Pangs of Gianthood

John Owen, once a cotton broker, wrote a novel, The Cotton Broker, six years ago, for which Britons laid down many a clutch of seven shillings. This year the shillings are rattling down again because Novelist Owen, a tall man who might pass for a giant, has written The Giant of Oldborne.-- As a yardstick to current British taste in fiction the book will stand branding with the cliche "important."

No doubt beef-eaters consider that in writing The Giant of Old-borne Novelist Owen was doing a Tolstoi. For hero there is a "sensitive" youth--the adjective is repeated ad nauseam--a sensitive youth who was as weak as a girl because all his strength went into making him a great tall bag of bones whom any knotty runt could upset into a helpless heap. For heroine he represents a buxom milk wench--the scene is rural Suffolk "these many years ago"--who has a taste which she herself considers monstrous for the hero-monstrosity. She has no love for him but likes to torture "with the least possible effort to herself" this sensitive bag -- of bones. The spectacle is on the order of a fat little girl tearing apart a daddy-long-legs.

If the novel is semiautobiographical, as its publishers hint darkly, then one can understand the author's readiness to be as garrulous in recalling his wounds of the spirit as an old soldier describing the carnage at Appomattox. That the book is carefully written--and perhaps for that reason especially appreciated by Britons, now in rebellion against the loose writing of the day-there is no doubt. But there is the feeling of words too long sought, too painstakingly chosen. For example a stream "wimples."

Wife of Bath Ahoy!

Reader!

If thou hast a Heart fam'd for Tenderness and Pity, Contemplate this Spot.

In which are deposited the Remains of a young Lady, whose artless Beauty, innocence of Mind, and gentle Manners, once obtain'd her the Love and Esteem of all who knew her, But when Nerves were too delicately spun to bear the rude Shakes and Jostlings which we meet with in this transitory World, Nature gave way; she sunk and died a Martyr to Excessive Sensibility.

When F. V. Morley, brother of thunderer upon the left Christopher Morley, set sail with two friends down the Thames-- in their converted ship's lifeboat Wife of Bath he naturally found many such bits of rare Anglicana as the Martyr's epitaph above. Young Morley, like his columnist-novelist brother, is one of those for whom any river will wimple with apt allusion. Half the poets of England creep into Mr. Morley's book, a pat line or stanza from each. And he can himself do such sure telling bits as: "The first lock, by Inglesham Round House, holds two feet of water, of varnished and translucent brown--the brown of old sherry." Though we are here reminded that Elder Brother Morley is prouder of his taste in wine than of his taste in literature--which he takes for granted--the Thames wanderings of Younger Brother Morley are as rich and heady as though the water were turned into brown old wine with the Wife of Bath's passing. An apparently genuine "treasure cipher," its decipherment and what ensued give to the tale an almost spirituous tang.

Manhattan Transport

The Story.-- One foggy evening in 1900, a tough barge rat from Haverstraw, N. Y., marvels, as always, at the changing masses of Manhattan's skyline seen from the North River. "Gee," he says. "Gee!" He can neither read nor write. He is 16; name, John Breen; parents, a once-pretty Irish servant and someone other than the grimy bargee she calls their "old man." Entering the East River, in thickening fog and greasy tide-rips, the barge is rammed. Loaded with bricks ("the city's red corpuscles") it plunges under. John Breen struggles out of the greenish-black water to a Manhattan stringpiece. The city claims him.

A ghetto family adopts him, the Lipshitzes. He outpunches the Grogan gang, gets used to elevated trains and a million smells. A Bowery bartender who handles pugilists takes him in tow. Like most successful bartenders, Pug Malone is clean-living, highminded. John Breen serves beer, knocks out bruisers, goes to night school. He becomes Malone's assistant on a country farm where men of paunch and riches submit themselves for renovation. One wealthy man, Gilbert Van Horn, less paunchy than most, discovers he is John Breen's father. John finds out too but neither says anything. Van Horn makes John his ward and pays his way through Columbia. John wants to be, and becomes, an engineer, a servant of his first mistress, the city.

During the construction of the cavernous city aqueduct, John and Van Horn's niece, Josephine, are engaged. But she is rescued from the Titanic disaster by smooth Garrit Rantoul, promoter of the aqueduct. She marries Rantoul instead of grim, underground, somewhat sandhoggish John. John, just promoted, quits engineering and goes on a star-spangled "bust," for three days rampaging the length, width and depth of the island labyrinth he had thought to help reconstruct. He winds up in fly-blown Bowery lodgings with Becka, daughter of his old friends, the Lipshitzes. She is now widow and harlot but still handsome, still "square." He takes her to the Jewish Alps (168th Street), marries her. He joins the staff of Almon Strauss, a philanthropist who dreams of "a tremendous city rising . . .", a beautiful, spacious, open-hearted city to replace cruel chaos.

Becka, big with child, goes to hear Billy Sunday. In the hysteria she is crushed by an automobile; killed. John goes on working under Almon Strauss, planning a better city. But chaos increases. The evening that Black Tom, freighted with T. N. T., detonates off the Battery, the evening before the years when the War is to detonate in Europe, Almon Strauss's chief engineer shoots himself, John replaces him. But planning a new city seems futile. . . . John is wounded in France, recovers, stretches bridge spans in South America. Somewhat relieved, he returns to work again for Dreamer Strauss. But his surveys of Manhattan subways, sewage, traffic and domiciling reveal conditions so overwhelmingly horrible that even Dreamer Strauss loses heart. The planning bureau is abandoned. John Breen prepares to leave Manhattan forever. He will marry the divorced and devoted Josephine. They are both rich. They will take his father's name and idle over the world. . . .

At Josephine's door John reads a last note from Almon Strauss: ". . . Hundred-million-dollar foundation . . . stop planning . . . begin to rebuild the tenements. The city needs you." John Breen, last of the Van Horns, joins Dreamer Strauss to recreate Manhattan.

The Significance. "This is a plain history of a complicated, messed up, romantic and terrific city, a city full of fornication, murder and sudden death." The last notable book about Manhattan, Manhattan Transfer by romantic Author John Dos Passes (1925), confined itself far more narrowly to the contents thus described than does this new volume. Herein are the engineering, political and financial epics, flung together with the social epic in a welter quite as prodigious qua novel as Manhattan is qua city. The human touch is correspondingly unreliable, too; John Breen and the rest of the characters have reality as seldom as individuals in a crowd at Times Square. Yet enormous gusto informs their story. And at one, point the reader comes upon 19 solid pages of neo-Whitmanian yawp about what Manhattan is, e.g. "Fireful, alluring, magnetic city of lies. Home of harlots, preachers, princes, janitors ... Sodom, Gomorrah, Babylon, Jerusalem, Kansas City . . . City of tenderloins . . . hors d-oeuvres . . . circumcisions . . . captive elephants . . . cornetists practicing by day . . . contraceptions, contraptions . . . blind balboas . . . psychlones... night sweats . . . grey postmen . . . maztoth . . . Holy Eucharist . . . Standard Oil . . . college campus of the Diplodocus . . . petters . . . melons . . . ikons . . . City worth considering . . . worth-while city. . . ."

The Author. Born in Milwaukee 47 years ago, Felix Riesenberg was educated in the N. Y. Nautical Schoolship St. Mary's, the U. S. S. Chase, and, after eight years at sea, in the engineering school at Columbia. He tried for the North Pole with Explorer Wellman in the balloon, America. He helped build the Catskill Aqueduct and was municipal engineer of the Borough of Queens. Then he superintended the New York State Nautical School and commanded the U. S. S. Newport during the War. In 1924, he turned altogether to writing, having already published two sea stories and a textbook. P. A. L., his first novel, was the robustious biography of a U. S. promoter and wildcat bunco artist, "P. A. L. Tangerman." Last autumn he published Vignettes of the Sea, much like William McFee's off-duty ruminations. The polyglot relations in East Side, West Side reflect his own. A deep-chested, straw-haired German, he married, in 1912, Maud Conroy of Queenstown, Ireland.

NON-FICTION

The White Hat--

Height 5 ft. 10 1/2 in.

Head--Round as a ball.

Forehead--Bulgy.

Eyes--Blue, mild, pale.

Complexion--Startingly white.

Hair (whiskers too)--Startingly white.

Voice--High and shrill.

Nose--Pug.

Dress--Disheveled but clean, usually white.

Pockets--Bulging with newspapers.

Hat--White plug (cartoonists' delight).

Glasses--Large and round.

Expression--Infantile.

He founded the New York Tribune.

He chased rascals, not dollars.

In eating, he would go for some particular article (as meat, gingerbread) and make a meal of it exclusively.

Utterances: "Hunger, cold rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely worse than them all. ... If you have but 50c and can get no more for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it and live on it, rather than owe any man a dollar. . . .

"Typesetters are not expected to know anything; but we employ the best talent that money and good prices can command for proofreaders, and there is nothing to be said in extenuation of their shortcomings.

"You lie, you villain! You know you lie!" (This he hurled at William Cullen Bryant in capital letters on a Tribune page. The author of Thanatopsis nearly choked with rage).

"I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers were democrats."

Once while Horace sat at work amid a wallow of discarded newspapers there entered a caller. But Horace did not turn around. "Ahem, I am Commodore Vanderbilt," the visitor announced, after a moment.

Horace did not look up. Annoyed, the millionaire raised his voice: "I understand you are lending money to my son ... I wish you to know that if you expect me to be responsible for it you are mistaken. I will not pay one cent."

"Who the hell asked you to?" squeaked Horace, not taking his eyes from his work.

In the Bridgeport home of Phineas T. Barnum a special room was always reserved for him, know as "Mr. Greeley's."

He could survey a page and absorb its contents from any angle-sidewise or upside down.

Aged 10, appointed captain of his "side" at a spelling bee, he chose the best-looking girls, who proved to be less intelligent than the ugly children, and so lost.

He liked girls, but as friendly and intellectual companions. Said his sister: "He used to correct their grammar when they conversed, and gravely lecture them upon the folly of wearing stays. . . . No village belle ever liked to own that she laced tightly, or that she wore a 'board,' as it was a tacit admission that her figure could not bear unaided the test of the Empire dress; consequently, brother's remarks would be received by his young friends with an injure! air, and a vehement protest against such a false accusation. Brother would then test their truth by dropping his handkerchief and requesting them to pick it up; if they wore a 'board' stooping would be impossible, or, at all events, very difficult. The ordeal would cover them with confusion, when the philosopher of 13 years would resume his moral lectures upon the laws of hygiene and the follies of fashion."

He was ousted from the New York Evening Post's composing (i.e. typesetting) room because that newspaper desired "only decent-looking men about." Said his sister: "He seemed to me the embodiment of romance and poesy, and now, as I think of him, with his pure unselfish nature, so early devoted to what was noblest and best, I can only compare him to the high-minded boy saint, the chaste seraphic Aloysius."

James Gordon Bennett invited him to join him in establishing the New York Herald. Greeley declined. Instead, in 1834, aged 23, he began to publish and edit the New Yorker, a weekly literary journal (in no wise connected with the current smart-chart by that name).

Item from what corresponded to the Miscellany page of the New Yorker:

"A man by name of Tibbetts, a short time since, jumped into eternity and the Kennebec River at one and the same time! Cause, intemperance."

In 1841, aged 30, he founded a New Morning Journal of Politics, Literature and General Intelligence--the New York Tribune (now the New York Herald Tribune). "The immoral and degrading Police Reports, Advertisements and other matter which have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading Penny Papers, will be carefully excluded from this, and no exertion spared to render it worthy of the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant at the family fireside." Horace was editor; one Thomas McElrath, his partner, was business manager. Among those who worked on Greeley's Tribune at one time or another: Charles A. Dana (famed for the Sun), Whitelaw Reid (father of Ogden Reid, present Herald Tribune owner), John Hay (Lincoln's secretary and Ambassador to England), William Winter (famed critic).

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it--if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it--and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." Lincoln penned those lines in a letter to Greeley.

Vexed while traveling by certain citizens of Erie, Pa., Greeley broke forth in the Tribune; "Let Erie be avoided by all travelers until grass shall grow in her streets and until her piemen in despair shall move to some other city. . . ."

Mrs. Horace Greeley was a onetime schoolmistress who never learned to keep house. A contemporary thus described her: "Mrs. Greeley was a woman rather below the medium size, thin, with dark hair and eyes. She had thin lips, irregular and somewhat defective teeth. There was little expression in her face, but that little was rather against her. She spoke quickly--not peevishly, nor angrily, as a rule, but her words had a kind of crack like the report of a rifle." Horace was kind and patient with this woman whom he addressed as "Mother." She kept cows which "Mother says shall never be killed while she lives, because they have given milk to her children. They fall down sometimes and want to die, but Mother will not let them and keeps a man to lift them up and care for them."

Horace, a lifelong Republican, was nominated for President of the United States in 1872 by the Democrats. On Oct. 30 of that year Mrs. Greeley died. On Nov. 5 Ulysses S. Grant "won 286 electoral votes to Greeley's 66. On Nov. 7, the Tribune announced: "The undersigned resumes the editorship of the Tribune, which he relinquished on embarking on another line of business six months ago. Henceforth it shall be his endeavor to make this a thoroughly independent journal, treating all parties and political movements with judicial fairness and candor, but counting the favor and deprecating the wrath of no one." But immediately there was a move to oust him from control. "My misfortunes do not come 'single files, but in battalions.' And so many of my old friends hate me for what I have done that life seems too hard to bear." On Nov. 29, aged 61, he died, some think of a broken heart.

*THE GIANT OF OLDBORNE--John Owen (Houghton Mifflin) ($2.)

*RIVER THAMES--F. V. Morley-Harper's ($6).

*EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE-Felix Riesenberg--Harcourt Brace ($2.50).

*HORACB GREELEY --Don C. Seitz--Bobbs, Merrill ($5.00).