Someone gave a masked party in a wine cellar called “Little Europa.”
The immediate past and the impending future always merged together for Mama, and there was never any knowing what she would do next. But when an idea came to her, she took it to her heart, and made up her mind quickly. Then she acted… acted fast. She could cross a green lawn with the epic strength and purpose of the Jews coming through the Red Sea. And never spill a drop of her excitement.
She came to Papa one morning and said, “Henry, I am going to Europe.”
“Europe!” said Papa, who always felt pure women are unpractical for life on slippery surfaces.
Mama nodded. “My sister Fran is about to marry that hod-clopper she thinks she is in love with. And Gramp says that war may come any year, now that the German King has signed peace pacts with the Tzar and England. And anyway, I want Stevie to know Europe. Auf baldiges wiedersehen, Puppchen.”
Papa turned pale. “What's that?”
“German. I've been taking lessons. It means… 'See you soon, sweetheart.'”
“Poopkin? Sweetheart?” said Papa softly to himself. Then he bucked up. “But what does Fran say?”
I said, “Aunt Fran says French… she's going over to get a torso for her wedding….”
“You see how ignorant Stevie is. He means Fran will shop for her wedding gown.”
Make French, Mama,” I said.
“French, too?” said Papa.
“Oh, I just brushed up on school French. Oh, Henry, I wish you could come. The chestnut trees along the Place de la Concorde by the Ministère de la Marine, the blossoms breaking by the Musée de Jeu de Paume, the Renoirgreen leaves against the Madeleine, shading the café chairs near the rue Royale….”
Papa said, “There aren't that many chestnut trees in the world!” But Mama knew by the way he said it that she had won and we were going to Europe for the summer.
“Oh, Henry,” said Mama, kissing Papa because she knew she had skillfully brought his enthusiasm to a quick boil.
“Now, Sara… maybe you can go… but Gramp must go with you.”
“I'm a grown woman.”
“Gramp knows Europe better than a guidebook.”
Mama looked at Papa, as if she wanted to say the kind of guidebook Gramp was, was sold after dark from the inside pocket. Mama was very moral, and Gramp had once had dinner with Oscar Wilde, and even been photographed with a dancer, a shabby little Lautrec drawing in highheeled, red-button shoes.
“We're going to Germany… Gramp hates Germans.”
“Now, Sara, all he said was that Germans keep on their overcoats while visiting America, like stage detectives.”
We were to sail on a Hamburg-America liner in June, but I can't remember her name. It was a Baron something or a Baroness something, or maybe even a Graf.
Fran was very happy because Mama had said she could be married at once… as soon as the trip was over… to her freight-handler. And Mama never went back on a promise… if she remembered it. She hoped some refined Herr Direktor, or French millionaire, or Generalkonsul would fall in love with Fran and give her culture.
The boat sailed at midnight, and we all met at Gramp's house and drank a toast to a happy trip. Gramp was in form and singing a Schubert Lied, and he looked at Mama and Fran.
“Hell in a taxicab, and save me at sea! At my age, traveling with two of the most beautiful women in America.”
“I'm going, too, Gramp,” I said.
“Well, Stevie, you'll be the cool head we need to help us when we go into some dive like the church of St. Germain-des-Prés.”
“That's what I mean, Gramp,” said Mama. “You mustn't mock culture. I want Stevie to love beauty.”
“Wait until we get some Cordon Rouge '07 and a homard à l'américaine inside him.”
“Art,” said Mama, “music, and, of course, the dance.”
Gramp fluffed back his tufts of white mustache and got into his burberry and picked up his gold cane. He didn't like that crack about the dance; Mama knew all about the dancer from the Russian ballet, and it wasn't nice of her to say anything about art, music, and, of course, the dance.
“Hell and warm water,” said Gramp, “it's time we let the boat cast off….”
But of course, we couldn't leave until the Dutch cook (who was weeping at Gramp's leaving for a sea trip) had served Shad Roe Longstreet, a dish that she swore must be eaten before every sea trip… it was better than a charm. I don't know how true that was, but Gramp had eaten it every trip since the day he hired the cook, and had never had trouble with shipwreck, typhoon, or iceberg. “Damn it, I wish it were good luck at cards,” said Gramp. “The Old Bag (an old friend of his who played her cards better than Gramp on ocean liners) took six hundred dollars off me last trip. But I'll take her like the promoters took the peoples' oil wells this trip. Serve up your roe!”
And the cook did, and we ate it… one eye on the clock. It may help you on some sea trip; so here it is if you have the sea trip, the money for it, a world at peace, and shad roe….
Take a shad roe, and sauté it in two ounces of melted butter, making sure it's the proper Van Dyke brown on both sides. Move the roe to a good, hot plate, and dust with salt and pepper. To the melted butter resting in the pan add a pinch each of well-minced chive, shallot, chervil, and parsley. Cook and stir for just over a minute, and then pour the seasoned butter over the waiting shad roe.
Gramp would garnish the dish with slices of lemon and a very light dusting of nutmeg, and the cook would add some parsley just for the color scheme… it reminded her of the color of the sea. And we ate. Perhaps it was true that shad roe is good for sea travel. It was a tasty way to find out, anyway.
But even food could not keep us long. Gramp pulled out his turnip-sized watch, compared it with what he called “the sissy on the fireplace” (sometimes Aunt Fiona claimed it landed with the Mayflower mob in 1620). and said, “To the boat!”
It was a wild ride to the boat. The horsepower was not spared….
We no sooner saw the great vessel bathed in lights and the people packed like happy ants on her decks, than Aunt Fran felt seasick. Mama said it would be all right once she took her shoes off, and got to bed, and read a good book. Gramp let Mama kiss Papa and Fran kiss her young man, and then Uncle Willie and everyone else kissed Mama and Fran (including a stranger in a Vienna Habig hat and a striped silk shirt who was there to see a vaudeville act off… but got his parties mixed up).
We fought our way to the deck, and Gramp, as an old traveler, stood there smoking Dimitrinos and handing out bills to the stewards, who bowed very low and said, “Jawohl, Herr Longstrasse….”
And Mama in her excitement, as Papa's face grew sad below us, said “Schones Schwabenland” over and over again… having forgotten her German, and saying anything farewell she could think of.
Fran sank against the rail, the great siren broke up the night, and the ship stirred like something alive. A wide wedge of inky water appeared to grow between us and the land of my birth… and we were at sea!
“Zul bennah af hhhhhk!” said Aunt Fran.
Gramp said, “So she speaks German, too?”
“No,” said Mama, “she's going to cat.”
Gramp took my arm, and we walked away to the bar. “Women like to be alone at a time like this. I'll send down a stewardess to help them.”
The bar was padded in red leather, and a fringe of drunks was already wearing out its elbows on the walnut bar. A small drunk came over to Gramp and pumped his hand.
“Well, well, General, haven't seen you… haven't seen you since…?”
“That's right,” said Gramp.
“Must be about, about…?”
“All of that.”
“You, me, and, and, and…?”
“Yes, a great crowd.”
“What do you know! See you again. Small, small…?”
“Yes, it's a small world,” said Gramp, and he ordered some Veuve Cliquor sent down to the cabin and had a brandy himself, and watched the barman make a lemon crush for me.
“Well, Stevie… you're seeing the world.”
“I liked the drunken gentleman very much, Gramp.”
“Nothing like a happy drunk for good company.”
The barman, a small, low-slung man with a line of oiled hair running from ear to ear and over his paperwhite brow, shook his head.
“No… drinkin' don't py.”
“No?” said Gramp.
“Look at me… ruined me life, took me wiges and left me 'igh and dry. That's why I'm 'ere behind this bloody bar. Seein' as I can swipe it 'as cured me of drink and fightin' in pubs….”
“What's a Cockney doing on a German boat?” asked Gramp.
“Oh, hit's to keep out graft and dishonest barmen selling tickets to the Captain's tible. The square'eads used to make a fearful fight of hit. So they 'ires Henglishmen… being as we're smarter at hunderhand polite dealing, you might sy.”
Gramp winked at me. “What will it cost to put two beautiful ladies at the Captain's table?”
“Now, sir,” said the barman. “You rightly can't sell that tible like it was fish and chips. But two pounds might do hit.”
“Another brandy,” said Gramp, “and a lemon crush for my friend here.”
When we got down to Mama's and Fran's cabin, Mama was wrapping cold towels around Fran's neck and face, and Fran was praying the ship would sink.
Gramp said, “Misfortune makes people kind, once pride is gone.”
“She's dying!” said Mama.
“Can she hold anything on her stomach?” asked Gramp.
“Not even my hand,” said Aunt Fran. “I forgive you, Sara.”
There was a tap on the door, and the waiter there had a bucket of ice and two bottles of bubbling wine wrapped in linen shrouds. Gramp opened one of the bottles with the pop of a heavy cork.
“Can you get this past your New England heart?”
“Let me die…” said Fran.
“She catted,” said Mama, in despair.
“Where are the kittens?” I asked. Mama looked at me, and I knew I would hear about it later. Gramp poured the wine…. “Well, I guess there is no cure for mal de mer… and I suppose the Captain will feel very bad about this….”
“The Captain?” said Mama.
“He asked me to be sure you two ate at his table. Every trip the two most beautiful women on the ship are invited to his table.”
Fran stirred. “What?”
Gramp took two bits of cardboard from his pocket….
“I think,” said Aunt Fran, “I might be able to swallow some strained soup.”
“You'll like the Captain,” said Gramp. “I've crossed with the handsome brute before. He makes witty epigrams that ate really mistakes in French grammar.”
The Captain was a huge brute with blonde hair and red cheeks bigger than a prize-winning beet. He kissed Mama's hand and held Aunt Fran's wrist, and he said something very amusing.
Gramp sat facing the Captain. Mama and Aunt Fran (pale but game) flanked him, and some assorted international bums filled in a few other places. The sommelier (looking like the Vicar who used to hint I could either go to Sunday School or go to Hell) stood behind us rattling his chains and saying Marquis and Marquise into the hairy ears of two fat people sitting at our table. They were so fat and pink and so hidden in their own suet that I never did find out which was the Marquis and which was the Marquise… although one smoked a fine, green-veined Havana cigar.
The Captain made a speech that I didn't understand, and the only three words in it I knew were “Plato” and “Henry Ford.” What they were doing in the speech I never found out.
The band began to play something frayed at the edges, and the Captain took another bow and kissed Mama's hand again. Mama felt this was the way they acted in Europe, but after that she wore gloves.
“American music,” said the Captain to Aunt Fran, while fumbling for her hand. “Bunnies Hug.”
Fran was thinking of some answer that would set the German nation back on its heels (Aunt Fran had figured out the Germans years ago, before they raped Europe for the tenth time and tried to peddle their Kultur in Moscowrushing Panzers), but as Aunt Fran was about to defend hugging bunnies, the headwaiter brought over a platter called a “Dish of Nuns.” That's what Gramp's old notebook terms it, and he gave the details of its tailoring; so he must be right. It was a chicken dish.
Here is the way Gramp found out how to make it. Cut two chickens into pieces, and sauté them in a casserole in lots of butter. When the chicken is golden and happy, add some whole small onions, salt, pepper, and a mixture sold as “chicken spices.” Cook under a tight cover for two hours in a very slow oven. Then add a pint of cream, and a pound of button mushrooms which have been sautéed. Stir with skill over hot water for another twenty minutes.
Pour a half pint of Sherry over some slices of heated ham sautéed in butter. Drain off the Sherry, and pour it over the chickens after you have beaten up four egg yolks with the liquid. Build a fence of ham around the dish, and serve with a very good Madeira.
We all ate our Dish of Nuns… all except Aunt Fran, who was really not in the mood to look food in the eye. The Captain could see something was bothering her; so he signaled the band to play again “the Amerikaner music.” The German idea of pre-war jazz was as bad as were their ideas on civilization, and it only made Aunt Fran sicker.
The Captain decided to repeat his little joke about the music.
“American music. Bunnies Hug.”
“Do they?” said Aunt Fran.
“Ragtime music. Sie irren sich. Bunnies Hug is a native American dance. Will you have some echten Russischen caviar?”
Aunt Fran stood up and shouted, “I forgive you, Sara!” and ran for her cabin. The sight of caviar had broken her stomach's back….
“Schön, schön,” said the Captain to the Marquis and Marquise. One of them shook cigar ash off on a passing waiter.
And that was how we spent the first night at sea. I remember every word of it, every light and every motion, but the next few days are a blank in my memory. And then I begin to remember the last day at sea, when Ireland was a plate of green spinach in a blue bowl of soup on our left. An author fell in love with Mama and Fran. He is forgotten now, but in his day you couldn't pick up a popular novel without finding his name on it… anyway, it seemed like that.
The Author, smoking a pipe bigger than a small rose, came up on deck when Aunt Fran had recovered somewhat and was only blue under her eyes. She was holding a book someone had handed her.
The Author came over to Mama and Aunt Fran and bowed until his autographing pen almost dropped on the deck.
“I beg pardon. I see you are reading one of my novels.”
Aunt Fran looked up weakly. “Good morning. Gene Stratton Porter.”
“Oh, sorry… thought it was one of mine. I'm — —” (no use giving his name… he may have a wife or two still alive).
“It will be our secret,” said Aunt Fran.
“Have you read my new novel, Sue's Scruples and the Prince?”
Mama said, taking part in the talk for the first time, “We do not allow your books in the house.”
“Wonderful,” said the Author, sitting down and blowing pipe smoke in my face. “And what does the little man read?”
“Tolstoy,” I said. “I'm half-way to Moscow with Napoleon.”
“Oh, one of those filthy Slavs.”
“Go away,” said Aunt Fran. “I'm dying.”
“We shall be in port by morning. April now that England's there….”
I said, “England now that April's there.”
“Thank you, my little tike…. Anyway, you ladies will recover and be presented at court, I'm sure.”
“No,” said Mama, “in our family we don't bow to kings.”
“May I join you at tea?” said the Author. “I'm writing a new novel, and the two main people will be real, honest American beauties who have no use for the fuss and pomp of European royal life or titles.”
But why go on? It's the lowest, stalest trick an author can use on women. After that tea Mama and Aunt Fran were always with the Author… he was going to put them in a book!
The ship sailed on into the gathering darkness. The shores of England beat someplace beyond the scribble of night and the weaving skeins of flashing lights, and morning was to see us on the English shore and on a boat train for London.
That night we did the foolish things one does on a ship the last night out. We exchanged addresses with people we would never see again. We ate too much of the good food. We caught the steward stealing our cigarettes, and the people in the next cabin kissing strangers behind the lifeboat; and we gave a concert at which I stood up and recited “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” “So well you could hear the horse running,” Aunt Fran told the Author. After that the vaudeville act did a wire-walking act
It was very easy to see that the Author was mad about Mama and Aunt Fran. The poor dope was like a kid between two bowls of whipped cream. He was, to quote Gramp, “Raide et très audacieux.”
“Une vieille rengaine,” he added in the card room, where he was playing draw poker with a fat old bag who owned oil wells in California and part of a railroad. She had lived in Europe for fifty years and spoke better French than Victor Hugo….
She said, “I got a full house. La feuille a l'envers.”
“Your hand,” said Gramp. “More chips, Stevie. I hate authors. This one is un taureau triste.”
“What have you got?”
Gramp showed his aces… and Mama came into the card room and looked at Gramp, and Gramp saw she had been weeping.
“What's the matter. Your author fall overside?”
“Gramp, I'm worried over Fran. I'm a married woman who can take care of herself… but Fran is young and innocent, and he says he's coming to London with us. He wants to show us Hogarth.”
“He'll have to dig him up… been dead a few hundred years,” said The Fat Old Bag, mixing the deck with skill.
“Gramp, you must scare him off…. He's got Aunt Fran on the boat deck and he's telling her he can't let either one of us go… it will kill him if he can't make up his mind soon….”
The Old Bag said, “How about a horsewhip, Longstreet?”
Gramp shook his head. “In affaires de coeur whips are no good. Sara, you forget this until I finish this game… I'll think of something.”
I think the Old Bag took Gramp for three hundred dollars… but even I could see Gramp's mind was not on his game. I must explain that in those days it was pretty dreadful for a young girl and a married woman to be trailed over Europe by a man both married and a writer of lurid love tales. If you don't understand this, then the whole thing looks silly.
If Papa or Aunt Fiona back home ever heard of this, it would be dreadful.
I remember going to sleep. Gramp and I shared a mouse-nest in heavy gold and rubbed fumed oak. I remember going to bed, and the sea splashing against the steel skin of the ship, and Gramp sitting in his bunk smoking long black stogies and thinking hard. Just before I dozed off I heard him say, “By the left wheel of Buddha, I think I know how to fix that author so he'll not autograph a copy of his books for a woman for a year!”
What, Gramp?” I said, and slept until morning….
Morning came, bright and yellow with fog. In England the weather is always clearing, or getting worse… it is almost never nice… but then, I may be wrong. The boat went slowly, and trunks were coming up from the hell of the ship's belly, and everyone was standing on deck brushing off stewards gathering to collect their honey.
Gramp was in the red leather bar… in a private corner, a booth the Cockney barman had reserved for him. I went forward and found the Author breathing down Mama's neck and holding Fran's hand… and I said could he step into the bar a minute.
Gramp rose and bowed the Author into the booth, and he poured him a Three Star brandy. And he said, “Well, it's lucky we ran across you.”
“Oh, really?”… said the Author.
“I'm a broad-minded man… very broad-minded… and I want to get away to Paris alone to broaden still more. Stevie, ask the barman for those sweet crackers.”
When I got back, Gramp was looking at the Author with the love of a pawn broker for his windowful of fiddles.
“Yes, you're the man for it. Mind, unlike most Americans you're no fool… an artist, a creative artist like you, has a right to happiness in his own way….”
“Well, now.”
“We'll wink at convention. You take these two charming ladies to Italy. I'll fix up some cock-and-bull story for your publisher… gathering material.”
“Oh, my publisher must not… I mean!”
“Now, don't worry… I want you three to be happy. Just watch Fran…. She's a—well, why not be frank? We're taking her to Europe because they caught her stealing silk stockings at Wanamaker's. It's an illness of hers. No harm in it… just pay for the stuff and go on as if nothing had happened. After all, she is beautiful, isn't she?”
“Yes, but!!”
“Just don't get arrested, since the papers will smear it wide and handsome. And another thing. Don't spend too much money on them. Frankly…” Gramp looked around… “frankly, keep a whip hand on them. They'll adore you for it. If they step out of bounds”… Gramp lit a fresh stogie and looked at the floor… “well, between us, just slap them around a little—do you a world of good—keep you fit. When do you start for Italy with them, you lucky dog?”
A great many years have passed since then. The Author is deader than his books. Mama's European trip is a set of scrapbooks and old postal cards. The ship is long since sunk. Fran, Mama, Gramp… well, it was long ago… but if I live to be as old as Bernard Shaw would like to be, I shall never forget the Author standing up as if shot to his feet by powerful springs. He looked the most shocked man in the world.
“You foul, filthy-minded old man! How can you talk this way about such things?… to me, a married man with two children… a son at Yale, a daughter at Sarah Lawrence…. How can you suggest… how can you!”
Gramp reached for the brandy. “I gather your answer is no.”
The Author threw his pride around his shoulders like a cape and went out, puffing like a blowfish on shore. Overhead the great siren broke and blew, and everyone said, “England!”
Mama was in the card room putting spears into her hat before a dulled Venetian mirror. Aunt Fran was on deck breathing in the land smell….
Gramp gathered the two ladies in his arms. “There it is… the England of vegetarian cookery, where they boil their potatoes to death in living steam, and their soups are tepid seas of dead animal life. But we shall see Simpson's, where the beef is rare.”
“And,” said Mama, “I want Stevie to see the interior of St. Magnus the Martyr near London Bridge….”
“And,” said Aunt Fran, “that shop we heard of at Savile Row, where the hand-made lace comes from….”
“Hell in a hack!” said Gramp. “I want to see the Tate Gallery again, and Stevie, wait until I dig up those Turner water colors, and….”
“Oh, dear!” said Mama… “here comes the Author!”
The Author, wearing a Sherlock Holmes cap and followed by stewards under pig-skin-clad baggage, passed us by without a bow.
Gramp said to him:
“As for myself, I walk abroad of nights, And kill sick people groaning under walls. Sometimes I go And poison wells!”
The Author did not lift his head.
Mama said, “How rude…! But there, we're in… land!”
Aunt Fran inhaled and closed her eyes, and took Mama's hand at the idea of standing soon on dry, firm land. “Sara, I forgive you!”