The 42nd Parallel

Eleanor Stoddard

When they first arrived in New York, Eleanor, who’d never been East before, had to rely on Eveline for everything. Freddy met them at the train and took them to get rooms at the Brevoort. He said it was a little far from the theater but much more interesting than an uptown hotel, all the artists and radicals and really interesting people stayed there and it was very French. Going down in the taxi he chattered about the lovely magnificent play and his grand part, and what a fool the director Ben Freelby was, and how one of the backers had only put up half the money he’d promised; but that Josephine Gilchrist, the business manager, had the sum virtually lined up now and the Shuberts were interested and they would open out of town at Greenwich exactly a month from today. Eleanor looked out at Fifth Avenue and the chilly Spring wind blowing women’s skirts, a man chasing a derby hat, the green buses, taxicabs, the shine on shopwindows; after all, this wasn’t so very different from Chicago. But at lunch at the Brevoort it was very different, Freddy seemed to know so many people and introduced them to everybody as if he was very proud of them. They were all names she had heard or read of in the book column of The Daily News. Everybody seemed very friendly. Freddy talked French to the waiter and the hollandaise sauce was the most delicious she had ever eaten.

That afternoon on the way to rehearsal, Eleanor had her first glimpse of Times Square out of the taxicab window. In the dark theater they found the company sitting waiting for Mr. Freelby. It was very mysterious, with just a single big electric light bulb hanging over the stage and the set for some other play looking all flat and dusty.

A grayhaired man with a broad sad face and big circles under his eyes came in. That was the famous Benjamin Freelby; he had a tired fatherly manner and asked Eveline and Eleanor up to his apartment to dinner with Freddy that night so that they could talk at their ease about the settings and the costumes. Eleanor was relieved that he was so kind and tired and thought that after all she and Eveline were much better dressed than any of those New York actresses. Mr. Freelby made a great fuss about there being no lights; did they expect him to rehearse in the dark? The stagemanager with the manuscript in his hand ran round looking for the electrician and somebody was sent to call up the office. Mr. Freelby walked about the stage and fretted and fumed and said, “This is monstrous.” When the electrician arrived wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and finally switched on the houselights and some spots, Mr. Freelby had to have a table and chair and a reading light on the table. Nobody seemed to be able to find a chair the right height for him. He kept fuming up and down, tugging at his coarse gray hair and saying, “This is monstrous.” At last he got settled and he said to Mr. Stein, the stagemanager, a lanky man who sat in another chair near him, “We’ll start with act one, Mr. Stein. Has everybody their parts?” Several actors got on the stage and stood around and the rest talked in low voices. Mr. Freelby “shushed” them and said, “Please, children, we’ve got to be quiet,” and the rehearsal was in progress.

From that time on everything was a terrible rush. Eleanor never seemed to get to bed. The scenepainter, Mr. Bridgeman, at whose studios the scenery was painted found objections to everything; it turned out that someone else, a pale young man with glasses who worked for Mr. Bridgeman, would have to design the scenery from their sketches and that they couldn’t have their names in the program at all except for the costumes on account of not belonging to the scene designers’ union. When they weren’t wrangling at the Bridgeman Studios they were dashing about the streets in taxicabs with samples of materials. They never seemed to get to bed before four or five in the morning. Everybody was so temperamental and Eleanor had quite a siege each week to get a check out of Miss Gilchrist.

When the costumes were ready, all in early Victorian style, and Eleanor and Freddy and Mr. Freelby went to see them at the costumers’ they really looked lovely but the costumers wouldn’t deliver them without a check and nobody could find Miss Gilchrist and everybody was running round in taxis and at last late that night Mr. Freelby said he’d give his personal check. The transfer company had its trucks at the door with the scenery but wouldn’t let the flats be carried into the theater until they had a check. Mr. Bridgeman was there, too, saying his check had come back marked no funds and he and Mr. Freelby had words in the boxoffice. At last Josephine Gilchrist appeared in a taxi with five hundred dollars in bills on account for Mr. Bridgeman and for the transfer company. Everybody smiled when they saw the crisp orangebacked bills. It was a great relief.

When they had made sure that the scenery was going into the theater, Eleanor and Eveline and Freddy Seargeant and Josephine Gilchrist and Mr. Freelby all went to Bustanoby’s to get a bite to eat and Mr. Freelby set them up to a couple of bottles of Pol Roger and Josephine Gilchrist said that she felt it in her bones that the play would be a hit and that didn’t often happen with her, and Freddy said the stagehands liked it and that was always a good sign and Mr. Freelby said Ike Gold, the Shuberts’ officeboy, had sat through the runthrough with the tears running down his cheeks, but nobody knew what theater they’d open in after a week in Greenwich and a week in Hartford and Mr. Freelby said he’d go and talk to J. J. about it personally first thing in the morning.

Friends from Chicago called up who wanted to get into the dress rehearsal. It made Eleanor feel quite important, especially when Sally Emerson called up. The dress rehearsal dragged terribly, half the scenery hadn’t come and the Wessex villagers didn’t have any costumes, but everybody said that it was a good sign to have a bad dress rehearsal.

Opening night Eleanor didn’t get any supper and had only a half an hour to dress in. She was icy all over with excitement. She hoped the new chartreuse tulle evening dress she’d charged at Tappé’s looked well but she didn’t have time to worry. She drank a cup of black coffee and it seemed as if the taxi never would get uptown. When she got to the theater the lobby was all lit up and full of silk hats and bare powdered backs and diamonds and eveningwraps and all the firstnighters looked at each other and waved to their friends and talked about who was there and kept trooping up the aisle half way through the first act. Eleanor and Eveline stood stiffly side by side in the back of the theater and nudged each other when a costume looked good and agreed that the actors were too dreadful and that Freddy Seargeant was the worst. At the party that Sally Emerson gave for them afterwards at the duplex apartment of her friends the Careys everybody said that the scenery and costumes were lovely and that they were sure the play would be a great success. Eleanor and Eveline were the center of everything and Eleanor was annoyed because Eveline drank a little too much and was noisy. Eleanor met a great many interesting people and decided that she’d stay on in New York whatever happened.

The play failed after two weeks and Eleanor and Eveline never did get seven hundred and fifty dollars that the management owed them. Eveline went back to Chicago, and Eleanor rented an apartment on Eighth Street. Sally Emerson had decided that Eleanor had great talent and got her husband to put up a thousand dollars to start her New York decorating business on. Eveline Hutchins’ father was sick, but she wrote from Chicago that she’d be on whenever she could.

While Sally Emerson was in New York that summer Eleanor went out with her all the time and got to know many rich people. It was through Alexander Parsons that she got the job to decorate the house the J. Ward Moorehouses were building near Great Neck. Mrs. Moorehouse walked round the unfinished house with her. She was a washedout blonde who kept explaining that she’d do the decorating herself only she hadn’t the strength since her operation. She’d been in bed most of the time since her second child was born and told Eleanor all about her operation. Eleanor hated to hear about women’s complaints and nodded coldly from time to time, making businesslike comments about furniture and draperies and now and then jotting notes on the decoration down on a piece of paper. Mrs. Moorehouse asked her to stay to lunch in the little cottage where they were living until they got the house finished. The little cottage was a large house in Dutch Colonial style full of pekinese dogs and maids in flounced aprons and a butler. As they went into the diningroom Eleanor heard a man’s voice in an adjoining room and smelt cigarsmoke. At lunch she was introduced to Mr. Moorehouse and a Mr. Perry. They had been playing golf and were talking about Tampico and oilwells. Mr. Moorehouse offered to drive her back to town after lunch and she was relieved to get away from Mrs. Moorehouse. She hadn’t had a chance to talk about her ideas for decorating the new house yet, but, going in, Mr. Moorehouse asked her many questions about it and they laughed together about how ugly most people’s houses were, and Eleanor thought that it was very interesting to find a business man who cared about those things. Mr. Moorehouse suggested that she prepare the estimates and bring them to his office. “How will Thursday do?” Thursday would be fine and he had no date that day and they’d have a bite of lunch together if she cared to. “Mealtime’s the only time I get to devote to the things of the spirit,” he said with a blue twinkle in his eye, so they both said “Thursday” again when he let Eleanor out at the corner of Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue and Eleanor thought he looked as if he had a sense of humor and thought she liked him much better than Tom Custis.

Eleanor found that she had to have many interviews with Ward Moorehouse as the work went on. She had him to dinner at her place on Eighth Street and she had her Martinique maid Augustine cook sauté chicken with red peppers and tomatoes. They had cocktails with absinthe in them and a bottle of very good burgundy and Ward Moorehouse enjoyed sitting back on the sofa and talking and she enjoyed listening and began to call him J. W. After that they were friends quite apart from the work on the house at Great Neck.

He told Eleanor about how he’d been a boy in Wilmington, Delaware, and the day the militia fired on the old darkey and thought it was the Spanish fleet and about his unhappy first marriage and about how his second wife was an invalid and about his work as a newspaperman and in advertising offices, and Eleanor, in a gray dress with just a touch of sparkly something on one shoulder and acting the discreet little homebody, led him on to explain about the work he was doing keeping the public informed about the state of relations between capital and labor and stemming the propaganda of sentimentalists and reformers, upholding American ideas against crazy German socialistic ideas and the panaceas of discontented dirtfarmers in the Northwest. Eleanor thought his ideas were very interesting, but she liked better to hear about the stockexchange and how the Steel Corporation was founded and the difficulties of the oil companies in Mexico, and Hearst and great fortunes. She asked him about some small investment she was making, and he looked up at her with twinkly blue eyes in a white square face where prosperity was just beginning to curve over the squareness of the jowl and said, “Miss Stoddard, may I have the honor of being your financial adviser?”

Eleanor thought his slight southern accent and oldschool gentlemanly manners very attractive. She wished she had a more distinctivelooking apartment and that she’d kept some of the crystal chandeliers instead of selling them. It was twelve o’clock before he left, saying he’d had a very pleasant evening but that he must go to answer some longdistance calls. Eleanor sat before the mirror at her dressingtable rubbing cold cream on her face by the light of two candles. She wished her neck wasn’t so scrawny and wondered how it would be to start getting a henna rinse now and then when she got her hair washed.