ANNE WARWICK BOOKS BY ANNE WARWICK COMPENSATION $1.30 net THE UNKNOWN WOMAN $1.30 net JOHN LANE COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Underwood & Underwood AN AMERICAN ALLEGORY: FIVE HUNDRED FEET ABOVE HIS SKYSCRAPER, AND STILL CLIMBING! THE MECCAS OF THE WORLD THE PLAY OF MODERN LIFE IN NEW YORK, PARIS, VIENNA, MADRID AND LONDON BY ANNE WARWICK AUTHOR OF “THE UNKNOWN WOMAN,” “COMPENSATION,” ETC. NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXIII Copyright, 1913, by JOHN LANE COMPANY TO MY FATHER...

A play is a play in so much as it furnishes a fragment of actual life. Being only a fragment, and thus literally torn out of the mass of life, it is bound to be sketchy; to a certain extent even superficial. Particularly is this the case where the scene shifts between five places radically different in elements and ideals. The author can only present the (to her) most impressive aspects of the several pictures, trusting to her sincerity to bridge the gaps her enforced brevity must create. And fi

Thanks to the promoters of opéra bouffe we are accustomed as a universe to screw our eye to a single peep-hole in the curtain that conceals a nation, and innocently to accept what we see therefrom as typical of the entire people. Thus England is generally supposed to be inhabited by a blond youth with a top-hat on the back of his head, and a large boutonnière overwhelming his morning-coat. He carries a loud stick, and says “Ah,” and is invariably strolling along Piccadilly. In France, the youth

Here are the two prime motives waging war in the American drama of today. Time is money; whether for the American it is to mean anything more is still a question. Meanwhile every time-saving convenience that can be invented is put at his disposal, be he labouring man or governor of a state. And, as we have seen in the case of the sky-scraper, little or no heed is paid to the form of finish of the invention; its beauty is its practicability for immediate and exhaustive use. Take that most useful

When one ponders what the New Yorker in his leisure hours most enjoys, one answers without hesitation: feeding. The word is not elegant, but neither is the act, as one sees it in process at the mammoth restaurants. Far heavier and more prolonged than mere eating and drinking is this serious cult of food on the part of the average Manhattanite. It has even led to the forming of a distinct “set,” christened by some satirical outsider: “Lobster Society.” Here are met the moneyed plutocrat and his e

There is no woman in modern times of whom so much has been written, so little said, as of the American woman. Essayists have echoed one another in pronouncing her the handsomest, the best dressed, the most virtuous, and altogether the most attractive woman the world round. Psychologists have let her carefully alone; she is not a simple problem to expound. She is, however, a most interesting one, and I have not the courage to slight her with the usual cursory remarks on eyes, hair, and figure. Sh

Of all the acts which America has in solution, marriage is as yet the most unsatisfactory, the least organized. It is easy to dismiss it with a vague wave of the hand, and the slighting “Oh, yes—the divorce evil.” But really to understand the problem, with all its complex difficulties, one must go a great deal further—into the thought and simple animal feeling of the people who harbour the divorce evil. Physiologically speaking, Americans are made up of nerves; psychologically they are made up o

Out of the turmoil and struggling confusion of rehearsal, to gaze on the finished performance of the great artiste ! For in Paris we are before the curtain, not behind it; and few foreigners, though they may adopt the city for their own, and lovingly study it for many years, are granted more than an occasional rare glimpse of its personality without the stage between. From that safe distance, Paris coquets with you, rails at you, laughs and weeps for you; but first she has handed you a programme

Sight-seeing in Paris must be like looking at the Venus of Milo on a roll of cinematograph films—an experience too harrowing to be remembered. I am sure it is the better part of discretion to forswear Baedeker, and without system just to “poke round.” Thus one catches the artists, in the multiform moods of their life, as ordinary beings; and stumbles across historic wonders enough into the bargain. Really to take Paris unawares, one must get up in the morning before she does, and slip out into t

Whichever it is, we must be back in time for tea at one of the fashionable “ fiv’ o’clocks ”; for, though many ladies who buy their clothes in Paris do not know it, looking at grandes dames is vastly different from looking at mannequins or the demi-monde; and the French grande dame is at her best at the tea hour. Someone has said, with truth, that the American woman is the best-dressed in the morning, the Englishwoman the best-dressed at night; but that the Parisienne triumphs over both in the g

To see Vienna properly, one should be eighteen, and a young person of good looks and discretion. Patsy was all this, and I, being Patsy’s uncle, was allowed my first peep at the jolliest of cities through her lunettes de rose . It was a bleak, grey morning in January—with the mercury at several degrees below zero—when we rattled through the quiet streets to our hotel. “Ugh!” said Patsy, some three minutes after we had left the station, “what a horrid dreary place!” I suggested deprecatingly that

Not many days after our establishment in the Carnival City, Patsy had her first experience with the smart “masher” and his unique little game. I being by no means bred to chaperoning, and in all respects, besides, immorally modern, allowed the young lady to go round the corner to a sweet-shop unaccompanied. She came back with a high colour instead of caramels, and—no, there is no way of softening it—she was giggling. Patsy never giggles unless something scandalous has happened. “What’s the matte

Between officers’ cotillons and opera, thés dansants and military concerts at the Stadt Park, Patsy sandwiched conscientious layers of sight-seeing. I am not of those who follow Baedeker (even in a shame-faced brown linen cover), but I dutifully accompanied her to the gallery and the royal stables, and to worship before Maria Theresa’s emeralds in the Treasury. At the Rathaus I balked—nothing except rice pudding is as depressing to me as a town-hall; when it came to the Natural History Museum I

In spirit, as in distance, it is a far cry from the childlike gaiety and extravagance of Vienna to the gloom and haughty poverty of Madrid. Gloomy in its psychic rather than its physical aspects is this city of the plain, for while the sun scorches in summer and the wind chills in winter, thanks to the quite modern architecture of New Madrid, there is ample light and space all the year round. Any Spanish history will tell you that Charles V chose this place for his capital because the climate wa

Pan y toros! The old “Bread and the circus” of the Romans, the mediæval and modern “Bread and the bulls!” of Spain. One feels that the dance should have been worked in, really to make this cry of the people complete. For in the bullfight and the ancient national dances we have the very soul of Spain. Progressive Spaniards like to think the corrida de toros is gradually dying out; many, many people in Madrid, they tell you, would not think of attending one. This is true, though generally the moti

Twenty-eight years ago Alfonso XII died, leaving a consort whom the Spanish people regarded with suspicion, if not with actual dislike. She was Maria Christina of Austria, the second wife of the king; and six months after his death her son, Alfonso XIII, was born. Sullenly Spain submitted to the long regency of a “foreigner”; and Maria Christina set about the desperate business of saving her son to manhood. From the first he was an ailing, sickly child, and his mother had to fight for him in hea

“The salient trait of the Spanish character,” says Taine, “is a lack of the sense of the practical.” For want of it, Ferdinand and Isabella themselves—the greatest rulers Spain ever had—drove the Moors and the Jews out of the country; and laid the cornerstone of its ruin. Far from realizing they were expelling by the hundred thousand their most wealthy and intelligent subjects, the Catholic sovereigns saw only the immediate religious triumph; the immediate financial gain of confiscating the esta

Underwood & Underwood “THE RESTFUL SWEEP OF PARKS”...

Coming into London from Paris or New York, or even from Madrid, is like alighting from a brilliant panoramic railway onto solid, unpretentious mother earth. The massive bulk of bridges, the serene stateliness of ancient towers and spires, the restful green sweep of park—unbroken by flower-beds or too many trees; the quiet leisure of the Mall, and the sedate brown palace overlooking it: all is tranquil, dignified, soothing. One leans against the cushions of one’s beautifully luxurious taxi, and s

says Pope, who himself was hopelessly immoral in the manufacture of couplets. And what two men ever agreed on morality, anyhow? The personal equation is never more prominent than in the expression of the “individual’s views,” as nowadays ethics are dubbed. One may fancy oneself the most catholic of judges, yet one constantly betrays the hereditary prejudices that can be modified but never quite cast off. I was recently with an Englishman at an outdoor variety theatre in Madrid. We sat restively