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Chapter 6. To Europe in Search of Adventure
- University Press of Mississippi
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74 5 C H a P t e r 6 To Europe in Search of Adventure “I like house-broken people,” said Elsie de Wolfe the first time I met her. Whether the remark is of any particular profundity or not, nobody can doubt that it is striking. Elsie and her great friend Anne Morgan, urged by Baron de Meyer, had turned up at one of Delmonico’s matinees early in the season for the express purpose of examining my doubtful talents. The “Triumvirate” had recently returned from a lengthy sojourn at the Villa Trianon outside Paris and had discovered, to Elsie’s intense dismay, that they were frightfully out of step with the times. The other two were somewhat less concerned, for Anne Morgan was too stately to be interested in the dance craze, and Bessie Marbury altogether too fat. Elsie, however, could never endure being less than ten steps ahead of the rest of humanity. By some perhaps less than Divine providence, I found myself selected as the instrument by which she hoped to make up for the time lost abroad. Upon being introduced to me at Delmonico’s, Elsie came directly to the point. She would require, I was told briskly, that I come to her house to teach her the newest thing in the tango. Her schedule was very full, but she believed she could sandwich me between her masseuse at ten and an important client at eleven-thirty. I would kindly telephone her secretary promptly at nine the next morning. “I also have a secretary,” I replied. “She makes all my appointments. You’ll have to call her.” The next day her secretary, who was certainly not her mother, phoned my own Miss Parmelee. I shortly found myself committed to perfecting the energetic Miss de Wolfe in the one-step, the tango, the maxixe, and my reliable old standby, the twinkle. Mabelle had settled for the customary twenty-five dollars an hour. t o e u r o P e i n s e a r C H o f a d v e n t u r e 75 “Why didn’t you get more?” I said. “Damn it, I tried!” Mabelle said. At the time, Elsie shared with Elizabeth Marbury an exquisitely decorated house on East Fifty-fifth Street. Friends from childhood, they had shocked the innocent era by establishing themselves as New York’s first “bachelor girls” in a house on East Seventeenth Street which had once belonged to Washington Irving. It quickly became a gathering spot for fascinating people. This was in no way the result of luck, but rather of the formidable rules which Elsie laid down. She insisted that everybody should bring something to the community. “It’s very important,” she frequently used to say somewhat sententiously, “to remember that a person must always drag his own weight. You can be rich and dull . . . or poor and amusing. But whatever you are, you have to make your contribution. No one rides free; . . . it’s never morals; it’s manners that count.” It has been said of Elsie, Lady Mendl, that she prefers a witty contortionist to a dreary duke. This is unfortunately only partly true. If the duke is decorative and sufficiently ducal in demeanor, he can be as dreary as many of them are without losing his place on Elsie’s guest list. The friends had progressed a long way from the early Seventeenth Street days by the time I met them. Elsie had graduated from actress to decorator, a profession which she veritably created in America. Bessie was an extremely successful and busy literary agent, with offices in London and Paris as well as New York. Our acquaintance developed rapidly, and for years, whenever I was in New York, I had a regular date for Sunday lunch and mahjong with Bessie. She was an inspired conversationalist . She would sit in her especially designed armchair and entertain me, with a rare sense of fitness, by allowing me to talk about myself. I know nobody with whom I would rather discuss myself. Through Elsie, my circle of friends branched out in a terrifyingly social manner. Particular among them was Mrs. Laurence Keene, a leader of real society long before Cafe Society had ever been heard of, who introduced me to all the greats of the musical world. Our friendship was looked on askance in certain circles. It was, in fact, when I discovered myself referred to in Cholly Knickerbocker...