Before starting my studies at the Art School, I had bought a copy of a recent issue of The Yale Record, The Harvard Lampoon's more boisterous rival. I read over the names of the board of editors which preceded the editorial. Percy James Orthwein, chairman, headed the list. I studied the illustrated jokes, missed their points, and, comparing the drawings with the work of the late Phil May, found them wanting. The cartoons of Alban Bernard Butler, Sheffield 1913, the man who went Mutt and Jeff one better, were a bit beyond me as yet, but if evertyping error in original - ever a. college paper contributor outclassed Mr. Hearst's most famous cartoonists it was Butler, who for three years regaled Yale, Harvard, Princeton and every other college that subscribed to The Record. His drawings were mostly inspired by the tradition of the Wooley West. His jokes were his own. His two-gun broncobusters were correct in every detail, from the buttons on their doublebreasted shirts to the brass studs on their cuffs. Butler's popularity was not limited to an undergraduate public; the cowpunchers themselves loved his picture, and The Record had many ranches in Oklahoma, his native state, on its mailing list.
Of The Record heelers of those days, Charles Andrew Merz, Rufus King and Fairfax Downey have since become writers of best sellers. Eli's most distinguished poet, Kenneth Rand, died shortly after graduation; Hudson Hawley— 'Boz' to newshounds—became the International News chief in Rome, and Frank Tuttle a successful motion picture director.
When the campus was again teeming with undergraduate life I addressed a formal letter to the chairman of The Record, enclosing some sketches that I thought were pretty good. A few days later I received an informal reply, telling me to call at No. 14 Haughton Hall, The Record office, the following Saturday at three o'clock.
As I stepped down into the Haughton Hall basement, the sanctum of The Record's symbolic owl, a stocky young man with a breezy manner emerged from the partition on my right. I handed him Orthwein's note.
"You're Orthwein?" I asked when he had read it.
"No, McConaughy, business manager," he said. "Perce will be over any time now, stick around."
He disappeared behind the frosted glass of the partition and closed the door, leaving me to examine at leisure the drawings of former Record artists with which the walls were covered.
An hour or so later a blond young man came in. He did not appear to see me, and stepped behind the partition that was the business office where he stayed for some time. I thought he must be Orthwein, though he looked pretty young to me to be editor-in-chief of such an important publication. I rubbed the bulldog toes of my shoes against my calves, straightened my shoulder-supremacy coat, which I had worn for the occasion, and fixed my tie....I caught snatches of conversation about Arrow Collar ads, sporting goods ads, ads for furniture stores and print shops, and then Orthwein came out. He had my folder of drawings in his hand and my formal letter.
"Oh, hello," he said with an engaging smile. "I'm Orthwein. In the next issue I'm running one of these drawings. They're very British but quite amusing."
I wanted to say some thing but I was too impressed to speak. I noticed that the shoulders of the suit he wore were narrow, his trousers, unlike my own pegtops cut rather tight. And his shoes did not have bulldog toes.
One of my drawings represented a couple of Americans with shoulder-supremacy suits. He held it up.
"This stuff is out of date," he said. "Padded shoulders died with Dink Stover, but the idea is good. Do it over and dress these follows like normal human beings."
I looked at him in dismay. One of the chief reasons I had come to America was to wear suits with shoulder-supremacy and pegtop trousers. Had I arrived too late?
"But," I said, "everyone at the Belle Dock wears clothes like that."
"The Belle Dock," he said. "What's that?"
"The place where I've been working," I said. "The boats from New York dock there."
"Oh," he said, and laughed a little, a nice laugh that had nothing of derision in it. "Well, you see, our drawings must look like the fellows who buy The Record. If they don't, none of them will buy it."
I felt pretty downhearted. It was easy enough to do the drawing over and dress the people like Orthwein...but my own suit! Eight weeks' savings were invested in it. Orthwein saw I was looking glum, and said:
"That's nothing to worry about. Fashions change all the time. You've only got to do the drawing over. Dress these fellows like me or—" he nodded toward the partition, "—Don McConaughy. That's no trouble?"
"No, no," I said, "but...well I like shoulders like that." He slapped me on the back.
"Forget it," he laughed. "The main thing is, the sketches are damn good."
A few talks with Mr. Lawrie had begun to convince me there was little prospect for a beginner to earn a livlihoodtyping error in original. as a sculptor. A side line was essential if he was to eat. Even a fairly successful sculptor had a hard time of it, his overhead being much higher than that of a painter. After studying current issues of Life, Judge, and Puck I came to the conclusion that if I could break into one or all of these periodicals I would make enough to become a sculptor without starving to death in the attempt. Forthwith I began mailing them drawings which they returned with disconcerting regularity, accompanied by the regretful editorial rejection slip.
All this time I had been boarding with G.B. and his wife in Fairhaven. They treated me better than I deserved and took an almost parental pride in seeing my drawings in the bi-weekly issues of The Record. But Fairhaven was quite a way from the college, and apart from spending so much time in streetcars, I felt that I would be better off living in town. Extra curriculum activities went on out of class hours and taking part in them put you in contact with everyone on the campus. G.B. felt badly at the thought of my leaving his home but he agreed that being on the spot had its advantages.
The most interesting undergraduates I had made friends with were Kenneth Rand and Hudson Hawley. Both were heeling The Record, so I often saw them. Everything Kenneth offered The Record was published, but he contributed more consistently to The 'Lit'. He was a quiet fellow, pretty much indifferent to class honors or recognition of any kind. When a publishing house wished to bring out an edition of his verse it was found that he had only the vaguest idea of what he had written. The files of The 'Lit', The 'Cow' and The Record had to be searched to collect it. He died shortly after graduation, unlike Rupert Brooke, unsung. Nevertheless he has his place among the immortals of Eli.
Hawley, later, with Alexander Woollcott, co-editor of the American expeditionary force journal, The Stars and Stripes, was the enfant terrible of the 1914 class. In appearance he suggested a mischievious spectacled cherubim. He was an excellent mimic and, curiously enough, dropped an habitual stutter during his impersonations. He supplied The Record with most of its humor, in fact, without him and Butler I think it would have been a pretty dreary sheet. The Nathan Hale verse in his rollicking Ballad of Eli Yale, which Butler illustrated, aroused such indignation among the old grads that we came near having The Record suspended by Prexy Hadly:
'They strung him up—you know the tale:
He said he'd do it gladly (no lies)
If he had nine lives; nor turned pale,
But died for God for Yale and Polis.'
When Hawley heard I was looking for a place to live he suggested my moving in on him at 94 Berkley Hall. A suggestion I accepted on his assurance that he would leave no 't-turd unstoned' to make me feel at home.
Since my first contribution to The Record Orthewein had given me a lot of encouragement. He took his chairmanship seriously and was always on the lookout for new talent. Those who in his opinion showed promise got a break. He regarded me astyping error in original - as a sort. sort of curiosity that talked dockyards slang—often incomprehensible to him—with an Irish brogue, and made drawings with a foreign atmosphere that intrigued him.
Once, on the way to the printers with him he said hello to a pretty girl. When she had passed I said:
"Who's the broad?"
"The what?" said Orthwein.
"The broad," I said.
He looked at me in a puzzled way.
"The girl you said hello to," I said,
"What did you call her?" said Orthwein.
"A broad," I said.
"What's that—Irish?" he said.
"No," I said, "American."
"New one on me," he said.
"Funny," I said, "at the docks we always call them broads."
Orthwein had a suite of three rooms in Vanderbilt Hall, lodging house of the senior class elite; and since no academic restrictions applied to me, I often visited him. His classmates came and went, observing me, listening to me with curiosity, asking questions about Ireland and the dockyards, noting my replies, my clothes—I had discarded my shoulder-supremacy suit for secondhand Brooks Brothers garments, a trifle large, but, as the Brooks model of those days had been inspired by a sack, only the class sartorial experts noticed the somewhat pendant seat of my pants and the coat collar that did not always hug my neck.
On Saturday nights I helped Orthwein make up the dummy of the forthcoming issue of The Record. My part consisting in applying the paste to the back of proofs and pasting them into a previous issue. I always pasted in as many of my own drawings as I could, and by the end of the year I had double the amount of credit space needed to make the board. Orthwein often asked my advice, which I never withheld, and which was always biased. This got to be known among Record heelers, who sought me out and made a point of cultivating my acquaintance with the object of having me exercise undue influence with Orthwein to use their drool or pictures, so that the six pages of contributed matter necessary to qualify them for election to their classboards might be obtained before the end of Junior year. Many were the ignoble drawings, the pointless jokes, thus pasted in The Record dummy, surreptitiously, towards midnight, in the presence of a drowsy editor-in-chief. But my conscience was always at ease, for the board had already passed on all drawings of which cuts had been made, and on all 'drool' setup, the great part of which was destined to be used sooner or later, anyway.
When Orthwein graduated and Butler succeeded him as chairman of The Record my Saturday nights were passed at the Colony Club in Sheffield instead of in Vanderbilt Hall. Butler dozed off regularly about 11:00 p.m., so the altruistic racket continued under his regime. One of the principal beneficiaries was destined to influence my future in a definite, though indirect, way, as will be seen later. This young campus man of the world held that extracurriculum activities offered the only worthwhile education at college. As a result, his activities were spread over an area so diversified that he never found the time to give any one of them his undivided attention. He had three pages of drool credit at The Record and needed three more to make the board. In what spare moments he could find he attended the architectural class at the Art School. When he brought me a set of six brush drawings of campus landmarks, Phelps Gateway, the Old Library, Connecticut Hall et cetera, I turned them down as unsuitable, though I admired the facility of his handling. They reminded me of the work of Nicholson, the English poster printer. After a sales talk, in which he stressed his Irish birth, I agreed to show them to Butler. We eventually ran three of them as full pages. After the third, the kicks started coming in: 'What is The Record, anyway—an architectural review?'
"Cut out the Newson stuff," Butler ordered.
But Horace Dorsey Newson already had the six pages of credit necessary to as sure his election to the 1914 board.