The Human Touch

We never make demands upon our readers. But—patronising our advertisers does help us considerably.

“Even writers once associated with the Socialist Party, most of the people on the Socialist New York Call, found their way to lucrative jobs on the capitalist press—David Karsner, Louis Weitzenkorn, Harry Salpeter, Evans Clark, William Soskin, etc.”—Joshua Kunitz, The New Masses, July 24, 1934.

DAY IN THE LIFE OF A CAPITALIST PRESSMAN

At nine-thirty my valet James gently draws the curtains of my air conditioned bedroom and as the flood of light gently massages my eyes into wakefulness, I catch a glimpse of the towers of New York and rest my eyes upon them awhile. “Your bath is drawn, Sir,” says James. At ten I have completed my ablutions, even to shaving, which I leave to the expert hands of James only on such special occasions as first nights, opera nights, dinners of special importance, etc.

In my lounge suit, which, in the meantime, James has laid out for me, I sit down to a hearty breakfast, catching a glimpse, in my hundred-foot march to the breakfast room, of one of the wings of my art collection and rest my eyes with particular delight upon my latest acquisitions, the Renoir nude, the Maurice Prendergast water color and the Utrillo street scene. Next month, I reflect, if I can afford it, I shall get myself a nice little Monet and maybe one of the better contemporaries.

Beside my plate I find the morning’s mail, but spend my first fifteen minutes on the fruits, eggs, toast, bacon and jellies, for Cook, as always, has excelled herself. Then, after the first cup of coffee and between puffs of my breakfast cigarettes I attack the mail.

I divide it into three heaps. In the first are all bills and petitions for money; in the second, checks and requests from magazines, syndicates and newspapers for articles and squibs and a summary from my agent of outstanding literary accounts, etcetera. In the third heap are personal letters, invitations, material supplied by friends that I can use in columns and so on.

WHAT EFFICIENCY!

Bills, requests for money, subscription appeals, etc., which are endorsed by me, with my initials, and passed on to my secretary, will be acknowledged with checks which I will subsequently sign, while of the checks received I make a neat pile for deposit in my various banks, depending on the state of my finances in each. Letters from cranks, professional beggars and uplift and social service racketeers are unceremoniously ditched into a tray, after having been torn across once, although I have occasionally, through sheer haste and impatience, thus discarded material for columns and squibs. Now, after having set aside, for detailed stenographic reply, such correspondence as cannot be acknowledged with a scribbled note, I turn to the papers and magazines, with a pad and pencil the maid has brought out, and in half an hour I am ready for my day’s exercise.

I change from my lounge clothes to street wear, which also has been carefully laid out in my dressing room and saunter forth. It is now close to eleven and for my morning’s exercise I direct my chauffeur to take me through Central Park by way of Fifty-seventh street, which means that if the whim overtakes me I may saunter in for a few minutes at one of my favorite galleries to see what’s on exhibition, and then resume my drive.

The weather is so pleasant that I crank down the windows and get a whiff of fresh air. Egnert—he’s my chauffeur—misses a pedestrian and I hear him curse softly, to which I say “Tut, tut,” but I sympathize with him. After about half an hour of riding I direct Egnert to drive toward Forty-second street, slowly. It has occurred to me that I might as well have lunch with my agent. When I call at his office I suggest he cancel any appointment he may have and lunch with me. He is only too delighted to do so, since he virtually lives on the commissions he earns from the sale of my writings. He suggests the Claremont for lunch and although I think the service is too plebian I consent and we ride uptown again. This luncheon is rather a lengthy one, for Jones—that’s my agent’s name—has various profitable proposals to put before me, for articles, prefaces, a series of sketches for Collier’s, all of which we go over after lunch, but the details of which I cannot venture to give at the risk of betraying our literary plans.

READY FOR WORK

At about three-thirty I am home again. After a hasty shower I don another lounge suit and I am ready to dictate the day’s column. I go over the rough notes set aside for this purpose, but do not feel in the mood to develop any one of them. I decide finally that it would be a good idea to develop a column on the life of the shabby individual of whom I caught only the slightest glimpse as Egbert nearly ran him down. And I succeed in writing a very sympathetic column, making the shabby fellow into an American counterpart of the German fellow in “Little Man, What Now?”

I flatter myself it is a good column, but then, there is such a wide following for almost any column I write, that I am certain this will be liked. While my secretary is typing this column, in order to have clean copy ready for Melvin, the copy boy whose job it is to call at my apartment every afternoon for my script, I scan the heap of afternoon papers which has been brought in, as well as a dozen or so of the latest books, just to see what I can write about for my weekly column in the New Yorker, in which, as a rule, I am a little more “smart” than in the daily column, which is read by yokels, comparatively. When the girl has finished typing the daily column I am ready to dictate the weekly column and, on other days, odds and ends of gossip and memorabilia and reminiscence which I keep moving in a steady flow to my agent’s.

It is six o’clock and I am due for dinner at the Jepsons at seven. James puts out my dress suit, boiled shirt, etc., I give myself a renewing shave and with James’s help in the matter of links and studs, I am ready to step into the car fifteen minutes before I’m due at my hosts.’ At the Jepsons I meet a number of old friends, the Jipsons, the Jempsons, the Jepsons, the Jibooms and even the Jaegers, a couple of charming actresses, Mr. and Mrs. Lunt and one or two second-rate scribblers from my own paper, including one Adrian Binkowitz. The drinks are good, the food is good, and the conversation, being supplied mainly by myself, excellent. But the evening hasn’t been in vain, because it gives me two exclusive anecdotes—which only I will know how to develop.

MIDNIGHT SUPPER

Reaching home some time after midnight, I find a little cold repast set out, mostly chicken and salad, with a little bit of champagne, which induces a state of pleasant drowsiness in me, after the day’s exhausting exertions. A couple of magazines which have arrived in the late afternoon attract me and I begin to read an article in one of them. . . .

. . . I awake with a start in my own apartment, without James or chauffeur, or maid, or Cook, or secretary. I am sitting fully dressed, in my zipper shirt and baggy pants. I have fallen asleep over an article in a magazine (the New Masses) entitled Problems of Fellow-Travellers. A glass of cold water helps clear the cobwebs and the dream through which I have lived with such harrowing detail. I don’t like to be surrounded completely by servants; that’s # proletarian’s idea of Heaven.

We never make demands upon our readers. But—patronising our advertisers does help us considerably.