncountable kids with notebooks. The
girl in the box office was wearing a white orchid, and a number of
troopers from the American Legion were wearing signs that said,
"American Legion Bans John Huston, Jo& Ferrer, the U.S. Sec-
tion of the Cominform," "Huston Tried to Kfll House Un-Ameri-
can Activities Committee," 'The Communist Press Praises Joba
Huston," and other incontrovertible evidence of treason. Probably
nobody noticed the fact that the Legbn hid banned the ito,
because an immense crowd formed in front erf the theater, the
stars hopping out of their cars, which were thai driven away by
a dozen parking field attendants all of whom wore white coveralk,
Music blared from a loud-speaker, a cameraman took movies, an
announcer introduced a number erf personalities who said they
heard this was the best picture of the year.
Among the arrivals I was able to count two monocles, ooe b&et,
one black velvet vest, and Dore Schary wearing a small cauliflower
of a foreign decoration in his buttonhole. Tony Curtis wore long
sideburns, Edward G. Robinson wore a bald spot, rear center,
Lauren Bacall wore bangs over her eyes, and Humphrey Bogart
wore bags under his. Leslie Caron looked like a frail rose with-
out lipstick.
Whether you consider these ceremonies the wake of a moribund
tribe or the ritual of a virulent industry, there seems little doubt of
the thumping impression that television has made on Hoiywood,
One has merely to cast a glance, as I did, at TV City, the eigte-
millkm-dollar extravaganza which CBS opeoed hone in 1952.
Actually, the building is only the nucleus for a city which is ex-
pected to overshadow Rockefeller Center in New York. As tbiags
stand now, artists coming to perform at the studio park in their
own tot, enter through their own door, receive their mail, proceed
to their dressing room (all identical: shower, bathroom, afld
couch). Here they wait for a summons to the studio which comes
184 THE 0.S.A. AMP CANADA
by p^bSc-addiess system. Moving vans can drive right up a ranip
and unload at the edge of a set. Scenery that is already on hand
is puBed around by battery-operated trucks. Light cues are given
to a board with a memory that is better than Dunninger's; and ooce
tfoe show is on, the board flicks the proper switches at the precise
trae. Modern electricians are obsolete. Since no one knows just
how television will grow, the corrugated steel walls have merely
been bolted together. When expanding, CBS has just to unbolt
and add.
In case of an air attack, TV City could also hold thirty thousand
refugees. The present structure has been built as two buildings
which will shake separately in the event of an earthquake, each at
its own rate of vibration. In case an A-bomb should knock out the
cable, a reflector on the roof will carry the beam forty-eigfct miles
to a transmitter cm Mount Wilson and the voices of Desi and Lucy
will be beard in the land anyway.
The Male Plane
CHICAGO
IF ANYONE HAS BEEN LOOKING FOR ME, I'VE BEEN OUT ROISTERING
with the boys at fourteen thousand feet.
Flying the new "men only" flight between New York and Chi-
cago is one way to spend a secluded evening with the boys. Steak,
poker, fat cigars, and blue snioke can all be enjoyed three miles
above teira firma and out of telephone shot of the little woman. As
a matter of fact, the only women in sight are a pair of hostesses who
have been commissioiied to serve the steak, piss the cigars, and
just smife sweetty. It is sort of a male heaven.
This new move to masculinity is the idea of United Airlines,
wbiA now schedules a daily ''men only" flight leaving New York
every afternoon at five (EDT), and a similar excursion departing
THE MALE PLANE * 185
Chicago for New York every afternoon at five (CDT). The light
takes about three and a half hours.
United calls its male plane "The Executive 7 ' and is mighty
pleased that a business magazine has noted that the airline **mmkes
a tycoon feel like a tycoon." Probably the steak-rad-smoke atao-
phere makes some of the budding executives feel as if they aie
already in full financial bloom.
I kissed the wife good-by the otter day, and she said, "Where
are you going?" putting that feminine emphasis on the "you.** M Tm
off to spend the evening with the boys," I said, *% the lyiag card
room/' Out at the airfield the boys were climbing aboard tiie big
Mainliner carrying fishing rods, sample cases, and otter impedi-
menta of men on the move. The captain's voice came over the loud-
speaker. ''Good afternoon, gentlemen," it said. ^WetooiHe aboard
United Airlines* Executive. Take off your shoes. Take 01$; yoer
favorite see-gar, light up your favorite briar. Ask the stewardess
for a pair of slippers. We will iy at fourteen thousand feet and be
in Chicago in three and a half hours."
By the time we had crossed the Hudson River, heading West,
every man-jack was in his shirt sleeves, and the click of chips
sounded merrily from the rear lounge. The see-gars and the pipes,
not permitted on normal flights, came out, and although the visi-
bility outside the cabin was good for seventy-five miles, it was ceil-
ing zero inside the plane. As a matter of feet, the only thing cm the
trip that smoked more than we did was Gaiy, Indiana, home of
the blast furnace.
After serving fifty-one steak dinners to fifty-one ravenous males,
the two hostesses were busy with the coffee Jug and a humidor of
cigars which United offers free of charge. The girts weie still smil-
ing, faintly. "Helpless," said Miss Terry Spitt of Roele, New
Jersey. 'TTiey'iie just helpless. When the men have their wives along
they do everything tot themselves. But with us they Just keep
buzzing for more coffee, another rigar. They don't evea get up to
gpt a cup of water themselves."
"Men are inclined to be more clrciiiBSpeet when they have
women with them," said Miss Sam Beatty of Mc^dair, New
Jersey, the other stewardess. "They all try $o be funny; I dost
mean make dates or anything, but they fike to kid us, w Sample
male joke: "Do you have a burlesque show aa board?** Or, "May
I have the next dance?"
186 THE U.S.A. AND CANADA
Hostesses Splitt and Beatty, cm their first **men only" run, ad-
mitted they felt a little peculiar, as if they had just walked into a
barber shop CHI Saturday afternoon, "Here we are, the two of us, up
facie at fourteen thoosaud feet with fifty-one men and no place to
run," Terry Splitt explained.
Those men not busy cracking wise with the hostesses or drawing
to aa inside straight in the back room were sitting quietly in their
airiiae^upplied slippers, reading sales reports, legal briefs, and
reports of annual meetings. The conversation ran to such beer-hall
subjects as Robinson's batting average and the recent half-Gaynor
porf ormed by Mr. Joseph Wakott of Jersey.
Nobody was reading a copy of Today's Woman that somehow
fended in the magazine rack of The Executive. The preference
leaned toward The Wall Street Journal, which United supplies in
bulk for each all-male flight. There was a noticeable absence of
squeafag babies. By the time we were over Cleveland, hostess
Beatfy noticed that for once she didn't have to warm up a bottle of
tmfay formula. The buzzer sounded in the rear lounge. "Pardon
me," she said, a m go see what the boys in the back room will have."
UP en the UP he I stored Frontier
LAC DBS LOUPS, QUEBEC
I HAVE SPENT A GREAT MANY AUTUMNS FEELING DEEP SORROW
for fishermen who pass the fall weeks at fishing lodges enduring
such rigors of the outdoors as no man has known since Gary
Cooper stood off the attacking tribes at Khyber Pass, My remorse
TTP OK THE TyPHOLSTEBED FBOMTIE1 187
has been somewhat tempered, however, ever since I walked down
the dock at the Lac Ouimet Club at Ste Jovite the other day, got
in a Norseman seaplane, and few off to the Lake of tte Wolves
in the Canadian northwoods. This ixmgjhing-il-at^-kxIg>4B-lhD-
woods may turn out to be a bigger fraud than tlie Teapot Dome.
The secluded location of our encampment, which is known as
O'ConnelTs Lodge, has not kept Sgnor O'Coimei from iastalltiig
a bar with indirect lighting. Sleeping tegs, I suspect, are a stow
item at Messrs. Abercrombie and Fitch, for Mr. OX&fi^eH's fisher-
men lay their leathery heads each twilight cm Beauty Rest mat-
tresses mounted on Slumber King bedsprings. Quiet, junior! Dad
bas had a tough day at the lake.
It seems to me I have been looking fen: many yeajrs at photo-
graphs purporting to show Indian guides cooking up a mess of
biscuits by the open fire. Nowhere do I remember the Bkes of Mr.
O'ConnelTs ligfct pine dining room with appended outdoor terrace
decorated all around with that border of bright geraiiims. You e
tell this is a fishing lodge because there is a stuffed moose mid a
stuffed fish on the wall.
We are sixty miles from the neariest permanent metropolis, &
place named Maniwaki, which is Indian talk for Mary's Land.
Indians words are bandied about up here like French ia a Fifth
Avenue salon. "Metchin&megus" a man is liable to say, especially
if he is an Algonquin. It means big trout. And there is cangway,
which is "Jealous wife," and hanwatan, meaning "the wiad has fct
down, now it is quiet." There is not much to tlie north of us except
one hundred and fourteen miles of gravel road leading to Val tfOr,
where the citizens mine gold, copper, and zinc.
We are in the backwoods all right, but any man who says he is
going up to the Lake of the Wolves to do some fishing is feaviag
himself open for a very smart crack, especially if there's a comgwa?
in his house.
There are fifteen cottages at our outpost, every room wMfa run-
ning water, most of them with bath, and all caressed by radio and
recorded musk piped in from the main building. In all tl^ne are
one hundred and fifty-eight beds, and many's the time they aie
filled with such woodsmen as the Maharajah erf Baroda, Jack
Demp&ey, Joe Louis, Jack aarfcey, General Ridgway, and Bert
Lahr. The rates run from nine dollars and fifty cents a day per
188 * THE U.S.A. AHX> CANADA
parson, four in a room, bunk-bed style, to twenty-two dollars a day
si Morataktop Cottage. Mountaintop is just a simple little old log
cabin wttfa sk picture windows giving out on Lac des Loops, where
the giant i&fa repose. The logs are peeled and chinked with plastic
tar, frontier style. Other backwoods touches are screened porches,
stall slicywer&, chrome plumbing, and draperies that run on trolleys.
Dmiig the summer many fishermen bring their families, and
tfaeifc are some family cottages which will hold four to six at twelve
doHars and fifty cents a head. Children play on the swings and
slides, and mothers can slave over a hot tennis court while dad is
out with the rod and reel. Pilgrimages are made to the garbage
dump at dumping time, which is twice a day, to watch the bears
pick through tie left-overs.
This family business is aH very well until the end of August, but
whoa the last Lilliputian has been packed off in the direction of
home and school, the serious fishing is on. From now CHI until the
cod of October, whoa the season closes, every fisherman is out on
the Lake erf the Wolves at the crack of dawn. Fishermen and skiers
arc worids apart, they tefl you up here, for when the skier is home
fam tte hffls he is ready for an evening of singing purple songs.
A ishennaii, however, is mainly ready for the sack. He is even too
feed to be a hup. The lodge has organized corn roasts, wiener
roasts, and barn dances, but when the serious season is on they are
fabukras (bids.
When the fisherman are concentrating oo fish they hire a guide
evszy day at eigjit dollars the day plus two dollars and fifty cents for
wbai the guide eats on the day he is guiding. With a guide in the
boat it is a rare occasion in the province of Quebec that a man will
come in fisidess. However, Mr. George O'CoeBell, who is sixteen
and who is the owner's son, has told me of a profitable venture be
used to have, which was paddling around in a boat at day's end
selling previously deceased fish to fishless fishermen.
There are thirty guides at O'Coenelfs, Algonquins or half-castes,
but the most famous of afl is an ample Algonquin named Nona
Moaatch. The first time I met him he was sitting in a boat with
two sports from Philadelphia who were fishing with their chauffeur.
A man should not fish without his chauffeur at a fishing lodge that
is worthy of the name. Nona has been guiding for fourteea years,
UP ON THE UPHOLSTERED FBOHTIES * 189
and he Ukes it better than his oM work, which was driving a dog
team. In the winter he cooks for a paper compaay. **Lak year
nobody died," he told me with some surprise. Between the &d of
the fishing season and the beginning of the cooking season he takes
parties moose hunting. He is an expert player of the Wrchbtrk bor&,
an instrument which makes a bull moose think be is being sere-
naded by a cow moose. Nona doesn't use musk on the fish, how-
ever, and when he is guiding two men k his boat he rarely comes
in without ten fish. Nona goes fishing two hundred days a year.
Once when we were in the fish house where the caidi is brought,
we saw some fellows sporting an enormous twenty-4hree-poi$iid
pike, and rumors were coming from the lake that another party
had two others over twenty pounds. We asked about this oversized
pike and a man in a smelly shirt and a battered cap said, **Caiigfet
it cm a six-pound leader. Fuzzy's fish was so big it went rigbi
through the net"
I went out in one of O'ConneU's three embers one day and
worked the better part oC the Lake of the Wolves. A Fitacfa
Canadian name of Al-bare was our guide and he put bait GQ the
hook that I would have been proud to display as a calcb. Why
Nona Monatch is responsible for two thousand fish a year and
why some other people don't get any, I do not know. I do know
that there was not a sign of a fighting pike. Thane wasat eraa a
sign of young George O'Connell bearing a limp pike, which at this
point I would have cheerfully purchased. Chin up and clout lose
heart, I have been advised. O'CoonelFs has fifteen other MBS in
which to drop a hook, five of them for the especial purpose of
catching none but the speckled trout.
If there is anyone who would like to top my record dmnbg the
serious season, Lake of the Wolves can be reached by car by fol-
lowing Route 1 1 out of Montreal to Mont Laorier, and then takiog
Route 58 over seventy-two miles of gravel hig&way to tbe lodge.
Three busses come up each day and three come dowa from Val
d'Or. Wheeler Airlines has charter flights from Moeteal airport
landing on O'Connell's own mite-long, paved air strip, four miles
from the lodge. Or Wheeler will take you by k&d- or seaplane
from Ste Jovite, which is in the Latireatians, A hired Cessna wWi
room for three passengers costs eighty-eight doBars for tiie ex-
190 * THE 0.S.A. AND CAHA0A
cursioia, and you can make it from either Montreal or Ste Jovite
in jest ora: an hour.
The only thing is, don't come back with some story about rough-
ing it wtth the boys at a fishing lodge in the Canadian northwoods.
The next time some Fields-Stream type tells me that, I shall wait
imtil he is finished and then I shall say, "Hanwatan, brother,
htmwatom" The wind has let down, now is quiet.
SOME
ENCHANTED
ISLANDS
FHC CARIBBEAN
SAH JTJ&N , F0EBTO BKX>
I REMEMBER SAN JUAN BEFORE IT GOT INTO THE BIG TIME, WiSCH
is only a question of four years or so. Mostly I remember the bosses,
faded and dented, like old soup cans on wheels whkh one had to
catch and leave on the run, for they merely slowed down for pas-
sengers, never stopped. The auto horns were an orchestra forever
tuning up. The best hotel was the Condado Beach, and m ifcs nigjst
club there were hundreds of silver-painted chairs that were meant
to be gay but were as sad as old champag^ae cocks and tte ashtrays
from last night's party. I recall walking cm a grassy plot ear fee
San Geronimo fort and being told a great new hotel would rise
here. And I remember that a few steps away the Yanks were in
spring training, and staying at the Normamiie, a hotel tliat got not
only its name but its shape from the French fcjer.
Aside from the Yanks, the Normandie's claim to emineiKe was
that, while built like a prow, it was only a triangular shell of a
building. In its hollow center, right in the lobby, wm a swimming
pool, and the rooms rose in tiers around it Substantial rumors had
it that U. S. sailors were fond of refueling at tibe pooiside tar,
taking tlie elevator to the third floor and executing swan dives into
the tank.
Now, in San Juan's new social dignity, a lid has been placed over
the pool to forestall such levity, the pooiside b@r has become a
genteel restaurant, and the Nonnandie is merging with the ooce
locally swank Escasibrxm Beach Oub fo lam* sa elegant resort.
The horns still blow, but the busses are new and require of ooe a
less acrobatic approach and departure. On the grassy plot has risen,
according to pfcuaise, tlie modern iMgriiioeiioe of tlie Caribe HiHaa
Hotel Otter holels ami apartment houses, white and unfettered,
194 SOME EHCHANTED ISLANDS
cast unfamiliar modern shadows along the lagoon. New restaurants
have sprung up in the city, new clubs in the suburbs, new cabs
with two-way radios cruise the palm-shaded streets. The click erf
roulette mid the stab of the neon 4 sign stir the tropical night. San
loan fa a new Miami with a Spanish accent.
About all that is feft of that five-year-old picture of San Juan are
the auto horns whose every blast remains an echo erf Latin disdain
for that useless appendage, the brake pedal. I was sitting just a few
weeks ago with a Puerto Rican lady in the new air-conditioned bar
of the Condado Beach Hotel, part of its new eighty-room air-
conditioned wing. Four mobiles floated over the heads of the bar-
tenders. Tea glass panels provided daytime imbibers with a vista
of the sand and the sea. Glass doors gave us a view of the Fiesta
Room aad its was plain that, inside, the silver chairs had long since
gives way to tropical modernity.
My friend was having nostalgic misgivings about all this, recall-
mg Sunday afternoon the dansants that were the elegant moments
of her Puerto Rican adolescence. Pictures of social Puerto Ricans
guttering their fans in an elaborate danzon blotted out the waver-
ing mobiles, the chrome, and the glass.
Yet, on the other hand she spoke proudly of the American prod-
ucts tbat were streaming from new Puerto Rican factories. Already
the itrotation, which seemed to have been ignited by the Caribe
Hilton, had come full circle, and Robert Caverty, the Caribe's
young manager, had to announce a quarter-of-a-million-dollar im-
pfxmment program that added fourteen rooms along the pool.
Near the Coodado is the new La Rada, which overlooks the
bay. It is a gem of a little hotel that can take 150 winter refugees,
putting them up in ak-cofiditioned apartments, some with fifteen-
foot glass windows. La Rada will extract anywhere from nine to
twelve dollars for two, and for an extra dollar a day guests can
have use of an eificiency kitchenette which is built between every
two apartments. La Rada's restaurant, run by M. Guillaume,
former maltre dliStel at the Caribe, is pure Parisian elegance, and
vies with the Caribe itself for the best fare in the Caribbean. San
Juan, which had been limping along for years on a tired establish-
ment called La Mallorquina, now also has in addition a totally
un-Hispanic bistro known as the Swiss Chalet, serving Swiss cheese
THE CARIBBEAN * 195
pies and fondues among the chicken asopaos and indigenous arroz
con polios.
North Americans who have uncovered a new, clean, comfortable,
air-cooled, handy tropical playground in San Juan are mm being
coaxed to discover the rest of the island A handsome new bole!
is tucked away in the mountains at BarranquitM, an boor aad a
half from town. It sits majestically on a promontory with forty-two
rooms, a swimming pool, a casino, and a view of the river El Salto,
The High One. From the glass corner of tile dining roora, guests
can look over their soup to banana patches, to a two-thousand-
and-eight~hundred-foot mountain named La Tomeflk, and to a
vista that stretches for ten miles.
On the way to Barranquitas travelers will roll over a hard-surface
road that winds between tobacco plantations covered with patciies
of white tenting. Houses crowd the highway ami since the road falls
away abruptly, the aft ends of the local homes stand on stils,
Family wash is laid to dry on the points of maguey cactus bushes,
but washday is lightened somewhat by the fact that the sole pieee
of raiment of boys up to the age of six or seven is a dirt The OTI,
according to my driver, is supposed to do wonders for the virifty
of the nation, a fact which no one with a passing knowledge of the
Puerto Rican birth rate is in a position to deny.
At the crossroads that might be equipped in the State wWi a
hot-dog stand, one finds a shack with a whole frig roasting tm a
spit, protected from flies and fikhers by a glass enclosure. The cook
moves a charcoal brazier along the length of the pig until tie whole
carcass turns a rich, red brown. Then it is sold as foctoft asado,
and with a portion of boiled bananas, tma radon costs ifiy cesfe
The pioneering blood of my ancestors having long ago tfamied
in my veins, I chose to forsake roadside fee/km amdo far the com-
parative sophistication of the Bamboo Inn, a local way station
between Barranquitas and Aibonito. The tm tamed ottt to be
bereft of the merest splinter of bamboo, and was decorated instead
with an outsized juke box and color pictures of the candidates for
the title of Miss Rheingold of 1953. Under their peariy siales I ate
rice and beans and candied sour orange peel and cheese.
For those who like water that is hot md sulphurated I am not
among them Puerto Rico offers Coamo Springs, but you should
be advised that the spa was there when the Spaniards were in
196 SOME ENCHANTED ISLANDS
ctege, and hardly a vase has been, moved since. A pair of iron
ladies painted white bold up pots of cactus at the entrance, great
gjt-edged mirrors and mammoth murals look down on diners, and
purple campanulas float in grand Victorian splendor in the finger
bowls. For those who would dispel their aches and creaks with the
walers, there is a pool set amid breadfruit trees. For mad, gay
evings there is an open patio equipped with a parrot who calls
out "Waiter! Waiter!," as I suspect he has been doing since the
day Sampson's forces first arrived. And through ancient habit, tiny
sa^r birfs called "reinitas" answer the summons of the head waiter
when he calls them to lunch in the sugar-coated bird bath.
Blessed with water that is hot and sulphurous, Puerto Rico also
has a whole bayful of water that is luminous, a fact which must
have earned for its discoverer the reputation of liar. Phosphorescent
Bay Iks off La Parguera, a tiny fishing village on Puerto Rico's
southwest coast On nights when, there is no moon, fishing boats
chug out to tibe strange bay. Nothing happens for long minutes till
tfae boat gets into the harbor, then churned by the propeller the
wake becomes an ifluminated tail. Frightened fish, sent scattering
by the noise of the motor, shoot away in a dozen crazy directions,
leaving a wMte stream behind them as if they were skyrockets fired
under water. The captain brings up a pail of phosphorescent water,
and wbea you dip your hand in, thousands of tiny diamond chips
rim through your fingers. Toss the water back to the sea and it
cascades over the side like liquid fire. When it rains Phosphorescent
Bay is a lake of candles. The boatsmen of Capri who make such
a loss about the Blue Grotto have less to display than the boatsmen
of La Parguera, who thus far have merely organized a complicated
rate structure that requires you to pay somewhere between seventy-
five cents or five dollars depending upon how many people are on
hand to make the excursion.
Visitors can stay overnight in La Parguera Guest House, a simple
but new and comfortable inn meant for sports fishermen and those
who can find pleasure in nothing more jazzy than collecting shells
around the mangrove-covered islands that lie offshore.
La Parguera means the-place-where-there-are-lots-of-pargo, a
ptrgo being a grouper. It is also the place where there are lots of
white and blue marlin, sailfish, black-fin tuna, wafaoo, tarpon, and
THE CARIBBEAN * 197
barracuda. Local boats charge about thirty-five dollars a day, and
the better-equipped fishing boats over from Miami get Miami
prices, sixty-five dollars a day. Everyotie has the piscatorial fever
in quiet little La Pargo town bcliKH0g a hefty sow. S&e k down
at the water's edge every morning sticking bar snout in the water
and coming up with something finny and tasty. Wlaether die it
picking up dead bait cast from the boats or whether she is doing
her own soaring isn't very clear but, whichever, she is known
among an ever-widening circle as the Fishing Pig erf La
ST. THOMJSt TX
THEY TELL YOU IN SAN JUAN THAT IF YOU WANT TO AVOH> THE
hurly-burly, take the thirty-minute flight over to St Thomas ia the
Virgin Islands. Once cm St. Thomas they tell you to ind a quiet
time you must take the twenty-minute flight over to SL Grofac,
There could hardly be a more peaceful atoll than St. Croix, yet
there are those who insist you ain't never known seclusion til
you've been over to St John, only reachable by boat
St. Thomas has retained faint traces of its Danish ownership
which ended in 1917, and there are streets with names ike Vmr
melskaft Gade and Dronnings Gade. A new air-coaditiooed nesfcati-
rant and bar with murals of old St Thomas is called Sewa Queen's
Quarter, a dramatic name (especially for a liiiicfaoo&i)* wycfa is
merely a translation of its address in Danish.
Mixed in with the Danish undertone is some of the sfaocking-
pink-and-black. Lord and Taylorish atmosphere that denotes mod-
ern, American chichi So, shops are named The Ptpperoliit Skk
The Donfc Shop, The Spanish Mai% and BverboJ. Some serve
soep-and-saodwkh limcfaecws ovar quaint bars for visitors off
cruise ships who have come to boy native mmket dfsse&, low-cost
Danish diver, Swedish glass, French gloves^ and all kinds of liquor,
198 SOME ENCHANTED ISLANDS
whicfa 10 the free port of St. Thomas sells for fantastically low
prices. One shops, for example, in the picturesque confines of
Baretta Center which has three offshoots Hibiscus Alley, Orchid
Row, and Jasmine Lane, all converted warehouses painted new in
gay colors and crawling with tropical flowers. The best brands erf
Scotch are two dollars and fifty cents the fifth, the cognac is cheaper
tfaan m Paris, cigarettes are twelve cents (seven in St. Croix), and
perfume is forty per cent less than in the United States.
The accommodations on St. Thomas vary from big, tropical
hotels the likes of the Virgin Isle, to intimate guest houses of, say,
Smith's Fancy. The Virgin Isle is a mammoth and beautiful resort
equipped with a balcony for every room, an air-conditioned bar,
dining room, and night club. Carved out of a hilltop, and sitting
above the town of Charlotte Amalie, the V.I., as it is locally
known, has tennis courts, swimming pool, a breakfast patio, and,
from almost everywhere except the wine cellar, an unbelievable
view of the roof tops of town and the sugar loafs that sit in the
adjoining sea, After December 1 5 things start at thirty-seven dollars
fee two, including everything save lunch.
Guest houses like Smith's Fancy take perhaps a dozen visitors,
offer a fa! American plan for twelve dollars a day per person. All
the hotels and guest houses will see that you get out to Morning
Star Beach and to a magnificent sand horseshoe called Magen's
Bay. You drive up over the hills, past screaming orange, flamboyant
trees, ttaxxigjh a preserve of land-crab marshes, and emerge at last
on a spotless beach fringed with seagrape trees. Here you swim far
from civilization and soda-pop signs, refreshing yourself with the
water of a green coconut sold on the beach for a dime.
On winter nights the island shakes with the show at the Carib-
bean Hotel, with the juke boxes at boites called the Mahogany and
the Hideaway. The Frangi Pani Room of the Virgin Isle seems to
have taken a lifetime lien CHI the services of a local monument of
talent named Mac McLevity. Mr. McLevity peddles calypso in
his handmade, mad costumes, and is noted for the plaintive lied of
a maitet lady who entreats a customer thus:
Please don' squeeze my tomatoes
If you must squeeze something
Squeeze the potatoes.
THE CABIBBEAH * 199
Although the language of the Virgins is English, spoken with
the accent on the final syllable fay all native islanders except a
colony of French chachas, it is amazing the amount of Spanish that
find its way ewer from Puerto Rico, It is a custom of St. Thomas
cab drivers, who speak only focal English, to Bslen each afternooa
to the Spanish language broadcasts of the baseball games from Sta
Juan. During the winter the radio singes with a five account of tibe
Puerto Rican teams. Spring to fall, however, it is a manufactured
play-by-play erf the United States big leagues rectiwd m Sa Juan
by tape from New York and manufactured into what sounds Bee
an eyewitness account rendered in an amalgam of Spanish and
American baseball idiom. **Dos outs," the announcer calls, fol-
lowed by a string of Spanish. When the teletype indicates a hit, he
strikes two pieces of wood together, shouts "Fowl" wfaik the engi-
neer brings up the recorded crowd noises. Puerto Rican baseball
broadcasts are not only intelligible to the unilingual taximen but, m
my driver told me, they have more "goose-toe."
ST. CROIX VJL
ALTHOUGH THERE is A LARGE SPANISH-SPEAKING POPUI^TION OH
St. Croix, forty miles off, no one could care less orar beam alxsit
baseball or the Pow-k>aded kilocycles. While St Thomas grows
shops and hotels and cultivates tourists, St. Croix is iateesled m
sugar cane, and visitors come after that The stone towm of
windmills which ground the cane before the steam age stffl dot
the island, and one at the Comanehe Club has been transforaied
into a honeymoon cottage.
The island has a large and scenic population erf ample-sized
colored ladies who tie up their heads with bto@d bandanas and
then plop a straw hat on top. Although the island's naiae is French,
the accepted pn>nunciatioe is **Saint Croy," a bastarfizatio
200 SOME EHCHAHTED ISLANDS
effected by the II S. Marines who had trouble, when they arrived
in World War I, with Gallic intonations. Those who come down
from the United States are known as Continentals. Those of the
Maud arc Cruzans, the "i" having long ago been dropped when
an artist making labels for Cruzian Rum left it out by mistake.
The investment in the labels was heavier than the Cruzans* addic-
tion to fauWessness.
The Buccaneer, a lovely new hotel for sixty guests, commands
a magnificent location above the harbor with handy swimming
m ttie sea. It Ekes to take its guests lobstering at night, organizes
picnics CHI the beach, has a tennis court and horses.
St. Croh's other large inn is the Hotel on the Cay (they say
u key w ), so called because it sits some yards offshore and must be
reached by rowboat Winter rates run about twelve to eighteen
dollars m the hotels, straight American plan, slightly less in the
guest houses which are sprinkled all over the island.
For those in search of even deeper peace there is, as I say,
St Jofan, forty minutes by boat from St. Thomas. There are two
tourist deveJopmoits 00 St John, Cancel Bay, and Trunk Bay,
both of which offer rooms or cottages hard by the sea. After
yotfve eaten a turtle steak and seen the wading sea garden, there
isn't much left to do except lie in the sun, swim, and contemplate
those less fortunate.
In the matte- of getting there, Pan American flies Constellations
to San Juan in six and a half hours from New York, five hours
from Miami, and it has twice-a-week speedy Convair service out
of San Juaa to St, Thomas, St. Croix, and on to Antigua, Guade-
loupe, Martinique, aed Trinidad. Eastern Airlines also flies as far
as San Joan, the Bull Lines gets there in comfort by ship, and
sfaotid you want merely to stop in, any number of cruises put in
at San Juan and St. Thomas. Caribair bounds back and forth
between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands like a bi-motored
shuttlecock.
THE CARIBBEAN * 201
BRIDCSETOWlf f BAHBABOS
BARBATK>S is A SUGAR-COATED PEAK SITTING ALOOF OF THE OTHEH
islands, on the eastern bleachers that took down 00 the Caribbean
Sea. Its neighbors which Ik in an otherwise orieriy stmg were
offspring of volcanoes, but Barbados was cneated out erf the co*sl
of the sea, and perhaps even among islands ttiere sue social dis-
tinctions.
Somewhere after sugar, molasses, and nun, the tourists bcccsne
a consideration. The island is all but surrounded by beaches and
by flying fish, a phenomenon that results in w. inescapable diet
of fried flying fish and f.f. pie. For those who sail kilo the road-
stead on the winter cruise ships, the water front is the most escit-
tag of the Caribbean. A forest of masts and rigging grow 01^ of
the interisland schooners that lie in the Careenage, an inland
harbor split by the Britannic facade erf the stoae Chamberlain
Bridge. Colored harbor police in middies, skimmers, and higb-
laced sailor pants, a uniform worn by Nelson's men, patrol in a
ion^oat Sweating stevedores unload mahogany togs brought
from neighboring Islands, for Barbados has no wood. Sliding among
the men comes a dark lady and atop her head is a can with a spigot,
"Mawby!" she cries, "Mawby! Who's caffitf me?" Hoidiag a glass,
she pours a steady stream of mawby, a bitter, spiced tea biewed
from a local bark.
Another refreshment is the Juice of fresh-cut cane, calkd **feot
liquor," a dangerous name for an innocuous bcDywash. In months
blessed with an ** there is also the caH of "See eee Aytgn!," for
sea eggs are the local term for sea urchins, a porcupine bal which
is steamed and fried and eaten for breakfast. It is against the tew
to sell sea eggs in months bereft of Vs, w but a bootleg femieess
thrives and the ladies who run the eggs cany cowed trays on
their heads and refer to their product only as "(km ti^. w
Get exit a little from Bridgetown aad there are the ned busses
with the open side, seme owned by My Lord's Hi! Bus
and the bakery carts shaped like a ittte lionse wiidi carry
and cakes to each door. The local homes me sfaipie and alike, as
if (tested by a child with building blocks. Qrkfet ganies spring
up on a pitch by the side of the sea, p^ss^s-ljy pA their
202 SOME EHCHAIfTED ISLANDS
bicycles on the curbstone to watch, and the scene is England done
in blackface.
Aside from its singularities, Barbados is also about the cheapest
island this skte of Majorca. If you stay the winter you can hire a
uniformed baby's nurse for five dollars a week, U.S. Since it is
both British and West Indian, its unit of currency is the British
West Indian dollar. I had better explain about that before we get
in any deeper. One dollar U.S. is equal to one dollar and seventy
cents, B.W.I., known as beewee. However, this refers only to
doHar bills, for a dollar in U.S. silver is only worth one doEar and
fifty-five cents beewee, and indeed may only net you one dollar and
twenty cents beewee in the shops. On the other hand, a beewee
dollar is broken down on a British structure and equals seven
beewee shillings (one shilling equals twenty-four beewee cents
except there is no such thing as cents), plus one beewee penny
(worth two imaginary beewee cents). Have I lost you, Hjalmar?
The hotels on Barbados have a habit of being old and some-
times stufiy, although I wouldn't say that for all twelve of them.
It is a rare one that has hot water and I would say that for all
twelve of them. The best of the island's accommodations seem to
be its residential clubs, a legal term designed to permit the owner
to dose his doors to such island trade as he chooses not to serve.
There are also twelve of these, among them the Coral Reef Club,
a new and handsome layout with fourteen rooms in an assortment
of white coral bungalows set amid banana trees, palms, and frangi-
pani at the edge of a curved sand beach. This kind of living comes
to eighteen to twenty-five dollars beewee, or less than eleven
dollars a day and up per person with food and hot water.
Maresol, a housekeeping apartment colony, offers a living
room, bedroom, kitchen, bath, and terrace for one hundred and
seventy-five dollars a month, B.W.L currency, and for eight dollars
a week, B.W.L, you can have a maid. That makes four dollars
and eighty cents, your money, mother.
The difficulty with Barbados after all, let's not make this too
easy is .its inaccessibility. British West Indian Airways flies from
San Juan with one stop in four hours, or they will pick you up
from Pan American in Antigua if you can wangle a seat, or they
will fly you up from Trinidad in a comfortable Viking in an hour
and a half. TCA flies down via Montreal and Bermuda. For cruise
THE CARIBBEAH 283
passengers the shopping simply isn't up to Si. Thomas, Bermuda,
Nassau, Curasao, or Trinidad, and I would save my kitty for
those ports.
POET OF SPAHf , TOOIIMJ)
TRINIDAD RODE TO NORTH AMERICAN FAME ON THE OFF-EAT
shuffle of the calypso, a type of song with lyrics that wetie antiseptic
as Sunday school if you examined them and suggestive as Eoo-
cacdo if you didn't. Port of Spain, whkh is the capital, is a handy
sort of Hong Kong, for Trinidadians are Chinese and Negro, East
Indian and British, French and Portuguese, not to mention tte
mixtures that evolve when love steps over lines of national origin
and race.
It is not uncommon to see an East Indian woman m a sari on
her way to town with a basket on her head, West Indian style,
hawking, "Melongene and patchoy!" The former is the Creole fear
eggplant, the latter means Chinese cabbage.
Bkck police in white pith helmets and blue short pants keep
the traffic moving past the Chinese merchants, past tlie coconut
cart pulled by a donkey and operated by a lad whacking husks
off with a machete, and above everything through a loud-speaker
floats the music of "Jingle Bells," calypso version.
Trinidad is a paradise for the cruise passenger, for its prices
on French perfumes, Swiss watches, English tweeds, and chmawafe
are said to be lower than that bargain basement of the Caribbean,
Curasao (ArpSge is fifteen dollars beewee, the ounce.) Its Indian
bazaars have fascinating collections of scarves from Benares, neck-
laces, bracelets, brassware, hwy figures, embroidered bags, all
imported from the homeland* Says Armoog^m and Seas, **$bop
Hare and Save a Trip to the Orient."
For the cruise ship parties, too, there will be calypso music
and sled-band music, which though they grow in Trinidad ane
204 SOME ENCHANTED ISLANDS
difficult for the individual traveler to hear. Although all shades
of Trinkbdians play in the steel bands, the music began with the
Negro. When it became unlawful to beat on drums, the Negroes
beat on bamboo and made bamboo-tamboo music, but they also
used the sticks to beat on each other and the cops stepped in again.
Finally from garbage cans and old brake drums came the steel
baud. Oil drums are used exclusively now and depending upon
their size have names like Ping-pongs, piano pans, and kittle
booms. The drums produce anything from boogie-woogie to
Beethoven's Fifth.
Calypso singers in outlandish costumes and names to match
appear on any tourist scene singing their off-color words to off-
beat rhythms, and often making new lyrics on the spot. Booklets
of lyrics and records are available for such famous artists as Eang
Radio, Lord Melody, the Mighty Spoiler, the Growling Growler,
and other old masters.
To house the tourist bewitched by the wonders of Trinidad, the
island has only the Queens Park Hotel, which enjoys a frightening
repfrtatkHi, far and wide. Probably the best room and bath in the
Caribbean can be had, however, at the Piarco Guest House run
by Pan American at the airport. Many of the rooms are air-
condtiQifeed, the service is crisp and East Indian, there is no
tipping, the glasses are wrapped in cellophane, there are hot and
cold water and showers, and fifteen minutes after your morning
cafl the boy arrives automatically at your door with complimentary
coffee and orange pice. About the same setup is offered by the
adjoining Bel Air Hotel, but the only hitch is that the airport is
eigteeea miles from town, and a cab costs five dollars, B.W.L
TOBAGO, B.W. I.
THE MOST UNSPOILED, INEXPENSIVE, AND AIX-BUT-UNDISCOVERED
island this side of the South Pacific is a reef called Tobago, just
THE CABIBBEJIM 205
twenty minutes from Its member isle, Trinidad. Literary detectives
and partisan islanders insist that it is the Robinson Crusoe island,
or to put it another way, the place Daniel Defoe had ia roifd
when he wrote of Crusoe's shipwreck.
In all fairness it must be mentioned that other partisans say
that Defoe was thinking about the island erf Joan Fernandez in the
Pacific. But on Tobago, where there is a Robinson Crusoe Hotel
and the Defoe epic is a perennial best seller, any man can give you
a dozen powerful reasons why this is the most famous desert island
of all.
Although Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe in 1719, to is ouly
lately that the romantic isle has been discovered by tourists. Daring
the war Commander John Crook of the Fleet Air Ann, who was
assigned to antisubmarine patrol out of Trinidad, used to fly ofer
to Tobago for week ends. He married a Triaidadlaii, went bsiei;
to England after the war to close his affairs on the stock
returned to Tobago, and opened a changing hotel by the
Since his home in England was Glen Haven, and his airplane
which carried him to Tobago week ends was called Btae Biid* lie
christened his inn Blue Haven. "By Blue Bird out of Glen Ha^e%**
he likes to say. Now a new wing has expanded hk capacity to ifly.
During the winter season his rates are fifteen dollars, B.W.L, per
person per day with food, which is about nine dollars a day in
United States currency.
On energetic mornings Czook takes parties (m a ride through a
palm forest to a clearing by the sea. Hbne he pets an outboard
motor on a skiff, takes everyone chugging two miles out to B@oco
Reef. You doa a glass mask, breathe through a snorkel tsbe, and
walk in coral gardens between angel fisb, parrot fish, aeo fetos,
white fish with broad yellow stripes, black fish with big wfeitee dots.
Back in the boat the commander shakes everybody back la reality
with an iced Reef Restorer that has the whole party sin^ng fodotc
the skiff is back to shore.
Another new inn on Tobago is aa efegast 1Mb raort called
Amos Vale wfakh has just been btiil o the seaside coner erf m
vast plantation. This place has a certain cMdii degaaoe gwa
ofl, perhaps, by a huge gold piano sitting M tiie center of the lobby*
a Watteau painting gracing the iiiside of Ms M. Hie
206 * SOME ENCHANTED ISLANDS
at Araos are Venetian glass, and guests are shielded from the
sun but not the breezes by lacy, Moorish concrete screens. There
fa a private beach here, too, and sailing and riding.
The Robinson Crusoe Hotel is a good deal older and more
weather-beaten, but it is popular nonetheless, and at night it is a
center of activity. The manager, a man possessed of the name of
Kurt Nothnagel, keeps the pace going by coaxing old American
musical comedy numbers out of a piano in the bar. Island rum
costs twenty-five cents, whisky is fifty-four cents, and "aerated
sweet drmks," or soda pop, twelve cents. But this is B.W.L cur-
rency so take forty per cent off for American prices.
Guests at the hotels can take a box lunch and drive out to
Pigeon Point, which has lovely sand and thatched-roof shelters
for picnicking. Or there is Store Bay, shaded by seagrape trees
and watched over by fishermen who seem to prefer a seat in the
shade to spreading their nets in the crystal-clear water.
The peace of Tobago is broken four times a year. Twice, once
at Easter and once at Whitsuntide, there are goat races. Twice
again, once in November and once in March, there are horse races
at the track. Butchers, cab drivers, and dock workers all seem to
own bocses in this economy, and it seems to take the island six
months to calm down after each semiannual meet. Otherwise there
would be racing more often.
For those who miss the races, goat and horse, there are excur-
sions out to Bird of Paradise Island, sometimes called Little
Tobago, the only place where the plumy birds still live aside from
New Guinea.
Anybody hurrying down to Tobago by way of New York can
fly cfeect to Trinidad on Pan American's Boeing service in eight
hours, connecting with British West Indian Airways flights over
to the Crosoe isle. Or Pan American also flies from Miami with one
stop at San Juan.
Once on Tobago I would recommend you to the transportation
czar, one Samuel Hercules, who is better known as Tall Boy,
perhaps because he stands six-foot-five inches. Tall Boy under-
stands the needs of the tourist even though the whole business
is a little new to the rest of the Maud. "After all," Tall Boy told
me, "they only put in electricity on Tobago Tuesday gone."
THE CAEIBBEAK * 207
JAMAICA, B.W. L
THE TWO PEOPLE ONE HEARS MOST ABOUT H JAMAICA THESE BATS
are Kitch and Bustamante. Kitch, who is legendary, and whose
name is pronounced keee-ee yitch with a long inflected book o
the end of it, Is the subject of the most popular calypso soeg oa
the island. Bustamante whose first name is Alexander, and wbo
insists upon being called merely Bustamante or even ^Bnsta**
has become almost a legend, too. He stands six-feet-four inches,
has light tan sMn, a great pompadour of gray hair wMfa a pah* erf
white spumes shooting out from the temples. On the dty I met
him his long nose was slightly red cm the shoreline of the nostrils,.
and he wore a simple black single-breasted suit, a plain white
shirt, and a white pique bow tie such as men ordinarily wear with
a tailcoat
Bustamante is the elected Chief Minister of Jamaica aad is
simultaneously the head of a union which includes every sugar
worker on the island, or one hundred thousand members. Busta
says he was bom in Jamaica and taken to Madrid at the age of
six by one Lieutenant Colonel Bustamante, a Spanish officer who
had come to the island on a vacation. His father, he says, was an
Irishman named Clarke, his mother a full-blooded Arawak Indian.
His Spanish is fluent and he declaimed pleasantly the other day
to the wife of the Colombian consul to Jamaica who sat at his side
at a luncheon in Port Antonio. He also declaimed m English o
a variety of subjects which according to my noles wert as follows:
On his mother: **Sfae died five years ago at one hracfced and five
and was never sick in her life to go to bed. Never sfci m her He
to go to bed, I say." On his wife: "She died sixteen years ago ia
New York. It was a terrific blow, for she was caha and 1 was tem-
peramental and we blended." On meat: "Is it Jamaica meat? 1
don't like foreign meat" On other labor leaders: **Lewfe b& gone
a little too radical Bevin came to too hasty xmSM%mJ* O
Walter Reuther: "Who?" On Ms fern: "I had seven tfaoiiwad
trees there and every one went down in the storm of 1951 except
five hundred. Every one except five fatHKired, Qtt, but mm it is
almost heaven there, hooey." On the English language: **A ittle
heavy. Has not much anisic in it" On his cotisk who is his oppo-
208 - SOME ENCHANTED ISLANDS
nent in a forthcoming election: "His mother born him on the steps
of a courthouse. He is bora lawyer. He master advocacy. He is
political illiterate. I won him. I always win him."
Busta went through the United States on the way to the Coro-
nation, He has been there before. He says he made a killing in
Wai Street at the time of the crash. Some say he once drove a cab
ia Harlem. Of Busta's family tree an American scientist who has
been commuting to the Caribbean for twenty years says, "Arawaks,
he!!. There hasn't been an Arawak around there since Columbus
arriral" Although Bustamante's followers probably are not in-
clined to doubt his flamboyant family tree, there are signs he may
have tremble at the next general election. Said a cab driver in
Jamaica last week, "Bustamante is like a cow. He give ten quarts
of milk, dan kick it ova."
Although Busta's popularity may be on the wane, Kitch's popu-
larity is on the rise, and it seems inevitable now that his inappro-
priate notions about love shall sweep through the Caribbean Islands
and slide the calypso scales into the eternal halls of folklore. The
ntcwe printable lyrics go;
KJtch! come go to bed, a have a
small comb to scratch your
And do do Kitch! don't make mi
cry, you know a love you, you
playin' shy
Well when she call mi, I took the
efaanee, a wait and He down but
she want romance.
A said but darling, I am misled, a
thought you call mi to scratch
mi head,
The flair for appreciating the dramatic which accepts a Busta-
mante, the lazy, lusty rhythmic undertone which produces a Kitch,
is probably what transports Jamaica from a pleasant island with
palm trees to a place of warmth, definitive character, and imagi-
native iedividuality. The personality erf Jamaica wells up out of
the music, springs out of the conversations, protrudes through the
philosophy, stands out baldly in the village signs.
THE CAHIBBEAW * 209
While all this has been enjoyed in the past on ma ekgant winter -
time basis by those suffering a social chilblain, Jamaica seems on
the verge of developing a summer business for tbe vacatk*er-wth-
pay. It began with characteristic conservative colonial timidity,
but now some of the most sanctified halls have arranged for pack-
aged tours at just about half the winter rates. Much erf the ew
program has been inspired by tbe direct, nonstop service bom the
north which has been inaugurated by Avkaca, the national airline
of Colombia. Montego Bay has been made the int slop out of
New York on Avianca's Saturday CtJastelktioa light to Barran-
quilla and Bogota. It takes six hours and fifteen minute. Aviaeca
also flies nonstop from New York to Kingston, and provides DC4
tourist service from New York to Jamaica with an intermediate
stop at Miami, BOAC has nonstop flights, New York to Montego
Bay, and other Jamaica service via Nassau,
Round-trip air fare and eight full days at the Casa Blanca Hotel
in Montego Bay will come to two hundred and seventy-seven dol-
lars plus thirty-one dollars and fifty cents tax. The Casa Blaaca is
the matriarch of Mootego Bay, having started wMfa six rooms bade
in 1924 when Jamaica grew bananas. And that same year when
an ing&iue sang a Lonenz Hart lyric that said, u Fd like 10 take a
sail on Jamaica Bay with you," nobody doubted that she wt$
singing about Jamaica, Long Island. The Casa Blanca has se?msty-
ooe rooms now, and is crowded by the new Momego Beach Hold,
which was built last year atop a graveyard, a ooMtnirfto^il pe-
culiarity that has not constrained its gaiety.
What the unregistered can expect at Mostegp Bsy m mmrn&t
at fees from eight to f ourteen dollars a day is swimming at Dodoes
Cave Beach, a pleasant sand crescent bordered by seafppe isoet
washed by remarkably translucent water repuled to impart mote
health than a krge-sized bottk of Carter's UMb liver Pik. Tie
patios of tbe Casa Blanca adjoin tbe sea and, wfale isdaeiag m
air of well-being either externally from tiie mm or fatomaSjr jEram
the local mash, one can hardly avoid being serenaded by youngsters
bobtog f or pennies, tbe man ia the gjbss-lxj&oiaed boat, or ioat-
ing calypso troubadours. At ni^ht tis^e aje abo looting fee-caters
wtio spit Jets of lame across the black water, and a lew tinacs each
week the showboat floats inshore, mi okl banana barge manned
by a cast of native singers and dancers.
210 SOME EMCHANTED ISLANDS
The Casa Blanea and the Montego Beach hotels have organized
exchange meals and there will be dinners with swordfish and ackee
an orange-cdored vegetable with a black pit; land crab in
season; wild pigeon; for dessert, perhaps a mango melba. A piece
of star apple and orange becomes a local temptation called "matri-
mony," and a water ice made from those fruits is, to be sure,
frozen matrimony.
It is a mile or so into the town of Montego Bay, a distance
that can be covered in the carriage of Leonard Hart which bears
a legend on the back: "Drive to Town Walk No More." Mr.
Hart's wagon is rather elegantly paved inside with linoleum, freshly
swabbed, there is a rack for magazines in case the traveler becomes
bored by the cascading bougainvillaea, and there is a pleasant bell
of the kind trolley cars used to carry. All these are agreeable ac-
coutrements and my only quarrel with Mr. Hart is his price, which
is two dollars and eighty cents an hour, and his reckoning of time,
which, Hke daylight saving, is generally an hour ahead. This pro-
pensity has doubtless been designed to compensate for the nig-
gardly ways of his clientele. "Pee-pul they don' spen' large," says
Mr. Hart
Sixty-five miles away along the rim of the Caribbean, an entire
new Jamaica beachhead was established when the Tower Isle
was built in the Ocho Rios area in 1949. It is a long, sleek buiidiag
right on the sea, with a balcony for every room, a capacity for
nearly two hundred guests, an open-air night club on its fourth
floor. A broad sand beach and the seaside terraces look out on a
tky island with a replica of an old Spanish tower. There is a broad
patio where you may lunch in your suit, a large pool for those
wfao prefer captive water, and a fleet of sailboats and a cruiser
for those who would rather be on it than in it. Single rooms this
summer will start at twelve dollars a day, American plan, a little
higher if you want to look out at the sea.
One of the liveliest of the new hotels in the area is Stuart Sharpens
Silver Seas, which is three miles from the Tower Isle, two hundred
yards from the Ocho Rios Market, and about the same distance
from Runaway Bay, where the last Spaniards departed in haste
after a conclusive skirmish with the English in 1660. Mr. Sharpe
now has his orchestra playing quite snugly in a seaside cave where
THE CARIBBEAN * 211
he expects they will be sufficiently cloistered from those wk> wouJd
prefer to sleep. He also keeps on band a weird collection erf tropi-
cal fish, some of whom like to be petted, and other grandstand
players who roll on their back and spit water; an ominous toothless
shark; fascinating displays of local produce; and one of the best
calypso aggregations on the island.
As for Sharpe's fruit, it includes sapodilla, which looks like m
potato but is soft as a sponge; ackee, previously discussed; soursop,
which is a green prickly affair; yams that grow like ham hocks;
breadfruit; papaya, called pawpaw hereabouts; pwj&sm which
are green; plantains or large bananas, served boiled or fried; shad-
duck, a lop-sided grapefruit that is yellow on the outside, sweet
and pink inside; cho-cho ? or small squash; and all this laced with
long beige strands of coconut blossoms,
As for Sharpe's entertainment, it includes Lord Composer, real
name Roy Muddle, who indeed composes and sings oa the spot;
Leonard Hardware from Runaway Bay, who in BOfSBtisical hours
is a lifeguard; shoeless Levi, who tap-dances with bottle caps
stuck between Ms toes; and Fire, a bar-waiter who habitually elects
a monocle and spats. This aggregation dances, sings, and makes
musk with a nrmba box fitted with f our springs, davers, m&racas,
a guitar, and a former vegetable scraper. Lord Composer's favorite
composition:
Them gots some glammer gal in
this town
I tell you boy that them really
soun*
Them got a way to dress up in
style
Them they mad a man aH the while
That's the kind of gal them call a
glammer gal
Than got oee style them cafl
downsweep
One too much them cal upsweep
Them place a black spot beskle
them nose
That one them cai the beauty
212 SOME ENCHANTED ISLANDS
Jamaica's best excursion is the river rafting trip on the Rio
Grande, wMcfa can be arranged from any of the hotels in the Ocho
Rios area, from Kingston, or from Errol Flynn's Titchfield Hotel,
tea minutes from the rafting site. Mr. Rynn, who is used to living
dangerously, also has a hand in the rafting business, which involves
an armada of narrow bamboo rafts, each with an elevated seat
toe two. Each raft is under the command of an individual captain,
all of whom belong to the Rio Grande River Pilots' Association.
Locomotion is provided by the captain, who uses a long pole, a
system which requires two hours for negotiating two and a half
mSes of the shallow stream, which winds under drooping tropical
trees, past blue herons, between rock channels, and over a suc-
cession of rapids. You can stop en route for a picnic lunch, for a
swim, to watch the native ladies at their laundry along the shore,
or to be serenaded lay naked boys with flutes who play a few scales,
coileet a few cote, then scamper downstream and hit you with
the same routine again.
Port Antonio is a handy drive to Kingston, whence Avianca
zooms directly to New York, a number of other lines fly on to
Miami and Nassau. No one ever leaves Kingston without a stop
at the Myrtle Bank, one of the world's famous old hotels. It is
built like a big ring with a great expanse of lawn in the middle.
When I dropped in for lunch the other day men in white suits
were sipping rum at the outdoor bar, hulking white ships were
slipping past the dock, and the Jamaica Military Band dressed in
red and white Zouave costumes was thumping away under a shade
tree on the greensward. One was compelled to cast a glance
around to see if Somerset Maugham wasn't sitting in some quiet
comer taking notes.
THE BAHAMAS * 213
THE BAHAMAS
NASSAU
ANY TIME OF THE YEAR YOU ARE BOUND TO F^D NASSAU &
colorful city sitting on New Providence Maud, an atoi twenty-one
miles long and seven miles wide. It has a cnimblatg hotel called
Sloppy Joe's, which is next door to Dirty Dick's, a saloon named
with equal suitability. You can get your clothes washed at l-Necd-
A-Laundry, ride a bike down Home Troubk Avenue. Your peram-
bulations could quite coiiceivably take you throat Dog Ftea
Choke Neck, or Choke "Em alleys, three local byways. Although
most of the hotels have their owii beaches, you can swim CM Pa-
dise Beach, which happens to be ioe;q>iicably located on Hog
Island, across Nassau Harbor.
Nassovians are fond of buying crayfish cooked in old gasoline
drums an the docks. Some of them thmfr gin and coconut water
is the best drink concocted. The Negro police are decked out in
white tunics, white helmets, and black trousers adorned with red
stripes. Probably the most-pointed-out point of interest is G0^aa-
ment House, where the Duke and Duchess erf Windsor slepl for
four and a half years of a five-year sentence as Governor and F
Lady erf the Bahamas.
Much of Nassau's native Negro population is fatvoived m leak-
ing and selling straw hats, bags, baskets, and slippers, As salesmen
they are past masters in the art of tolling you pleasurably with
mellifluous talk, strung with happy humor. "You gotta little Jofaray
at home, boss, I got some nke slippers?** No Jotraay, we Id! the
lady. "Then maybe you gotta Susie at home, boss, I gotta nice
haiKH>ag? n We regret we have no Susie eitifaer. **Boss, w the eokwed
My says suddenly, "Just what you waitm' on?"
Straw handbags, attractive on tibe outside, and rather ragged
within, sell fee about one dollar md twoaty-Jwe cents. Cocoaiit
straw feats with brigjfat bands tliat cost a man five dollars at home
214 - SOME EHCHJINTED ISLANDS
sell for one dollar and fifty cents at the straw market. ("Hat loot
good on you, boss.") In the shops there is the usual British assort-
ment of chinaware, scotch at two dollars and eighty cents a fifth,
tortoise-shell jewelry, and men's shirts and women's dirndl skirts
w. smart African prints. The cloth is printed in the States and cut
in Nassau, a process that would go better if reversed. Sizes seem
to run small and the location of buttons frequently has nothing in
common whh the position of the button holes. You'll find rich
doeskin cloth on hand, and a number of tailors offer to make you
a pair of trousers in an afternoon or an entire suit in three days
for less than sixty dollars.
Almost any working day, which excludes Friday afternoon and
all day Sunday, Nassau is alive with farmers driving underslung
two-wheeler carts, guides driving surreys, and gray-cloaked colored
mms, who ride through the streets on bicycles. A Greek Orthodox
priest with a masterful gray beard and frock to match also stroQs
the streets. He is the spiritual guide of the Greek colony, which
forad its way to Nassau years ago to work in the sponge beds. A
plague rained the sponges and Nassau turned to tourism.
Tbe appearance of a cruise ship in the harbor will bring out
tibe beggars who crouch in the doorways and sing, "Hep me, please,
sir. Gimma penny?" There are also the shoe-shine boy who calk,
**Boo-bnown, boss?** and now and then the troubadours, who wffl
serenade you on the spot with "Bahama Mama" or lyrics con-
cerning the private life of the late-departed Duke and Duchess.
(X Nassau's two large hotels, the Fort Montagu Beach cm the
cool east end at the island has its own beach. At the crustier British
Colonial, owned by Lady Oakes, evening dress is "customary"
every night and "obligatory" on Saturday. The British Colonial
offers fine tennis courts, an open-air pool at the edge of its broad
gardens, and dancing every night in the bustling grill. A double
room equipped with bath rents from thirty-six to fifty dollars a
day, food included. The Fort Montagu in season charges from
twenty-four dollars to thirty dollars from December until the
end of January, and jumps the rates about eight dollars per room
per day from January through the end of March.
The cM Royal Victoria Hotel, first built during the Civil War to
house ammunition being run to the Confederate forces a short way
THE BAHAMAS - 215
across the sea, has long since been a success at bousing tourists. It
has a salt-water swiinming pool decorated with coconut palms and
bougainvillaea; and a suite for two looking over this artificial briny
comes to thirty dollars a day European pfaai, the Victoria's highest-
priced accommodation. Elsewhere on the premises you ea bed
down comfortably for as little as twenty-two dollars for two, no
meals, or thirty-six dollars for two modified Amerkan pba wlaefe
is to say, no lunch. Dinner is served by candlelight ia a grew of
palms, many of them embraced by vines spcootiig witit phiioden-
dron leaves. The coconuts have been removed m die interests of
saving the crockery if not the customers.
The arrival on the islaiid of a new three hundredH-oom estab-
lishment to be called the Emerald Beach will force the older inns
to lower their rates and spruce up their premises. Five miles firorai
town, the Emerald Beach will be all ak~cooditk>ned and that wH
make it comfortable as the movies in simmer.
Aside from hotels big and small, Nassau is also developing small
colonies of villas usually in inland, cloistered locations ideal for
families. The Nassau Racquet dub as a for-instance, has combina-
tion living room, bedroom, and kitchen units, charges eighteen
dollars a day for the layout. There is a commissary on fee grounds
and a maid can be engaged to cook dinner at fifty cents an hour.
Breakfast is cooked free on your own range with your 0w gro-
ceries. There is a small pool and tennis court on hand,
Pahndafe Villas has cottages wilh two bedrooeis, livrag &OOML,
bath, and screened porch renting foe twenty-six doSars a day mm
and twelve dollars a day in summer. They step four and the e$At
area is penned in f or the benefit of these wttfe o&prisg. Aft&o^fc
several erf the cottage colonies offer free transportation to Iowa arxi
beach, you can rait cars in Nassau for abort eig^t dollars a day.
While this might be considered a rather stiff stipend, M is probabty
one of the few places whore the average man woii be aifc to lofl
around under the pains and the tropical moo fa a jelkm con-
vertible Singer sports car at sightly mcwe tfam fifiy dollars m wdt
Should you come to Nassau on the European pirn* yo wffl
definitely find a dearth of restaurants. Most any hotel dining room
wffl be happy f or your patronage, tiower md m places ike the
psfio of fie Wmdsor yonTI fad sneb local ezotfca M fcod sapodiila
and pawpaw. A sapodffla looks ike MI orarsiased, green, expies-
216 ' SOME ENCHANTED ISLANDS
siooless plum, and tastes rather like mashed figs. Pawpaw is aa
itinerant papaya melon, which is often served with a coating of
seeds. Charged with pepsin, the seeds are soft and healthful. Paw-
paw is one of the few foods with its own antacid, aside from the
hot dogs at Lindy's, which, according to ancient legend, are served
with built-in bicarbonate of soda.
HAMILTON
BACK WHEN THE FURNESS LINES PLACED THE Ocean Monarch m
service we said, in a rash moment of intrepidity, "Hang the hard-
ship," and agreed forthwith to sail aboard her for a six-day trip
to Bermuda. We can repeat that the Monarch is five hundred and
sixteen feet and three inches long, weighs fourteen thousand tons,
and serves sixty-eight items for breakfast.
All of the Monarch's staterooms are square, outside rooms with
bath, a luxury made possible because she is a one-class ship and
need only provide one set of public rooms. The aft end of her
boat (feck is a broad expanse with courts for deck tennis and
shuffleboard and with ample room for rows and rows of loafers.
The sundeck overlooks an outdoor swimming pool on the deck
below, an area usually surrounded by multicolored mattresses for
utter collapsing.
Both the Coral Caf6 the floating night club and the dining
salcm are air-comiitioiied, and since most passengers spend half
their cruising time in either place, nobody is expected to mind the
heat no matter where the Ocean Monarch sails. The food is much
BEBMUDJL * 217
better afloat than ashore in Bermuda, and the menus include a
number of dishes which seemed foreign to everyone in earshot
except, I trust, the chef. I refer particularly to Meho Mowbray
pie, which turned out to be veal and ham pie; Oxfort Brawii,
which is head cheese; and Cream Carmen, unmasked as tomato
soup.
On the breakfast menu anyone with a mind fear juices was at
liberty to choose among pineapple, orange, tomato, pome, and
lime. Or to have eggs boiled, fried, turned, poached, scrambled,
shirred, country style, or en cocotte; not to count the omelettes
which cone plain, jambon, jelly, tomato, or WesleoL Anyone
with indulgent tablemates, an enormous appetite, a twisted psyche,
and an iron-lined stomach could conceivably tarn in a breakfast
order for Iced Water Mekm, Saut of Ox Kidney TtarWgo, with
Hashed Browned (or Creamed) Potatoes, Vienna Bread, all
washed down with Horlick's Malted Milk. AH these items appear
on the morning list, Surgeon's quarters and consulting rooms are
located on A-deck aft, port side.
The Ocean Monarch has nothing to do with the old M&imvh &j
Bermuda, which burned when it was being refitted foe ImOTy ran
and was sold into service between England and Australia, Tfais
new Monarch is a namesake of the Ocean Monarch whkfa irst
sailed from Liverpool bound for New York on April 10, 1857,
She was two hundred and f orty feet long, less than batf the ste
of the new ship, and she carried nine hundred and fifty-few- pas-
sengers, more than twice as many as the new Maw&c&s capacfty.
The fare for six adults and a child came to one hundred nd
twenty-five dollars in 1857, a sum which would carry one
to Bermuda and back in iritnimnm accommodations in 1951.
On her regular cruises to Bermuda the pcsseol; Ocean
is in the habit of sailing at 3 PM. en Saturday afternoons, arrirrag
at the island at an indecent hour Monday momiig, Siie usually
pits in at St. George's, the ancient town on tie eadraue east aid
of Bermuda, forty-five minutes by taxi from Hamilton. St Geocge's
was founded in 1612, was the captel for two temdred years, Mid
hasn't changed much since. It fe surely one of ttie few t0wus in
the worid which gives the mitor or the rcskfeiit a choice of two
names for many streets. Among them are the Duke of Cuisberiaiid
218 * SOME ENCHANTED ISLANDS
Lane or OM Maid's Lane; Silk Alley or Petticoat Lane; and
street rainominally known as Shinbone Alley. A carriage ride
wiD bring you around the shore to Gates Fort, named for Lieutenant
General Sir Thomas Gates, governor-designate of the Virginia
Colony, whose ship was wrecked on Bermuda July 28, 1609. The
fort was put up as protection from the Spanish, while Gates built a
new ship, and sailed four years later to rescue John Smith's James-
town Colony.
The English arensal at St. George's also figured in a long-arm
match perpetrated by some of our slippery ancestors from Phila-
delphia. Bermuda leaned heavily on Britain's American Colonies,
and when the Revolution was declared, the Americans slapped
an embargo on Bermuda's ships. The Continental Congress told
a Bermuda delegation that the embargo might be lifted in exchange
for the English powder stored at St. George's arsenal. One dark
night the hungry Bermndians up and stole it, loaded it at Tobacco
Bay, and sent it sailing up to the American shore.
There are a number of hotels handy to St. George's, the handiest
being the Hotel St George, which sits cm a hillock right in town.
The Hotel St. George is not a place for honeymooners, but it is
pst the spot for families to whom it shows every deference shod,
of adopting extraneous children on a permanent basis. There are
certain areas carefully marked with SFO signs (small fry only)
inside of which are all kinds of devices to keep the little devils
from blowing each other up while the big fry are off golfing. There
is even, for that matter, a pint-sized golf course with two holes,
a caddy faoese, and a third-hole milk bar. Rates on a modified
American plan (room, breakfast, and dinner) start at ten dollars
a day for a singje with running water but no bath.
The Castle Harbour in Tuckefs Town across the water re-
opened since we were in Bermuda last and it is camme hdtel, as
the French are fond of putting ft, about the poshest place on the
island. It has three hundred rooms, each at feast fifteen by sixtem
feet, each with its own bath, each with a view of the world outside.
The grounds are landscaped and lovely, particularly a sunken
garden called, for some capricious reason, the Coffee Chine.
There is a fine swimming pool in the back of the hotel, and a
continuous free bos service runs to the beach on the South shore.
BERMUDA * 219
Castle Harbour adjoins the Mid-Ocean golf ctob (Big Ttaee meet-
ing site) wMch is famous, tricky, and elegant* and there is dancing
every nigfct but Sunday in the Castle Rendezvous, a mammoth
and rather attractive night club in the hold basement. Rooms for
singte occupancy will cost you from eighteen to twey-tim doilan,
a day or twenty-six to forty-two dollars for two in a double room.
The rate here, too, is modified American plasi^ but the Bermuda
restaurants are inclined to set a better table than the hotels, and
the system gives you a chance to gt around.
Bermuda's distinctive accommodation is the guest house, or
informal hotel, of which Harmony Hall near HaiaiMcm is a fair
example. It is comprised of a series of one-story pink buildings all
connected by corridors, and it can bold eighty-five wife all beds
spoken for. It gets a young crowd, particularly honeymooners, wbo
pay twenty-four dollars a day with two meals, or thirty-six dol-
lars in the bridal suites, each of which is equipped witb a private
porch or balcony and a garden entrance. There is & night club m
the basement, called the Gombey Room principally because it is
inhabited cnice a week by some of Bermuda's Gotnbey daacers,
who raise a hell of a racket on fife and drums and stomp around
decked out in ieopard-skin costumes and headdresses of peacock
feathers. The Gombeys also appear in considerably larger numbers
each Boxing Day in Bermuda, wfakh is the day after Cfaristoas,
traditionally in England a holiday for servants. Bermuda's servants
make a festival of it, mix in African tappings* mod dance and
sing calypso while the onlookers toss theaa sfal&ig of e&-
conragemeet.
Aside from such heaven-sent advantages as the sun and the
sea, Bermuda also offers some man-made bargains which are
frequently too attractive to pass up. Shetland sports jackets for
men are about f orty-two dollars, Shetland sweaters for ladies aie
seven dollars and fifty coats, aid if you're reteirieg by sea, with
no overweight worries, each person Is slowed to brkg back ive
fifths, or one gallon, of liquor duty-free* If you buy m bead you
can get five bottles of good scotch for twelve <k&r% ive bofifles
of assorted cordials for twelve deters and fifty cents, or fi^e bottles
of name-brand gin for eight doHars* You ffank down your money
in the liquor stoce and you new see the cases until they aie
delivered under pur letter at the pier in New York. Baggage is
220 * SOME ENCHANTED ISLANDS
unloaded first, however, and if you have hootch in the hatch it
will delay you for at least half an hour on arrival. Prices cm French
perfume are also a distinct improvement over what you pay at
boine. For one thing there is no twenty per cent excise tax, which
Uncle Sam unromantically imposes on all instruments of allure.
MEXICO
With Love and Etft-ess
MEXICO CITY
I HOPE THE TEXANS WELL PARDON ME FOR MY SEEMING LIBERTY
in lumping their empire with the states of California, Arizona,
New Mexico, and Colorado. But if you torn a hypothetical geo-
graphical coalition of all those territories, you will get a land mass
of about the same size as the Republic of Mexico.
Mexico sits with its head in the laps of all the states rnestiofied
above, with the exception, of course, of Colorado. Its feet nudge
up against Guatemala, on the south, with one toe oo the border
of British Honduras. Along the forty-five hundred miles of coast
line on the Pacific and the seventeen hundred miks along the QmM
of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea the country is km, fiat, and hot,
Hie center of Mexico, however, is one immense plateau spiked
here and there by great mountains.
Some twenty-six million people Ihc m Merioo, half el tfaea
pure and full-blooded Indians, the other half part lodkiv part
Spanish. For the most part they speak Spanish, and M that seems
an obvious nugget of intelligence, there is a weB-estabfehed travd
agent in Mexico City who swears that an American lady after her
first day in Mexico was heard to remark* **I look for years erf
French in college, and honestly I caa*t understand m wad.** Tie
language of course differs widely from the Spanish erf Spain, jwt
as the English of, say Newcastte-uader-Lyme, differs from the
chatter of Mempfais-aloiigside^^
A great misapprehension has sprung up thai Mexican tempera-
ture all year around is about the same m St Louis in the mkkik
of August at tteee in the afternoon. In tie first piaoe, feal of
224 * MEXICO
Mexico is north of the southern extremities of the United States,
and, what's more, the average altitude along the great plateau is
six thousand feet, not very much less than the height of Mount
Washington in New Hampshire. The weather is, indeed, so change-
able and varied that rural Indians have adopted the sarape, an
emergency blanket-and-cape which is folded and carried slung
across the shoulder when not in use.
Although the temperature in many parts of the country is tem-
perate, the Mexicans live as if they were sitting astride the Equator.
Lunch can run anywhere from half-past one in the afternoon to
four o'clock, and many people still take siestas. One goes to dinner
at nine.
Americans who want to return with happy memories of Mexico
must deckle beforehand to pass up salads, raw vegetables, and
be careful where they order pork and fish. Don't ask if the local
water is safe to drink. The alleged purity of the water has become
a point of local honor, and head waiters and hotel managers will
insist theirs is as unblemished as Little Nell. Don't drink it, except
in Mexico CSty. Order a bottle of Tehuacan bottled spring water
instead. Be careful of ice cubes. A good way around a cold scotch
and soda is to order some of the excellent Mexican beer which is
rich, malty, and not nearly so carbonated as our brews. Try Carta
Blmea, Bohemia, or XX's pronounced dos eck-ess. For the first
few days in the high altitudes (or, for that matter, in the hot low-
lands) don't eat or drink too much, because you'll have trouble
digesting.
High or low, digestive troubles are not one of the major prob-
lems of the Mexicans. A local delicacy is the worms which grow in
maguey cactus plants, sold in baskets made of cactus skin, ten
pesos foe a handful. To cook, drop live worms in pot of boiling
oil and simmer. That brings me to the iguana, a lizard whose skin
is used for shoes and handbags, and whose flesh looks like the
white meat of chicken and tastes like fish. The tortilla, a substitute
for bread, is a hefty pancake of corn-meal dough, and frequently
they are manufactured at street corners or bullfights by ladies who
sit CHI the ground, pound the batter together with their palms, and
drop the pancake onto a portable cooker. Once you wrap a tortilla
around a piece of pork or chicken or cheese or anything that hap-
pens to be kicking around the pantry, it is no longer a tortilla but
WITH LOVE AWD ECK-ESS * 225
a toco, a Mexican sandwich. AIM! if a toco should be rolled aad
dunked in tomato sauce or mole, a rich sauce made of chile, spices,
and chocolate, it becomes, in torn, enchiladas.
The unit of Mexican exchange is the peso, which is worth about
twelve cents, roughly eight to the dollar. In spile of tie advan-
tageous exchange for norteamericanos, many Americans wBl irn^e
a short case of apoplexy when they look for the first t&ae it a
Mexican menu and read "De Luxe Hamburger Saadwfch Plate
$4.00." The symbol we use for dollars is also used by the Mexi-
cans to indicate pesos. The price of the hambmger is forty-eigjit
cents, not four simofeons.
Comparable items such as meals and hotel rooms sue for the
most part outstandingly less expensive below the bottler tfeaa
above ft, as subsequent quotations of rates will shortly indicate.
And ladies who are wild for bargains, and most ladies aic, wffl
have a mad, gay time poking around for silver, perfume, and
flowers. On the way to the house of a friend this seaaowr I stopped
in an Indian, market and bought four dozen oversized gladioli
for what amounted to one dollar and twenty-fife cents.
It is the custom to tip between ten and twenty per cent of a
check, but you will be overtipping if you translate the value of
pesos into American money before taking care of a bellboy or a
porter. Cab drivers are not tipped. As a Mexican explained to me f
"It is not necessary to tip them as they already overcharge yro.**
Actually, cabs are cheap and no ride inside Mexico Ciy shotild
be more than eight pesos, and most short trip are three or four.
Americans are frequently in the habit of looking apa all foreign
tender as stage money, a propensity wfakh is especially imp&asant
to the Mexicans. I stood behind a cotmtryman. at tte cashier's
desk of a Mexican hotel recently as he paid bis MIL Reaching into
his pocket and extracting a wad of pesos he saM, **H0w mwA m
ft in this stuff?** "In this stuff," the Mexican girt answered in icy
Hngiifth, "your Ml is shrty~tfanee pesos."
Americans will also avoid local disdain by refraining from
wearing shorts or slacks anywhere except at a itsort; by asking
pennissioii before taking anyone's piste; aad by not necoiliiig
m abject horror if a Mexican greets you Mke an dkl friend. Old
friends greet by embracing gostiiy and thiMqrag eacfa otlia: in
the kidneys. His salutation has also been described as the
226 MEXICO
for the rocoe or the feeling f ox the wallet, depending upon what
one suspects of one's greeter.
"Conor* DcdtferT*
MEXICO CITY
THERE ISN'T ANYTHING THAT WOULD COME IN MORE HANDY HERE
at seven thousand three hundred and forty-nine feet than an extra
set of iimg&, Nobody seems to know what a city of three million
people is doing way up here, but the Aztecs founded it this way
in 1325, and nobody has the guts to ask for a change now.
Those who live here call it Mexico, the way New Yorkers drop
the u tity w from New York, Mexico is in the middle of a building
boom, and great new futuristic skyscrapers of brass and glass
and colored mortar stand stiff against the sky. There are those
who say that Mexicans coming home after a few years abroad fail
to recognize the streets.
It was startling when I arrived in Mexico on a fine summer
evening recently to find these bold new buildings reaching up for
international recognition. Qa the sidewalks squatted Indians and
their babies. Some were selling newspapers, some were begging,
and some were nursing. As the dusk came down dozens of gasoline
lanterns were turned cm, and they screeched against the darkness
with a green-white light of the hue that a firefly throws. In the
glare Indian vendors hawked a thousand trinkets of Mexican silver,
and men walked up and down with armfuls of colorful costumes
for children, spangles dancing.
As I have been teffing you, if s cool in Mexico even of a sum-
"HOGEK, DODGEM!" 227
nier's evening, and men stroll by m topcoats. Tie weather is tort
of perpetual spring or perpetual early fall, and there isn't much
difference in the seasons except that summer is the rainy season
and the flowers are bettor. Yon cliiab a flight of stairs and the
breath comes fast; you're aU set to give yoradf a silent sermon
about cutting down on smokes and dissipation when yw remember
the altitude. Like living halfway up the Matterfeorn.
When it comes to picking a ho4l, the biggest and the newest
is the del Prado, six hundred rooms, six bandied baths, six fa-
dred radios. It is located on the Avenue Juarez, opposite Alameda
Park, handy to the office buildings, theaters, and restmiiraatSL It
has a soignee night club on the lower floor, a dining rooin decorated
by Diego Rivera, and telephone operators that speak English aod
act as your secretary. Says one when she takes your mmfoar t
"Roger, Dodger!" The Prado's rates: forty to eighty pesoi a day,
European plan, doubles fifty to ninety, and there are a number
of luxury suites with private terraces.
In the same class, slightly less in price, is the Reforma, which
has two hundred and fifty rooms, sits cm the broad and beautiful
Paseo de la Refonna, and in its intimate residential way is remi-
niscent of the George V in Paris. Singles fifty-fivt; to seveirty,
doubles seventy to eighty-five. Family style, but still catering to the
American taste, is the Geneve, away from the cei^er oi things, with
rates that run eighteen to fifty single, and about dxty double.
The. Ritz, the Prince, and the Regis are all conmiefcial hotels in
the downtown center charging thirty-five to fmty-fi^B single.
Most of the eating in Mexico Qty is (tone m the restaurants, for
one thing because the hotels operate on the Emtjpea pbm, ad
for another because there is an excellent list of places ID cine. No
ooe should miss Sanbonfs, which has an Immense
offering American dishes served by girls in Mexican costumes* and
a number of nooks where you can boy American dr^ American
magazines, guidebooks, perfume, saver, md post cafds* It also
has a Fuente de Sodas where you can get a Latin vefstai of a
black-and-white.
There are a half-dozen restaurants in town wMcfa haw thkk
carpets, exquisite decorations, silvar servke plates, soft musk^ m&
excellent iEtornafional fare where you can eat for less tbas titoe
dollars. In this class there is the Jena at Avenue Mondos No. 10,
228 * MEXICO
where the atmosphere is elegance and the theme is Napoleon's
victory over the Prussians and the Saxons at Jena in Thuringjb
in 1806, I'm not altogether sure what this has to do with a res-
taurant, but the tablecloths are decorated with a plan of those
proceedings in full color. Since all j's are pronounced like h's, ask
for the hay-na, or they'll think you're daft. In very much the same
mood is the One-Two-Three at Liverpool 123, which has no
Napoleonic trapping but offers instead a garden with all manner
of caged birds. I have a menu from the place before me and I wish
to report that a T-bone steak 'from Chihuahua" (they mean the
province, not the dog) costs fourteen pesos, Breast of Chicken
Alfonso Xin is twelve pesos. Among the desserts chocolate cake
lists for three pesos, or thirty-six cents, but you can spend six bits
on Mangos Flamb6e.
Sunday may be a day of rest for everyone else, but it will keep
the tonrkt in Mexico City hopping. Sunday mornings everyone
trundles out to Xochimilco (they call it so-chee-meel-ko), foor-
lera miles southeast of the city, to see the floating gardens. The
section was oace a settlement for Aztec nobles, who built rafts
which they aodboied in the lake. Eventually the rafts became
covered with, earth and reeds and so became islands, affixed to
Hie lafce-iottom. Through the canals formed by the islands, the
focal natives, who still speak an Aztec patois, float little skiffs
covered with fresh flowers. Truth to tell, I'm not quite sure whether
the boats or the original islands are supposed to be the floating
g3ideas. It has all become quite a Sunday carnival, however, and
as your skiff is pofed down the cypress-bordered canals, water-
borne veadors glide up to you in other boats selling blankets,
pottery, and beer. An Indian girl in a canoe paddles up with a hull
fnfl of orchids, a barge bearmg a photographer slides by. Your
picture is taken on the way down and the print is delivered to
you on the way back. The Mexicans come to Xochimilco, too,
hiring a whole barge on which they load entire families down to
third-degree cousins, food toe the whole entourage, and a stove.
It is said with considerable truth that the bullfight, which is
called for Sunday afternoons at four, is the only thing that ever
goes off on time in Mexico. Hie bullfight season runs from No-
vember through March, although amateur fights, called the Novil-
ladas, are held during the rest of the year. You can buy a ticket
COBTS SLEPT HEBE - 229
at your hotel, from your travel agent, or at the staditm itself which
happens to be the largest buflfigfat arena in tic woridL It seats fifty
thousand and when the winter fights are on, a mas without influ-
ence, luck, or an oversized wad of cadi might be barf p^ to get
a seat. The stadium is a deep and perfect saucer, and ycm can bey
your seats on the sombra side (shady) or on tlie jrf which, H& tibe
bleachers, is less expensive. The usher may plop a cushioo ondcr
you, a service which brings a small price, but ifs worth It Get
there early, as the crowd is also a show.
Cortes Slept Here
CUEHNAVACA
IT IS FORTY-SEVEN MILES OVER A FINE HIGHWAY TO CUERN AVACA,
a small town with an altitude three thousand feet lower than
Mexico City and a climate that is renowned. It was popularized
first by the Aztec emperors who caiae in the sraraier, then by
Cort6s, and ultimately by Emperor Maximlia and Cariotta. ft is
still a nesting place today for TOiting barons from the United States
and of Mexico who have built magnificent estates equipped with
swimming pools and platoons of servants, who come cheap below
the border. For the h^ne-todi^'-gosic^^K>rrow tsomiit tte is UK
Cathedral, built Mke a fortress, wMcli Cort& founded in 1529,
and across the steet his white lionse, BOW tie Posada La Casoaa,
a boarding house. Hie Palacio Cor^ mm tie Stale capital (for
Mordos) lias murals by Rifeia, donate! fey Dwight MOEKIW,
former United Stales ambassador to Mexkx>.
The hotels are designed for those who wffl stay lor a wMte, and
230 MEXICO
anyoiie who wouldn't want to should surrender himself for analysis.
OK of the pfeasantest is the Hotel Mandel, on Highway 3 before
reaching Cueraavaca from Mexico. It seems to sprawl all over
the place, with drooping trees, a swimming pool, and an aura of
exquisite peace. A double room is thirty-five pesos a day, for
two, European plan, or ninety pesos for two with meals.
The square at Cuernavaca is a sleepy place surrounded by
dozens of carts that sell such useful items as delicate wooden
ukuleles painted pink and yellow, rebozos by the gross, sandals,
blouses, and hand-painted skirts dancing with sombreros and
mules that I regret to report leave me nothing if not bilious.
For those who must retreat from such hurly-burly, there is a
quiet park in the center of the square where one can sit in the
shade aiki contemplate the gingerbread bandstand. Such repose
was hardly enough for Hernando Cortes, Descendant of the Sun,
Conqueror of Mexico. When he was bored with battle and fa-
tigued with intrigues, he would slip away to a quiet little sugar
mill near a lake, not far from the center of Cuernavaca.
Cortes returned to Spain in 1540 and seven years later he was
dead in Seville. The sugar mill, which was the first one built cm
the Continent, kept churning out sugar until 1912, when some
overheated Mexicans blew it up during the course of a revolution.
A moldy wreck, the mill lay abandoned with the ghost of Cortes
and wounds of the revolution until 1943, when it was viewed by
a Mexican and an American, both with ideas.
After World War II these two gentlemen, who had just built
the great del Prado Hotel in Mexico City, decided that Cortes had
had a pretty good idea even if it was four hundred and five years
old. In 1948, with the flavor of the old Spanish conquistadores in
mind, they opened the Hacienda Vista Hermosa, one of the most
fascinating little oases on either side of the border.
The Hacienda is Old Mexico, a million miles from a billboard
or a snarl of traffic. The arches of the ancient Cortes aqueduct
tiptoe right across the middle of the swimming pool. A stone bell
tower looks down on an antique carriage which stands on the
mosaic courtyard by the portico. Statuettes, perhaps brought from
Spain in the early days and found under the dust of Mexican attics,
stand now in quiet pools.
CQBTS SLEPT HEHE * 231
Upstairs, the rooms are opened with great iron keys, have tiled
floors. Oil paintings look down from the walls. Some rooms haw
huge arched balconies where one can sit in the shade and wonder
if it is possible to muster enough energy to descend the stairway
and flop into the swimming pool. The bar b a delightful arbor
where one sips a tall, cool green concoction called the "General
MacArthur," a drink which replaces normal vision with a view
of five stars. At night there is dancing in the patio with soft Bgbis
playing from hidden recesses in the palm trees. Meals ane sorted
in a romantic grotto by waiters who wear the traditional costume
of the bridegroom in the neighboring state of Guerrero. It consists
of a white shirt embroidered down the front, an embfmfeired $mk
to match, and black trousers.
At luncheon, at dinner, and sometimes later under the Mexican
moonlight, guests are serenaded by a pleasant little guitar trio.
Since almost every young man seems to sing and pky the guitar
in Mexico, it was not too difficult for the management to find a
trio right on the premises. In their spare time the troubadours
are respectively the Hacienda barber, tailor, and the repairer of
bicycles.
Should the simple life of lolling about the pool, slppis^ drinks
and being serenaded ever begin to pale, the Hacienda am ofiar
horseback riding down the back-country roads, tennis, badminton
jai alai, and billiards. One mile away at Lago Tequesquiteago, m
old Aztec tongue-twister, there is black bass fishing ia the fafce and
water skiing on top of it. In the faD and winter theie m dadc
hunting and shooting for quail and wild pigeon. Advtmtecfs can
arrange for jaguar hunts in the mountains ten miles off.
So many norteamericanos have followed the old Oortfe teai
that the fifty-seven rooms of the Hacienda Vista Heonosa me
usually filled. Fifty more are being added, and all wiD be ifeoo*
rated with the courtly air of the Cortes period. As things stairf
now, the Hacienda's rates for room and board rwa tarn one ih
dred and sixty to one hundred and eigjhty pesos a day for two,
food included. That comes to a daily tariff of between seroifeea
dollars and twenty-four cents and nineteen doflais and fifty-Ifoe
cents per couple. The Hacienda, should you want to mate a bee-
line for it, is thirty-five miles from Taxco, and
twenty-five minutes' drive from Coernavaca.
232 * MEXICO
The Mexico of A4-S-M
TAXCO
ON THE ROAD FROM CUERNAVACA TO ACAPULCO, TAXCO IS A MOVIE
set by M-G-M with characters by Central Casting. It is everybody's
idea of Mexico. There is the village square with the iron bandstand
again, very much like Cuernavaca. Back and forth across the Plaza
there is the ccmtinuous movement of the peons with burros, of
women with rebozos bulging with sleeping children, of men carry-
ing a mountain of baskets. Back and forth they pound across the
cobblestones slipping down the hilly paths, and trudging up the
snaking alleys, for very little of Taxco is built on a single level.
You watch the parade from the second-floor porch of a bar where
the walls are morals of donkeys dancing on their hind legs, or from
Bertha's, a tiny saloon run by a lady of generous size and a gold,
toothy grin.
Looking down, too, are the laurel trees and the fine facade of the
rose-hued Church of San Sebastian. It was built in gratitude by
Jos6 de la Borda, a Frenchman who developed the silver mines
and a tidy fortune.
An the winding streets are lined, shoulder to shoulder, by shops
full of silver and tinware, and some, indeed, with paintings and
furniture. The mines, the factories, and the shops are all at hand,
and the prices are a third, a quarter, sometimes a fifth, of what
you would pay north of the border. You can occasionally bargain,
but the shopkeepers are inured to haggling, and the price won't
drop very far. You can deal with American merchants on a tony
basis at places like Bernice Goodspeed's, where you must ring the
bell and wait to be admitted. Or you can climb the alley known
as the Soto La Marina with silver shops on both sides. On the way
there are hotels, rising in class with the altitude. First, at the Plaza
SEVEN-UP BY THE SEA * 233
San Juan, the Santa Prisca, then on up the steep Soto, the Rancho
Telva, a pleasant spot owned by Wells Fargo, and finally the hand-
some Victoria with a broad, stone dining terrace looking into the
town. Taxco's hotels, like the town, are built on a dozra different
levels, with arches, balconies, catwalks, and stairways connecting
the rooms, the bar, the dining room, and the office. It sometimes
becomes a bit of a game to find your way home. You can lazy
away the winter for anywhere from six to ten dollars a day per
person with food.
$even-Up by the Sea
ACAFOLGO
IF YOUR PRIVATE MOTOR YACHT IS UP IN DRY DOCK, YOU CAN BUZZ
over to this playground on the Pacific in one hoofs flying tin*e from
Mexico City. Acapulco is swank and elegant, and it draws Holly-
wood and high society, but the prices are half of what you pay in
Cannes, Capri, or Monte Carlo.
Acapulco is a big cove on Mexico's southwestern flank, and
there are many who say that it makes the heralded harbors of
Naples and Hong Kong look as exotic as the docks in Hoboke*
New Jersey. Modern hotels built for outdoor living, njagaifieeat
villas, and fantastic night clubs are clustered around the rim ol the
harbor, some perched on a rocky crag looking down, others sitting
with their feet in the sea.
Visitors swim from two broad sand strips knowa as the Morning
234 MEXICO
Beach and the Afternoon Beach, a pair of capricious titles, for both
are popular all day long. The Yanquis, and many Mexicans, too, sit
under the shade of big straw hats with frizzly ends, while the end-
less string of hawkers strolls by selling coconut milk in green shells,
Cokes and Seven-Up, clams on the half-shell, hand-made dresses,
sun glasses, and sombreros. A native swimmer causes a flurry
when he comes up with mauve-colored blowfish speckled with white
dots. And erne is shaken from the languor induced by the hot sun,
the complete peace and the distance from the office by a Mexican
in rolled-up white ducks who suddenly shouts in very good English,
"Who will be the next to sign up for the exciting trip in my glass-
bottom boat?"
The greatest single sight in Acapulco is the famous divers who
jump from the top of La Quebrada cliffs into the waters of a narrow
inlet one hundred and forty feet below. According to the rules of
the tight cooperative association which they have formed, the divers
are supposed to jump three times a day, passing the hat before
each performance. Actually they will make the leap whenever they
have accumulated thirty or forty pesos, less than five dollars.
"If you want to get an unusual picture," a Mexican friend said
to me, 'follow him." He indicated a guide who was climbing over
the side of the observation deck and letting himself down toward
the water's edge, one hundred feet below the cliff face. "Him?" I
said in a high falsetto, for I sometimes speak that way when asked
to perform stunts that should only be undertaken by Enrol Flynn.
I looked over at the Mexicans and Americans who had gathered at
the observation deck. "Hmpf," they were saying. "He lacks el
guts," an old Spanish expression indicating I was short of courage.
My knees were doing a rumba beat and the only trouble was that
no one was playing the rumba. So I climbed over the side and
followed the guide down one side of the chasm my Keds holding
firm at every precarious step while the diver who was to make the
jump climbed up the opposite side.
I set my camera at one five-hundredth of a second so that I
could catch the diver in niid-air, and also to avoid a blur because
of my hands, which happened to be shaking. The diver kneeled at
a tiny chapel set in the rocks, then stood at the edge of the cliff,
waited until the waves were favorable, then plummeted straight into
the sea. A second later his head bobbed up and he shouted some-
SEVEN-UP BY THE SEA 235
thing strong and Mexican. My guide explained that the force of the
dive had split the boy's bathing suit in two.
High up on the edge of these cliffs, looking down into the chasm
at a spot where no eagle would dare to set foot, the Mexicans have
built a night club called La Perla. Its wooden panels are carved with
the names of Esther Williams, Jennifer Jones, and David Selzakk.
Teddy Stauffer, the manager, was a recent husband of Hedy Lamarr.
La Perla's dance floor juts straight out from the cliffside and is
supported underneath by cement stilts. The nightly floor show is a
leap into the sea, the diver being guided away from the rocks of
the opposite shore by a huge bonfire.
For less palpitating entertainment Acapulco also has a night
spot called the Copacabana, which is hardly more than a disnly
lighted grass shack by the sea. A floodlight plays CHI the beach, and
while the music floats out from under the shack, you take off your
shoes and dance on the sand.
For the outdoor life by daylight, Acapulco has a dub de Esquis,
where power boats and water skis may be rented at fifty pesos
(five dollars and seventy-eight cents) an hour, for those who eafoy
water esquiing. The waters offshore are also the home erf some of
the world's biggest and hungriest sailfish. One hotel, the Qub de
Pesca, maintains a fishing dock, two power boats, and makes a
habit of posting the catch made the day before. Usually the top
day's haul is an eighty-pounder. A boat and tackle cost about
thirty dollars a day.
lie Hotel de las Americas, under the same ownership as the
big Del Prado in Mexico City, offers a swimming pool with a view
across the harbor, and a cottage colony which snuggles around an
old watch tower. One of the newest hotels in town is the Cateta,
which has three hundred and fifty rooms, every o&e with a private
bath and a private porch. Two persons in a double room pay
twenty-one dollars a day for the room, including all meals. The
hotel nestles alongside the Morning Beach, and virtually all the
rooms look out to sea. If you missed seeing South Pacific, you'll get
a clear view of it from almost any one of the Cateta's windows.
236 * MEXICO
Mayan Ease
MERIPA, YUCATAN
LIFE ISN'T NEARLY so FLOSSY IN YUCATAN, THAT BULGING
province CHI the Atlantic side, dead south of New Orleans. Things
are realty so different from Mexico and for that matter, from any-
thing else, that it has lately been attracting the Hollywood set, a
migratory group who would travel one thousand miles on pogo
sticks for something novel.
Yucatan is the home of the Maya, and the pure Indians those
whose bloodlines were never crossed with the Spaniards* are
short and stocky, and their eyes have an Asiatic slant. After
struggling across the Bering Straits some thirty thousand years
ago, posted continually southward by advancing glaciers, the
Mayans settled at last here in Central America and built a dvfli-
zatkHi considered the most advanced in the new world. The per-
severing travelers who journey to Mayaland come to see its ruins,
which vie with Rome for beauty and magnitude.
The most important ruins are at Chichen Itza (they call it
cbeesheneetsa}? eighty miles from Merida. Twenty Mayan pyra-
mids, temples, and shrines are scattered over an area of six square
mites. It is possible to walk the incredibly steep steps of the pyra-
mids, stroll in the court where the Mayans played a form of basket-
ball, look into the room of their temples. Virtually all these build-
ings had to be excavated and, to some extent, reconstructed. The
Carnegie Institute in Washington spent millions in Yucatan restor-
ing the Mayan civilization piece by jigsaw piece.
To visit Chichen you must allow at least two nights, staying at
the colorful Mayaland Lodge right at the ruins. An oasis in the
Yucatan jungle, the lodge has private baths, hand-carved Mayan
furniture, tiled floors, a swimming pool, and a growing clientele
from Hollywood, that other fairyland one thousand miles to the
northwest.
MAYAH EASE * 237
For the man in a hurry there is UxmaJ (ush-mal), fifty mites
over the billiard^able flatness from the airport in Merida. The
ruins of Uxmal, which is Mayan for 4< three-tin^s-<festroyed, n are
concentrated in a small area. Most imposing is the Palace of the
Governor, a mammoth ancient white house with a facade of
twenty thousand stones. The drive to Uxmal takes an hour and a
quarter from Merida, and the regular tours leave about seven-thirty
in the morning, returning shortly after noon to avoid the scorch-
ing heat.
Houses in Yucatan, not counting the handsome residential sec-
tions of Merida, are built of mud, painted white, and topped with a
thatched roof. The state has no natural surface water at aB, but
there are countless underground rivers beneath the limestone table
on which the countryside settles. Nearly every home, rich or poor,
is equipped with a windmill, which pumps up the water supply
from beneath the surface.
In Mayaland the avocados grow as big as watermelons and when
the natives aren't munching corn, the local staple, they live on
beans and, occasionally, venison. Sometimes deer are shot so far
from the market that the meat is cooked on the spot with hot rocks,
and then sent to the city for sale. It is also a delicacy down here to
stuff a turkey with pork and serve it with a black sauce made from
burnt peppers. Well, as T. Bankhead once said, "If you bavent
tried it, don't knock it."
For transportation the Yucatanecans, as the citizens prefer to
be called, hail a coche-caleza, more popularly known as a p&lpito.
The pulpito is a black, solemn carriage which seeoos better suited,
for time and location, to the days when Voltaire ruled the salons
of Paris. It is called a pulpito because the driver sits on top, on a
small pulpit To complete the incongruity, the coach is drawn by
a pygmy-sized horse, descendant of the ones the Spanish brought
over, lie conquistadores decided on this special pint-sized nag so
that more could be loaded on a ship and each horse wo*dd have an
appetite to match his size. The breed is extinct in Spain, but it still
flourishes in the rural reaches of Yucatan.
In Merida, the capital city, which was founded after the arrival
of the Spaniards in the early sixteenth century, the mm are fond
of wearing guayaberra shirts, a Cuban import Square tails hang
238 MEXICO
outside the trousers, three sets of pleats run down the back, and
they can be worn with or without a tie.
Out in the country, which is to say, five minutes from Merida,
the women dress themselves in a huipil (pronounced wee-peel).
It is simply a white sack cut with all the daring decolletage of a
Mother Hubbard, and decorated at collar and hem with bright
embroidery. The men affect a white shirt with white shorts or
rolled-up trousers of the most porous material possible. It is so
thin that for decency's sake they frequently tie a short apron around
the waist. For norteamericanos, the ladies can get away with simple
cottons, the men with seersucker suits, and aprons can be left
hangjng in the kitchen at home.
THE PACIFIC
HAWAII
This Site of Paradise
HONOLOTJJ
SOME TIME BACK, THE ss President Wilson PUT INTO HONOLULU,
Territory of Hawaii, and was preparing to push on to Yokohama,
Hong Kong, and points south* Somewhere in the warm Hawaiian
waters the ship blew a gasket, slipped a disk, or whatever it is that
ships do that requires hospitalization. At any rate, die was required
to retire to Pearl Harbor for a full week of repairs during which
period the American President Lines dispatched all the first-class
passengers to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel while the third-class
travelers and the crew were put up at other downy retreats along
the rim of Waikiki.
Some passengers bound for the Orient who were delayed by this
circumstance appeared bef ore Captain Joseph Cox when the ship
was finally ready to put to sea again and presented hfm with a
parakeet by the name of Butch, who, I can attest, shares his cabin
to this day. These restless folk were doubtless the soul of wit in
giving the captain the bird, but had I been forced to suffer eigfal
unexpected days in Hawaii I would have given hfm the Distin-
guished Service Cross.
I think I can tell you very simply what it is about Hawaii It is
the faint essence of a f oreign flavor, the word here and there spofeea
in Hawaiian, the histay of the Polynesian royalty that bubbles to
the surface amid the shiny cars, super drugstores, and where you
feast expect it. With this alien piquance there is the familiar Ameri-
can structure of life which the mainlander on vacation will find
downright enjoyable. There are no things you must be careM aot
242 THE PACIFIC
to eat, no shortages of items you had better bring from home, no
strange local rules to live by. There is the refreshing air that wells
up out of a land where Hawaiians, Samoans, Chinese, Japanese,
Filipinos, and new emigr6s from the mainland live a life without
evident jealousies, hatreds, and classes of citizenship.
Whether you come by sea or by air, the islanders will play quoits
with your neck, and it is inevitable that you set foot on land
garlanded with leis of plumeria or tuberoses or carnations that give
off a strange oriental scent or tiny vanda orchids that take hundreds
to make a string. Stringing leis is a handsome and, I judge, a profit-
able business. There is a Honolulu Leis Sellers Association, and
white the sale of leis at the docks is informal, the airport manage-
ment built an orderly row of shacks from which their lei people
could operate. The only trouble was that once they got the icebox
in the shack, the pan for stringing, and the stool, there was no room
for the lei-makers, who are ladies grown ample by the good life.
The official flower of the islands is the hibiscus, and more than
five thousand different kinds of hibiscus are growing around the
place. The pure luxury of having so many flowers around could
elsewhere be experienced by no one unrelated to Max Schling or
the Aga Khan. All this transpires in a temperature that is con-
stantly seventy-three degrees, give a little, take a little.
The Hawaiian language has twelve letters, but no one ever got
around to organizing a word for weather, a bit of intelligence that
has found great favor with the copywriters of the Hawaii Visitors
Bureau. All other words, however, end in vowels, sometimes in
several, in which case each gets its share of the pronunciation.
Although there are few old hands left on the islands who carry on
normal daily conversations in Hawaiian, there is hardly an islander,
no matter what his racial origin, who doesn't spice his English
conversation with pau (finished), pilikia (trouble), lanai (porch),
malihlni (newcomer), and pupule (crazy), which is just what my
ancestors were for stopping about five thousand miles too soon.
A'u is a local word for swordfish, but the name for the trigger-
fish is humuhumunukunukuapuaa. The only trouble is that you
could faint from malnutrition by the time the waiter tells you it's on
the menu. The favorite word for food or eating is kau kau. The
curious blend of old Polynesian and machinistic malihini has pro-
duced a neon-girdled drive-in called the Kau Kau Korner. They tell
HAWAII * 243
a story out here of a Japanese farmer who had a horse and of his
Chinese neighbor who owned a cow. The horse's feed seemed to be
disappearing at an alarming rate and the Japanese fanner finally
decided that the Chinese farmer was stealing it When confronted
with this accusation the Chinese with the cow said, "Horse no can
kau kau cow kau kau. Cow kau kau cow kau kau."
One can only imagine what the Hawaiians were wearing befofe
the missionaries arrived. After they left the local folk were decked
out in holokus, which have a long train that is held up by a strap
or pinned up at the side. They also were clothed in Mother Hub-
bards, or muumuus, which hang straight as a curtain and are equally
as attractive. Malihlnis have taken up the wearing of muumuus on
the street and the sight of a portly matron latety out of Boise dis-
porting herself in a well-flowered muumuu and high heels is justi-
fiable homicide.
Men generally live in aloha shirts, a sports shirt with an uncon-
trollable pattern, and you get by in this raiment at any function
short of a funeral. The teen-agers, regardless of gender, are wearitag
aloha shirts and blue jeans, now almost a national costume. The
keikis, or children, can get by with almost anything, but shoes are
considered an unnecessary encumbrance. There is a private school
whose brochure specifies that pupils should start wearing shoes
after attaining the seventh grade.
Visitors can get by in almost any style, except perhaps for IUOMS
when Hawaiian garb is actually specified. A luau is a Hawaiian
feast featuring a pig roasted in an imu, an oven of preheated rocks.
Food is served on ti leaves or in coconut shells, and you will prob-
ably enjoy every bit of it except perhaps for poi, an immobile goo
which bears a certain resemblance to library paste though not quite
so flavorsome.
The most famous of the luaus on Oahu is held each Sunday in
the High Talking Chiefs Long House of Don the Beachcomber's at
Waikiki. South Pacific dress is mandatory. You can releve the self-
conscious feeling of being done up in a sarong or hcdoku by visiting
Don's bar, which makes a feature of strange rum drinks. The one
that fascinates me the most is Don's Pearl, concocted of white rums^
tropical fruit syrups, and Mexican limes. Every fifth drink contains
a real pearl, on the premise, I suspect, that by the time you will not
see it and leave it in the bottom of the glass, or better, that you win
244 * THE PACIFIC
look at the ooa pearl, see twenty, and think you have struck it rich.
I would also commend you to a lovely place called The Willows
where dinner is served in a thatched-roof shack over a pond that
is starred with water lilies and bordered with drooping willows and
perfumed frangipani. The terrace of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel
makes a magnificent setting for a dinner by candlelight, with flaming
torches set on stanchions by the edge of the sea. There is no way
I would rather start any day than on the patio of the Halekulani
Hotel at Waikiki, shaded by a snarl of branches from a great old
hau tree that grows out of the floor. The sea is at your elbow,
refreshing the sands; Diamond Head lends stability; turtle doves
come in to share the toast; and the myna birds, who obviously eat
elsewhere, swoop by and chirp and chirp, taking nothing with
them but the quiet
If the only thing that seems to chirp in your own digs is the
telephone or singing commercials, the Hawaiian life seems not only
distant but unbelievable. Well, it is rather unbelievable, but the
distance, which is something over two thousand miles from Cali-
fornia, has been shortened to nine hours of flying by Pan Ameri-
can's doable-decker Boeings, which are now flying both luxury
and tourist-class service. The Stratocruisers cany eighty-one
escapees on the tourist run, twenty-five more than the same plane
win take over cm first-class. Pan Am put on the tourist air service
with the fare reduced to one hundred and twenty-five dollars one
way or two hundred and fifty dollars round trip, in case you want
to go back home. First-class fare with meals, bar service on the
tower deck, and plenty of room to stretch costs one hundred and
sixty-eight dollars one way and three hundred and nineteen dollars
round trip. For ten dollars more you sleep your way over in a roomy
upper berth. It's worth hocking your jewels or selling your
It's a cinch youll never need the mink in Hawaii.
HAWAII * 245
Alcha* Hilc-Hellc* L. A*
HILO
LYING ON THE SANDS OF WAIKIKI IN OAHU AND PARTICIPATING IN
nothing more strenuous than the contemplation of the catamarans,
I have felt it would take nothing short of an explosion to uproot
me. Explosions, however, take place with convenience and fais^
torical regularity on the big island of Hawaii, which is bursting
with orchids and volcanoes.
You call it, depending upon what impresses you, The Big Maud,
The Orchid Island, or The Volcano Island. Double the sfee of Dela-
ware and roomy enough to encompass all of Puerto Rico, the
island erf Hawaii is larger than the rest of the string combined. In
the damp areas around Hilo and Puna orchids bloom under man's
guidance and also without it. Five volcanoes enliven the local
scene, two of them active and two of them snow-capped in winter.
Hilo is the big town of the big island, and according to a thor-
oughly unreliable source it got its name because a Scandinavian sea
captain by the name of Olsen chose this locale to lie down and die.
His survivors, notably a terse lot, erected a headstone on which
was chiseled, "Here In Lies Olsen." Sometime later a Chinese mer-
chant set up shop here, and for lack of a better name be peded off
the capital letters from Olsen's marker. The sign coeM be dearly
seen during the ensuing years by skippers of incoming vessels, and
soon maps and charts labeled the settlement Hilo.
Nowadays with Hawaiian Airlines, a tidy little Hue, you jump
over from Honolulu to Hilo, a matter of two hundred and sixteen
miles in something over an hour and under fifteen dollars, Maud
taxis, called sampans, are rehashed De Sotos of uncertain vintage,
from which the tops have been removed. For long excursions Sim
Holt's Big-Island U-Drive will fend you a station wagon with top
intact to take you whining througji the fields of sugar caae warag
with white, feathery tassels, to Waipio Valley, where the sea washes
in on a black sand beach, half a hundred villagers spend their lives
growing taro, and the only way in or out is by mule train.
246 * THE PACIFIC
A circle road winds past villages built around general stores
where the shelves are piled high with Duz, Ajax, Quaker Oats, and
other treasures from the mainland, but also cans of skewered
oysters, broiled octopus, dried shrimp, and dried seaweed, treasures
from homelands left behind. The pineapples are a different fruit
from what the folks back home use as a bed for anthills of cottage
cheese, and the limes that come with the tea are yellow on the out-
side, red on the inside, and tart as Tallulah.
Mamalahoa Highway crosses the island on its north end, cutting
across the Parker Ranch, which after the King Ranch in Texas is
the largest in the world. It was established in 1815 by a sailor
named John Palmer Parker, who was lured from his ship by King
Kamehameha the Great to hunt the wild cattle that roamed the
great Waimea Plateau. His descendants have been breeding stock
ever since excepting for the current owner, Richard Smart, who
has turned popular singer, warbles frequently in Paris and London,
and is rarely on the range. Crossing the Waimea Plateau on a windy
afternoon is an eerie feeling with the sun disappearing opposite the
inactive hulk of Manna Kea, the beige grass riffling with the gusts,
and the cactus standing there like awkward scarecrows holding
prickly armfuls of red pcmird fruit.
There is a tamed, domesticated feeling, however, about the
Koaa Coast on the west shore, a famed sanctuary for Hawaiian
kings, and in these kingless days for tourists. The Kona Inn is a
magnificent establishment where the lobby is decorated with the
trunks of fern trees and you can view the surf while registering. All
rooms face the ocean, and those with a lanai hanging over them will
relieve you of twenty-eight to thirty-two dollars for two, meals in-
cluded. The hotel's menu is a maze of Hawaiian, and one is likely
to be greeted with aloha kakahiaka, which is to say, good morning,
and be handed a fistful of ai'na kakahlaka noonoo, which, of course,
means breakfast ideas. These suggestions may be as local as sliced
pineapple (Hala kahiki okioki lahilahi ia), papaia nectar (Wai
momona oke he'i) , not to mention such delicacies as Laiki i olani-
laika papaa (Rice Krispies), and Huika weluwelu (Shredded
Wheat).
There is a tennis court at hand, a salt-water pool, and at night
Hawaiian music with performances by an eminent troupe composed
of the second cook, the repairman, a bellboy, and two waitresses.
HAWAII * 247
When the tide is out there is shell-coEecting by moonlight The
Field-&-Stream types can make arrangements for deep-sea fishing
off Kona, and Slim takes out hunting parties in search of three-
hundred-pound wild boars and also wild goats and wild slieep
whose forebears came ashore from some forgotten shipwreck.
The road south from Kona around the foothills of Mauna Loa
crosses stream after stream of lava that flowed from the volcano,
some as long ago as 1 868. In 1949 Mauna Loa blew its top, sending
lava fountains three hundred feet into the air, but in 1950 it went
off in a monumental gush, the greatest since 1859, destroying a
dozen buildings and burying a mile of highway. More than six hun-
dred million cubic yards of lava belched out of Mauna Loa cm that
occasion, which is more so one mathematically inclined park
ranger has figured than could be carried by all the Liberty ships
that could be produced at top wartime production level in a hm-
dred years. Broad avenues were seared out of luxuriant green
countryside, leaving tumbled gray rock and the remnants of trees
turned ash white as if by fright. This time it hit the sea, sending
steam clouds billowing ten thousand feet in the air, and creating ia
an instant more boiled fish than has ever been seen outside the
confines of New England.
By comparison KUauea, a volcano which nestles against the side
of Mauna Loa, is a docile little explosive. Its crater is two miles
wide and two and a half miles long and, since its molten lava is
centered in a fire pit called the Halemaumau, it is possible to go
walking on the crater floor. Rangers of the National Park Service
conduct walking tours, steering a wide berth of the Halemaumaii,
and it's all & free service that you get out of your yearly taxes.
Also in the neighborhood are a number of steam flats, fissures in
the earth caused by rain water falling on the hot rocks. The cracks,
which are filled with dozens of well-steamed wonns, emit clouds
of steam that emerges at two hundred and four degrees K, the
boiling point of water at this altitude. In 1924 there were a number
of steam explosions, clouds of dust rose twenty thousand feet in
the air, lightning seared the sky, the heavens rained mud, and an
eight-ton block of lava, enough to put a dent in anybody's Duesen-
berg, was vaulted into the parking area. Hawaii can be exciting.
For over a hundred years there has been a Volcano House sitting
on the brink of Kilauea's crater, and now from the sanctuary of a
248 THE PACIFIC
glass waB you can watch the proceedings and simultaneously have
lunch. A fire has been burning continuously in the fireplace of
Volcano House for nearly seventy years, a fact once noted by
Ripfey, and the walls are lined with photographs of the great,
among them FDR ("In fulfilment of a long-cherished dream,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, July 25, 1934").
Five minutes away there is a jungle where ferns grow forty feet
high, which is taller than many trees. Down by the shore is the
beach of jet black sand which was f onned when hot lava hit the
sea and then was pummeled by years of waves. And not far off are
the Warm Springs of Wai Wela Wela, where Hawaiian priests had
to bathe in an inky pool of hot black water before they were
ordained. Now, cookouts are held under the lau hala trees, and
au iki young marlin is roasted by the light of torches set around
the pool. A film of orchid petals is spread over the surface and you
purge your dissipations in water that is ninety degrees.
All this is forty minutes from the airport in Hilo, from which
you fly back to Honolulu and from Honolulu to reality. I boarded
Pan American's shuttle to reality one evening, stowed the leis in a
cellophane bag provided by the management, and with an unerring
sense of direction found the cocktail lounge on the lower deck.
Drinks and dinner took an hour and a half, and for an extra saw-
buck there was a berth upstairs roughly double the width of a
Pullman trough. Some nine hours after take-off time a lady came
around with word of coffee and of California. Out of the window
Los Angeles was a big, long black box with lights gleaming out of
a million pinholes. Dull blue came up from the ocean, fire was
spreading in the sky. Tomorrow was waiting in the wings, edging
up behind the San Gabriel Mountains, anxious to become today.
JAPAN ' 249
JAPAN
Purely Occidental
TOKYO
I WOULDN'T SAY THAT EVERYTHING is EXACTLY UP TO BATE IN
Tokyo City, but show me a place where things move faster. Or
louder. The seven million who live here make New York took Hke
Upper Monongahela. They move down the avenues and across the
squares in solid phalanxes, and remnants of the formations mn off
in a dozen directions. It seems that the seven million are al cm
bicycles, and sometimes that they are in ancient tin lizzies, o
motor scooters, in tricycle delivery trucks that are enlarged motor-
cycles, in bicycle rickshas. They are also on foot, every man a
pushing, shoving Notre Dame guard.
, For one thing there are few traffic lights, fewer traffic cops, and
no order. A man has to be nimble and also keep up his insurance
premiums. A dazzled tourist, having just gotten cauglht in tibe
revolving door of his hotel which works in the reverse of ours,
emerges on the street to find the traffic running left-hand or English
style. But whereas the Englishman on wheels is the soul of chivalry,
here the automobile horn is quite as necessary to the smooth func-
tioning of a motor car as are the spark plugs. The bora signal is not
used so much as a warning of impending danger, bat ratter as a
way of saying, "I see you." Drivers and pedestrians play a sort of
friendly game of mobile "I Spy.'* It is perfectly possible, however,
for a car to go barreling down an empty street, horn blowing madly.
I can't seem to draw much significance from this peculiarity, for
just as frequently a vehicle goes barreling down a street jammed
with pedestrians, horn going, people dodging for cover like com
kernels popping off a hot griddle.
Huge lanterns daubed with bright colors dangle from every
250 * THE PACIFIC
restaurant and shop. Every eating place hangs out a curtain at eye
level so you just can't manage to see who is inside. Music blares
in the street a mixture of Bing Crosby doing 'White Christmas"
and "Jingle Bells" or "Come on-a My House" in Japanese. Should a
man look to the skies for solace he will find it filled with helium
balloons trailing long tails printed with advertising.
There isn't quite anything that looks like home here in Japan.
I have seen apples as large as grapefruits, white radishes as long
as French breads, and the carrots almost as long as that. The per-
simmons look like tomatoes, and they are eaten here either before
they are ripe or after they have been hung on strings and become
dry. I have walked into a counterpart of a delicatessen without
being able to identify one single item except a displaced box of
Ritz Crackers.
The change for anyone coming straight out of the States is rather
like walking through a door and finding a new civilization on the
other side. Air travelers are whisked westward in hours. Coming,
as I did the other day, on the President Wilson of American Presi-
dent Lines hardly creates a different effect. You are at sea for two
weeks, but the voyage is a continuation of good substantial Ameri-
can hotel life, albeit afloat.
So you walk down the gangplank and suddenly the dress looks
like somebody yelled "Fire!" in the Turkish bath. Some of it is
straight Western dress. More than I had anticipated is oriental. For
instance, the well-dressed gentleman this season is wearing, bottom
to top, wooden getas, which are plain flat clogs elevated by two
strips of wood until the wearer stands about three inches off the
ground. Getas are held to the foot by a pair of straps that separate
the big toe from the second toe. To keep his feet warm the gent
wears a pair of tabis, which are like foot mittens. There is a separate
compartment for the big toe. This being winter, he wears a woolen
skirt, above that a woolen cape, frequently with a fur collar. Some-
times you see a man, but never a woman, with a whole fox fur
around his neck. And topping the entire ensemble is an ordinary
femora, brim turned up all around.
Businessmen usually wear Western dress to the office and change
to a kimono at home. This also requires changing from socks to
tabis in order to put on getas. *
JAPAM 251
Young girls, especially in the cities, have gone over to Western
dress, but roughly three females in four are still in kimonos. Ladies
also wear t obi socks and getas elevated by three-inch stilts or sloping
platforms. The kimono is held together with an obi, which is a
colorful, often brocaded sash one foot wide, ornately folded in the
back. It takes a huge metal clip, a padded support, double joints,
ten minutes, and a year of practice to tie an obL
Babies, which are being born at the rate of two and a half mil-
lion a year, are carried papoose fashion, facing forward. A large
kimono covers mother and child. Once a boy is school age he gets
a black uniform with brass buttons and a black peaked military cap.
No matter what he is wearing, a Japanese in winter seems never
to be warm. Western-style hotels and Western restaurants built for
the tourist are steam-heated, but shopkeepers, ticket-takers, and
just about everyone else huddles over a pot of charcoal embers.
Colds are easy to catch, and many people try to avoid them by
wearing white surgical masks all day, a holdover from the pre-
scribed preventives used during the flu epidemic following World
War I. This curious addiction to antisepsis is largely confined to
respiratory areas. Kissing is still considered pretty dirty business
in Japan, and before the war kissing scenes were cut (Hit of foreign
motion pictures. Even today Japanese actresses require that a small
invisible antiseptic piece of gauze be placed over their lips before
they indulge in any Western-style smooching sceiies.
When it comes to eating and sleeping, you can have it local or
Western. Most tourists live Western and dabble in Eastern. It h
infinitely cheaper to live like a Japanese, but sleeping on the floor
and eating seaweed and raw fish gets to be a little rough for a man
on vacation. Since the occupation ended last spring, virtually all
hotels have been turned back to their original owners and are
operating again on a straight civilian basis.
Tokyo's famous Imperial has become again a nesting place for
some of the most fascinating guests assembled this side of Ankara.
It is a low, squat, somehow oriental-looking building designed by
Frank Lloyd Wright in the Twenties as an earthquake-proof hotel.
It did indeed resist the quake of "23, but in the end it may perish
of the shocks of tall Americans bumping their heads CHI the low
doors. When I look out my window from a standing position in my
room at the Imperial I get a clear view of the window shade roller.
252 THE PACIFIC
To wash my hands in the basin I make as if to touch my hands to
my toes and stop when I reach porcelain. Frank Lloyd Wright was
infinitely more conscious of the height of the Japanese than those
architects who planned other Western hotels here, and indeed it is
not the Japanese who live in them anyway.
Nonetheless, the Imperial possesses a wonderful fascination. A
comfortable room there with Western beds, good hot water, and
steam heat, a rarity in Japan, costs ten dollars a day for two with-
out meals. The service is almost as quick as electricity, for a
sneaker-shod bay-san is at your door before your finger is oft the
buzzer. It will cost from two to five dollars a day more to stay at the
new Nikkatsu, a beautiful modern and handsome hotel that occu-
pies the sixth and seventh floors of a shiny new office building.
Although lodging seems quite high in Tokyo, and civilian rents
are nothing short of fantastic, food is comparatively inexpensive.
A Western-style luncheon in the Imperial's dining room with an
entree of fish or steak costs about one dollar and fifty cents. There
is also a grillroom in the basement, and for those who want to
plunge into la vie Japormaise the hotel's Sukiyaki Room is one of
the best in town. You must remove your shoes at the door and pre-
pare yourself for a bowing, smiling greeting from the full corps of
waitresses done up in colorful kimonos tied with an obi.
Typical of Japanese decor, the room is utterly simple and charm-
ing, decorated with rice-paper screens, unvarnished woods, and
lovely flower arrangements. Each party is ushered into a separate
akove divided by screens, the diners squatting on cushions around
a lacquered table two feet high. Dinner begins with wet, hot wash-
rags scented with an oriental fragrance. You wipe your hands, pass
the hot rag over your face and deposit it back in its wicker con-
tainer. It's an old Eastern custom and you'll run into it at most
restaurants and hotels. Now that you are clean, one of the kimono
ladies kneels before you and cooks dinner on a hot plate.
A special kind of restaurant serves nothing but an assortment of
fish fritters called tempura. Dinner at the famous Inagiku the other
night started with the usual shoe-shucking at the door, followed by
washrags, followed by hot unsweetened green tea. That done, the
initiates were paraded past a delightful little garden into a room
fitted with a semicircular table. Inside the horseshoe stood the chef,
while the guests took up low stools around the rim.
- 253
The chef began dealing around the horseshoe, and in front of us
appeared in succession: fried prawns, fried white fish, fried water-
cress, fried gingko nuts, fried green peppers, fried sea eels, and
fried cuttlefish, which are cousins of octopus by Firestone out of
Goodyear. At this point everything is fried except the customers,
so comes now sake in tiny cups followed by bear in big tumblers.
Presently a lacquered bowl arrives filial with soybean soup and
drowned clams, a signal that the meal is coming to an end. There
is a salad of ginger, Chinese cabbage, and pickled radish. Then
everyone retires to another private room again for wasfarags and
green tea.
In between eating there is the Ginza, which means "Silver Mint"
But the Ginza, which is Main Street, is tinsel as well as silver, and
two minutes with its jostling crowds would convince you that no
walk on it is a stroll. GIs fresh out of the States and GIs fresh out
of Korea are on the Ginza, and so is the colorful girl from Oshima
Island with the box on her head filled with camellia oil. Hie
Ginbasha is on the Ginza where you go in for drinks and girls come
to sit with you, attractive girls in evening dresses for whom you buy
a drink if you are alone, and pay them one thousand yen an hour
two dollars and seventy-eight cents official or less if they like
you. There is no kickback to the house, which makes its money on
the drinks.
Until recently the Ginza was also the home of the Ginzakan
Mart, an open-air bazaar which has since been removed, in the
aesthetic public interest I suspect, to a sylvan spot along fee banks
of the river, a block from the Silver Stroll. Here you can buy
cigarette lighters embossed with a copy of a dollar bin, motocbo&ts
powered with flashlight batteries, kimceos blazing with gold
dragons, boxes with secret openings, binoculars, and sinister knives
that flick open at the touch of a button. I wouldn't say that the
merchants of the Ginzakan were scholars in English, but they haw
picked up the finger points of the language as it is spoken by the
horsetrader. They open with a price. You counter mth one much
lower. They clasp hand to head and say, "No get commission."
Yon start to walk away, they tug at your sieeve, point to the article
and entreat, "You say/* You don't know how far he's coining down,
so you counter with "You say," and the the you-mys fly back and
forth until you've made the purchase for fifty yen, or fourteen cents
254 * THE PACIFIC
less than you might have bought it in more reputable surroundings
on the Ginza itself.
The department stores are a modern maze of handsome tea sets
and slender sake bottles all packed in wooden cases, of battledores
decorated with three-dimensional faces of Japanese ladies and gents
in ancient dress, of frail and beautiful lamps with rice-paper shades,
of polished lacquerware, brocaded getas, and paper parasols guar-
anteed to keep out the rain. Long lines of kimonoed ladies shuffle
in their sandals to get on the escalators at Matsuzakaya's, and in
the aisles the crowds push and shove like those on the Ginza and
also like those in Macy's, USA.
Somehow you expect it in Macy's, but Japan's crowd manners
come as a shock. The rudeness of the mob is a complete anachro-
nism when you hold it up against the strict code of manners to
which individual Japanese adhere. I like to reflect with pleasure
upon Tadamiehi Kara, a man who stands five feet tall in his tdbi
feet, and has a fine, noble face, eroded now with lines of age. His
eyelids have sagged with the years, covering his eyelashes, and it
would be difficult f or the unpracticed observer to determine whether
he is staring dead ahead or fast asleep.
Mr. Kara is our guide in Tokyo, and with typical American
familiarity we have come to call him Uncle Tad, a term of which
we suspect he is very proud. To answer a question Uncle Tad must
first remove his hat, and should he be required to move close to
you he is careful to place his hand over his mouth lest his breath,
should it not be sweet, offend you. When we were taken with the
sukiyaki vapors one day, he saw us to the hotel, bowed many many
times, and said, "Please take very best care, please, please." Once,
when describing a typical Japanese house, he said it was indeed
very comfortable, "all except, excuse me, toilet."
One wonders how much Uncle Tad has been left in Japan after
the occupation, or whether it shall all be the crass mob on the
Ginza, Our legacy has included the strident jazz that blares out
of the loud-speakers in Tokyo, and I remember well, Uncle Tad
wincing, and then taking off his hat, covering his mouth, and say-
ing, "Excuse me, too much civilization." But the new class of
youngsters laughs and plays and pulls pigtails when their fathers
were taught to be the very model of an inscrutable Oriental. The
young smiles atone in part for the Bebop Night Club we have left
JAPAH 255
in Kyoto, the Stagger-out Bar in Yokohama, and the Ritzy Cabaret
"Service by pin-up girls" in Osaka.
There is, it seems, an insatiable urge here to do it American and
say it in English. The Osaka railroad station, for instance, sports
a beautiful illuminated glass sign which reads, "Ordinary A Little
to the West," which means the ordinary local train stops a bit west
of where you are standing. A gas station urges, "Let* s Get Associ-
ated." Motorists are urged to caution by the slogan, "Pray Safety
Traffic." The Osaka Castle takes you up in an elevator but asks
you to walk down in the "stepcase." The Cabaret Deoea in Kyoto
advertises its "Perfect Cool Warm Room." And there is that de-
lightful restaurateur here in Tokyo who, after hoars, hangs out a
shingle which reads simply and pleasantly, "dose Time Now."
The Time cf The Tsubame
KYOTO
THE NEXT TIME I AM PROVOKED TO THE BRINK OF HOMICIDE BY
conductors on some American railroads which shall be nameless,
I shall reflect with tenderness and longing upon The Swallow. Or,
in the language indigenous to these parts, the Tsubame. Tlie
Swallow is a crack train that runs between Tokyo and Osaka,
stopping en route at Kyoto, a trip of seven hours and twenty-two
minutes. The ordinary train takes twelve hours and thirteen minutes
for the same run, and so The Swallow is treated with some respect
around the railroad tracks.
For instance, when it leaves a statical every trainman on the plat-
form comes stiffly to attention at the edge of the track and wheels
around, facing the departing cars. All the candy-butchers take off
their hats until The Swallow has flown out of the depot The obser-
256 * THE PACIFIC
vation car is fitted with deep, upholstered chairs; an orchid plant
blooms by the window; chrysanthemums fill a vase in the corner.
In attendance is a steward wearing a white coat and an armband
on which is lettered the word "Boy." When he isn't dashing up and
down the aisles making deep bows, Boy sits in his own compart-
ment behind a frosted glass door that says "Boy."
After the train is a mile or two out of Tokyo depot, Boy appears
with hot wet washrags guaranteed to refresh the fevered passenger,
and a cup of inevitable hot, green, unsweetened Japanese tea. No
charge. In the front of the car is a little snack-bar decorated with
an urn of fresh fruit. Small charge. About five miles out, Boy comes
around to introduce the conductor who is dressed in a natty blue
uniform, red band on arm, white gloves on hand. The conductor
takes off the fancy hat, smiles to reveal a full keyboard, then bows
so deep he could snatch a handkerchief off the floor with his teeth.
"Tickets, please," he says.
At Haxnmamatsu, which is halfway between Tokyo and Osaka,
everyone piles out of the cars for a ten-minute stop. Music floats
from a loud-speaker, and a gent in a white gym suit and a white
cap mounts a dais set up on the platform. After bowing deeply in
each direction, he leads the passengers in setting-up exercises. The
Santa Fe was never like this, not even when Judy Garland was a
singing waitress CHI rL
The railroad station in Kyoto, a city of a million, is probably
the only modern structure in it. A white granite tower rises seven
stories over the acres of low brown buildings, every floor above the
second a restaurant specializing, in ascending order, in pork cutlets,
Chinese delicacies, baked eels, pastries and candy, and fish fritters.
The night cloaks Kyoto in a mood that is medieval, and even though
formless kimono-wrapped ladies of the evening materialize out
of the woodwork of the houses, still there is an honest romance
about the place. The moon shines down on the ancient-style Sanjo
Bridge that spans the Kamo River, and the still is broken by the
strange wail that is part ripple of a snake-charmer, part trill of a
bagpipe. It is the sound of the yatai, the hot noodle salesman who
pushes his cart by the light of his swinging lantern over the old
Sanjo, and past the place that calls itself the Coney Island Tea
Room.
There are several Western hotels in Kyoto, notably the Miyako,
JAPAK - 257
which has endless corridors, a hilltop view, a swimming pool, tennis
court, and an uncentral location. We left its comparatively faofoe-
like bosom to spend one night at a Japanese inn, the Kanaiwaro
bekkan on the banks of the Kamo, within sound, so said the bro-
chure, of the warbling chidori, which is to say, plover.
Nine retainers and the owner collapsed at the door when we
pulled up. "Afa-mama-san, papa-san," they saki, smiling all over
the place and bowing. We bid our shoes good-by at the entrance
and slid into a pair of slippers. The entire troupe led us up the
stairs to our room. It opened CHI a small vestibule with no furni-
ture except for a make-up table. If mama-san got cm her knees in
front of the mirror, she could put on her make-up handily.
Shoes, we have come to know, are proper equipment for the
streets, slippers for the halls, but if you enter a room you do it in
stocking feet Our living room, dining room, and bedroom, which
was all one cubicle, were covered with straw matting. In the cento:
was a table separated from the floor by eighteen inches and flanked
by a pair of armrests that stood cm pedestals one foot high. If you
slid open the rice-paper doors you were on a terrace that was
exactly as wide *as each of the rattan chairs thai were on it. You
could see the Kamo River, but the chidori, or plover, was playing
it dumb.
Kanaiwaro-bekkan's heating, like that of any Japanese home,
was not only not central, but it was, fet us say, informal. Tfaene was
an hibachi, which is an urn filled with ashes and a few hot coals,
and also a kotatsu, which is more or less the same thing covered
by wooden grillwork. The idea is that the family sits around it, and
a quilt is thrown over all the legs that are present Easily the hottest
thing in a Japanese hotel is the bath. It begins with a double
kimono for each guest which one is expected to slip into while the
housegirl stands by. She couldn't care less, I think. Thai she ami
the bathboy lead the kimono parade down the stairs, past the froiM
desk, and the registering guests, and into the inferno.
Dinner was cooked over a one-burner, and when ft was done
Otoku, our housegirl, folded up the cwe-4)urna:, took oat the dishes,
put the table up against the wall, and came in with a pie of com-
forters. You sleep between the comforters and you pot your bead
on a canvas bag filled with dry beans. I shall not risk the ridiculous
258 THE PACIFIC
by calling it a pillow. To travel to the bathroom means walking
(stocking feet) to the border of the hall, putting on a pair of wait-
ing slippers, shuffling to the edge of the tiled floor, stepping out of
the slippers, and jumping into a pair of wooden clogs that are
parked by the bathroom door. From bathroom to bedroom to
departure in the morning means clogs to slippers to stocking feet
to slippers and back to one's own shoes at the front door. It in-
volves the greatest exercise of footwork seen since Benny Leonard.
Breakfast might ordinarily mean unsweetened green tea and pickled
radishes, but a Westerner can usually turn up some eggs, which are
kept on hand since meat is dipped into the raw yokes in the course
of transporting sukiyaki between frying pan and mouth.
There are those who complain that the shopping in Kyoto is over-
rated, but what you must do is to poke around among the factories.
The prices will be no less than what you pay for the same goods in
the shops of Tokyo, but after seeing the hand labor that goes into
each product the machine-conditioned Westerner comes away with
more tolerance for the cost of goods. The director of the lacquer-
ware factory explains that there are fifty-five steps between a piece
of cypress and the ultimate fabrication of a high-gloss rice bowl,
wooden cup, picture album, or cocktail glasses. Lacquerware takes
thirty hours to dry between lacquerings, Cloisonne, known as shippo
yaki or seven-treasured ware, takes thirteen steps, including four
enamel bakings. Woodblock prints are still rolled out by the
ancient processes, and some intricate work is done by long-taloned
fingernail weavers who are the harpists of the world of textiles.
Some of the best-looking handicraft is damascene ware, which is a
dull black surface inlaid with handsome designs in gold and silver
wire.
The big attraction in Kyoto the week we were in town was the
simultaneous presence of the kabuki, Japan's four-hundred-year-old
theater. With some difficulty we were able to obtain tickets at
nine hundred yen, or nearly three dollars each, a rather robust fee
for a Japanese. The seats were actually cushions on the floor, and
since the performance runs from ten in the morning until four in
the afternoon and my yogi positions were a little rusty, we sought
to change the tickets to ordinary Western-style theater seats in the
orchestra. This proved to be a cinch, for there were rows of un-
JAPAN * 259
occupied places. It was explained that geisha giris and large com-
panies were in the habit of buying blocks of tickets and holding
them for last-minute friends of the establishment A number erf
geishas were in the house, sitting quietly for hours on pillows or in
the first rows of the orchestra, where their immense hair-dos must
have provided a monumental problem in vision to those wiio sat
behind them.
Ka means singing, bu is dancing, Id means play. Rabuki involves
all three talents. The stage is immense; and to supplement the
entrances and exits there is a long runway extending from the stage
to the back of the theater. Characters can appear from this path-
way, from the wings, or on some occasion they will pop out of trap-
doors in the floor. For some interludes a reader and a samisen
strummer sit on a platform to the right of the stage, from which
vantage point they maintain a running commentary that sounds
like a recording of a tobacco auctioneer being played on the wrong
speed. Some numbers are accompanied by eight samlsen players
and a choral group of ten who also thump on drums, AH sing
nasally and play in a manner that by Western standards could only
be judged as nearly off-key and positively listless.
The costuming is stupendous, and the effects by local standards
I took to be splendid, because a bit of posturing by an actor ending
with a fluttering of the eyelids and a motionless pose would cause
an effusive spluttering of applause from my neighbors in the audi-
ence. The language seemed always high aiid unreal, probably be-
cause all parts are played by men. Four hundred years ago, wlien
the kabuki began, women were considered a.) too smal for the
big stage, b.) invitations to immorality among traveling companies,
and c.) rather dirty people anyway.
Scene changes are effected by stagehands who wear black suits
and black masks and frequently remain CHI the stage whife the cur-
tain is up. If a character requires a costume change, he may be
surrounded by a cluster of stagehands holding screens, even as an
American football player who has ripped his pants in tlse middle
of a game is protected by a covey of assistant managers with
blankets.
According to my notes, the gent behind me broke out the sake
bottle at 1 1 : 10 A.M., but most everyone else waited an hour for the
intermission, at which time they filed upstairs to the lunchroom and
260 ' THE PACIFIC
plunged into little wooden boxes filled with dandy morsels of raw
fish, cold rice, and bean curds all tied together with a string of cold
seaweed. Probably they discussed the play between mouthfuls, but
I couldn't understand a word.
The Voice cf The Nightingale
KASHIKOJIMA
ANYBODY WHO THINKS THAT JAPAN'S THEATRICAL TALENTS ARE
solely wrapped up in the ancient postures of the kabuki ought to
have a look at the Takarazuka Revue. The show is an oriental
version of occidental songs, dances, and skits which are performed
by three traveling troupes Flower, Moon, and Star. When Flower
is playing in the theater at Takarazuka, Moon is giving its all in
Tokyo, and Star is on the shelf rehearsing.
One Saturday afternoon I managed to have a look at Moon on
its home court at Takarazuka, which is an amusement center mid-
way between Osaka and Kyoto. The center and the shows were
originally developed by the gent who owns the private railway con-
necting these stations and thought it might help develop business.
Whereas the kabuki employs only men, Takarazuka is exclusive
in its use of women. The talent is something less than the Folies
Bergere, and not only miles separate it from Hollywood. Neverthe-
less, a definite air of showbiz pervades the proceedings that wasn't
abroad in the land when Perry opened the doors just one hundred
years ago. A program is printed in English, and while watching the
review unfold I was able to refer to it periodically to study the back-
ground of some of the performers :
Hanayo Sumi: One of the most popular staretts of the Takara-
J&PAH 281
zuka Opera Company. Her charm Bes in her modem freshness
of beauty. She hates worms and early rising,
Kaoru Uji: With a sweet melodious voice, Miss Up is one of
the best mezzo soprano singers of the Takarazuka girtvue. Sfee
has Japanese taste making poems, and is fond of visiting shrines
and temples.
Yachiyo Ohtori: Fresh and vital young actress who became
popular recently. She is modest by nature and one of her char-
acteristics lies in her naivete. She is fond of man like Gary Grant
Michiko Asakura: Having typical classical ekgance as a Jap-
anese girl in her face and attitude, she always shows her good
theatricals on the stage. She gives such impression ttiat she is
poppy in field.
Indeed, all the poppies in the field were the very soul of decorum
on the stage, and things never got any more risque* tban a road
company of "Rose Marie" playing Toledo. On the other band, I
would not let the youngsters within shelling distance of the quarter
in Tokyo known as Asakusa, which makes a fine specialty of strip
shows, burlesque, and other uninhibited sport which the local
showmen are confident is only a Far Eastern edition of what goes
in the world's capitals. Truth of the matter is I don*t flifak tliey
would get away with such theatrics in Montmartre, where the rules
concerning the female form, the display and gyrations thereof, are
not exactly unliberaL
While plunging headlong into the curious ways ol the West, and
being if anything more Western about it than ^vas originally in-
tended, the Japanese have meanwhile maintained their own worn
cultures. It is something like finding both vintage wine and ice-
cream sodas at the same fountain, and while the two don't mix any
more than pickles and milVj the width of the range is nothing if
not exhilarating.
From Osaka it is the same time about fifty minutes either to
the jazzbeat at Takarazuka or to the cradle of Japanese culture at
Nara, A magnificent metropolis of shrines and temples exists at
Nara. Sacred deer roam the walks unhindered except that once a
year they are shorn of their horns, which are made into dust col-
262 THE PACIFIC
lectors for the tourists. The five-storied Kofukuji pagoda gives its
image to Sarusawa Pond, which ripples it and frames it in pale,
swaying willows. Neither must you miss Daibutsu, the Great
Buddha which has a face that measures sixteen feet by nine and a
half feet and is the largest in Japan. Nearby stands its bell with
this explanation:
BIG BELL FOR BUDDHA
This was cast in 752 A.D. measuring 13.5 feet in height, 9 feet
2 inches in diameter, 10 inches in thickness and is prominent not
only as the second largest but also the most sweetly sonorous in
sound throughout Japan. But it is so colossal and heavy that it
has remained the records in the history that it has fallen to the
ground several times up to the present point. By the way the
belfrey was rebuilt in the 13th century.
Nara's Kasuga Shrine is painted bright red and you reach it by
a magnificent avenue of stone lanterns. A Shinto priestess known
as a Miko is in attendance at the entrance, largely for the collection
erf the admission charge and also for dispensing fortunes, or omikuji,
to anyone in need of a look into the future. She wore lipstick solely
on her lower lip, her hair was tied in a pony tail wrapped in silver
paper, bits of silver paper dangled over her forehead from a metal
suspensory that was welded to the pony tail, and she had on a white
blouse and a red skirt.
I paid this lady ten yen, or two and eight-tenths cents, for which
I was given a chance to shake the omikuji bako, or box, until a
numbered stick appeared in an aperture. When number 15 showed
up, the priestess went to a drawer, similarly numbered, and ex-
tracted a long slip bearing a poem which when translated said :
BETTER FUTURE
We had a storm, but it's over now
We're happy and we can hear
The sweet voice of the nightingale
In our garden.
There followed a series of categories with our possibilities in each,
and I am happy to divulge what is in the stars for this department.
In business we should buy now; when it comes to a contemplated
JAPJLH 283
trip we will find more profit in a far-off country; oar fawred direc-
tion is north; we shall win our disputes m the long run; oar immug
should be done quickly; we shall surely get well from any illness;
and our silk-growing prospects aie good although we should not
be ambitious.
The gentleman just ahead of me at the omikujt box wast to the
shrine for a quick prayer before shaking, and I was informed that
this is common practice and helps insure a brighter fortune. Nobody
really wishes for a splendid fortune, for that would surely mean
one could expect nothing but the worst on the succeeding fortuue-
telling occasion. Medium luck is more prudent Should the fortune
prove disappointing, one ties it to a tree. From the white patches
in the branches overhead our luck was better than most Probably
we extended it by moving oft the next day to Kashikojiiiia m the
pearl country, which lays to the south.
The pearl lands of Japan are strangely like the lake lands of the
Canadian midwest. You stand on the summit of the Shima Kaako
Hotel and you look down to Ago Bay, a dozen little salt-water
inlets protected by a hook of land and floating with rafts. Under
the rafts hang baskets of oysters and inside their shells grow eighty
per cent of all the pearls grown in Japan, which is to say, virtually
all the pearls in the world.
As for the Shima Kanko, it calls itself "A Floating Palace to a
Sea of Pearls," which is really not an extravagant dam at aQ, since
it is probably the most tasteful hotel in Japan. Modem paintings
hang on its walls, the service is crisp, the ambiance elegaet For
those who want to examine a pearl farm, the Sfaima Mura is a tee-
minute walk down the hill.
Most of the tourists, however, flock to Mikimoto, the pearl king
of the nation, now in his nineties, whose most recent pfaotojp^pfa
depicts him in a silken kimono, thin smite on face, Mack derby CM
head. A pearl island at Toba has been developed by Mikimoto just
for tourists who ride over in the company feny, look in on pear!
operations, pearl sorting, and even diving, which is practiced oaty
by women. In deference to the tourists, the divers at Mikmoto's
pearl island wear clinging white coveralls and lipstick. One sus-
pects that at the eigjit hundred pearl farms in the aiea the divers
wouldn't know Helena Rubinstein from Isabella of Spain.
HOMEWARD
r c m Attica tc the Attic
MEWYCSK
BEFORE ANOTHER YEAR OF TRAVELING GETS UNDER WAY THERE ^
going to have to be an agreement reached in our house. We've got
so many cute little dust collectors from so many cute Mttte I assign
markets that the joint is beginning to look like a Turkish bazaar,
A traveling man who is a soft touch f or a fast safes talk can collect
himself right out of a comfortable place to five.
The way things stand it takes a swivel-hipped halfback to mow
from the living room to the dining room without knocking over a
four-f oot-long bedwarmer, for which we were slightly overcharged
in the flea market in Paris. One must also avoid a great plaster
horse I juggled all the way home from Mazatlan, Mexico. It is a
startling thing, painted shocking pink, silver, and Hoe; bet despite
its vivid appearance, which would seemingly render it safe from the
human elbow, it now has more cracks than the Great Wall of China.
When I plunked down twenty-seven pesos for it last summer I
didn't reckon on the high cost of upkeep.
While avoiding these pitfalls, one must also beware in our bouse
of a mammoth cowbell which hangs from our ceifing. We were
rushing for a train in the tiny Swiss town erf Ifemtz not long ago
when the lady whose biHs I pay spied this bell hanging in front of
a leather worker's shop. "I've got to have it,** she suggested mildly.
The Swiss explained that it was a ceremonial bell worn by the
reigning queen of the herd when the cows come down from the
pasture lands in the Alps in the fall. There is neither a cow BOT a
mountain within three counties of our abode, but we have the bell,
and unsuspecting guests frequently crack their craniums on it
268 - HOMEWARD
Occasionally a lubricated invitee will sound the tocsin, and the
noise sets the neighbors to reading the fine print of their lease and
makes nervous wrecks of the mice.
One drops one's ashes in our house in an ashtray that advertises
the Pappagallo Restaurant, a fancy eatery in Bologna, or in an-
other from the Villa d'Este Hotel, which sprawls at the edge of
the lovely Lake of Como in Italy. At great personal risk I purloined
another handsome ashtray from the ultra-elegant Palace Hotel,
where the royal and the famous stay when they are in St. Moritz.
On better days the ashtray perhaps rested the cigarettes of the Ali
Khan, the late Alfonso of Spain, or Charles Laughton, all of whom
have stayed at the Palace, but, with singular disregard for tradition,
my wife keeps it over the kitchen sink now because it's such a
handy size for the Brillo.
We haven't got much wall space left in our house. Looking down
from one vantage point or another is an Aztec mask of shining tin,
a monotype of a sad little Mexican boy picked up at Bernice Good-
speed's studio in Taxco, two Dutch tiles framed in wormy chestnut
from a flying trip to Holland, a poster advertising Annie Get Your
Gun when it was playing in Paris under the title Annie du Far West,
and another of Porgy and Bess, billed as an Oper von Gershwin,
when it played at the Stadttheater in Zurich with a German-speaking
cast who did it in blackface.
Among the handy little gimcracks we couldn't live without is a
four-foot voodoo drum from Haiti, ten edelweiss from the Swiss
Alpine resort of Davos, two yellow ukuleles from Cuernavaca, and
a can of guaranteed Diamondback rattlesnake meat from Ross
Allen's Reptile Institute in Silver Springs, Florida. I own a wild
green and white sport shirt surprinted with figures of donkey carts
and things, bought in an unguarded moment in the Virgin Islands,
in which I wouldn't be caught at a masquerade. My wardrobe in-
cludes a fuzzy green Tyrolean hat purchased in Munich, in which
I looked dapper in Bavaria and in which I would be stoned in
Manhattan.
Our generous government permits its traveling citizens to bring
home a gallon of liquor duty-free, a move calculated to accommo
date the tourist, aid foreign economy, and still keep peace with the
liquor interests here in the United States. Every time I'm in
Bermuda or Nassau or some place where the economic structure
THE END OF A BOUND-TRIP TICKET - 269
permits a man to get tanked for two bits, I buy my gallon share of
the bargain booze even though it frequently costs me overweight
on the plane. So what happens? My friends are cultivating expensive
tastes for fancy cordials bought at half price in the Caribbean which
I can't afford to keep in stock at the prices up here.
On goods other than liquor the government lets you bmg in
five hundred dollars' worth of foreign loot every six months. This
generous allowance permits me to support the bazaars of Europe,
North Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. It also imparts a cer-
tain foreign flavor to our house which makes for lots of conversa-
tion and a pleasant atmosphere. The only thing that worries our
friends is that when you're having canap6s at our boose you sever
know whether you're getting Sells' Liver Pt6 or Allen's rattlesaake
meat. I'll bet if s pretty unnerving.
The End cf a Round-Trip Ticket
I HAVE COME HOME TO NEW YORK ON FALL DAYS, HDINO DOWN
the familiar hill on the Henry Hudson Parkway, where the George
Washington Bridge comes into view, and seen a thousand spanw$
tossing on the cool winds like confetti in a hero's parade. I liave
come up the harbor on a new ship while she took the shuddering
curtain calls of the Battery. I have come home on a troop ship feat
stood off 40th Street overnight because she had come up the river
too late and the dockers refused to unload the soldiers home from
the war because it was after hours. I have come in from the West
on the tram when the minutes between Newark and New York,
270 * HOMEWABD
which are just fifteen by the clock, were the longest part of the
journey. I remember well the ballbearing works, the lane bump
of a hill that stands on the Jersey flats crowned by a billboard, and
the smell of the pig farms of Secaucus. Once I floated down the
East River in somebody's yacht, and many times I have played
the tortoise along the routes that lead to the Holland tunnel and
home. There have been those interminable hours flying down from
Gander after crossing the sea, and those wonderful night arrivals
when the plane swung in with the dust of Orly still on her wheels
and all Brooklyn and Queens looked so regal and bejeweled,
camouflaged with darkness and gleaming lights.
There is something very sweet in coming home, as men have
said with sticky lyrics, and the. warmth of it doesn't diminish the
pleasure of the trip. What traveler whether in New England or on
the North Cape has ever found the beds as long, the beds as wide,
the beds as soft, the beds as hard, the beds as friendly as the bed
at home?
What voyager has not tossed in the alien night because of the
unfamiliar noise of the crickets, the unfamiliar absence of the ball
game tumbling out of the deaf neighbor's radio. Who has not
refused to be cradled by the roll of the ship, or lulled by the crash-
ing of the streamlined cars? Who has not bent his neck at ninety
degrees over those triangular mattresses or stuffed frankfurters the
Europeans use for pillows. And once home has not the inner man
and the outer man glowed with satisfaction sitting there before the
open icebox at 12:30 A.M. deciding which would prove more vul-
nerable to attack, the cold turkey leg or dinnertime's custard? Try
to do that in Pago-Pago. Or even in the Mountain View Hotel,
Somerset, New Hampshire.
Home had all that, and it had the coffee that didn't startle you,
and the skyline that fitted like the missing jigsawed piece into the
image of your memory. It had the same old faces, the malted milks,
the same old noise, the same old quiet, and the hollow in the mat-
tress just where you expected it. It was, when you got right down
to it, the place there was no place like.
