Peter Whiffle by Carl Van Vechten — Read

There is a considerable period in the life of George Borrow for which his biographers have been absolutely unable to account. To this day where Borrow spent those lost years is either unknown or untold. There is a similar period in the life of Peter Whiffle, the period including the years 1907-1913. In the summer of the former year I left him at Paris in the arms of Clara Barnes, so to speak, and I did not see him again until February, 1913. Subsequently, when I knew him better, I inquired about these phantom years but I never elicited a satisfactory reply. He answered me, to be sure, but his answer consisted of two words, I lived.

Our next meeting took place in New York, where I was a musical reporter on the New York Times, the assistant to Mr. Richard Aldrich. One night, having dropped Fania Marinoff at the theatre where she was playing, I walked south-east until I came to the Bowery. I strolled down that decaying thoroughfare, which has lost much of its ancient glory -- even the thugs and the belles of Avenue A have deserted it -- to Canal Street, where the Manhattan Bridge invites the East Side to adventure through its splendid portal, but the East Side ignores the invitation and stays at home. It is the upper West Side that accepts the invitation and regiments of motor-cars from Riverside Drive, in continuous procession, pass over the bridge. For a time I stood and watched the ugly black scarabs with their acetylene eyes crawl up the approach and disappear through the great arch and then, walking a few steps, I stopped before the Thalia Theatre, as I have stopped so many times, to admire the noble facade with its flight of steps and its tall columns, for this is one of my dream theatres. Often have I sat in the first row of the dress circle, which is really a circle, leaning over the balustrade, gazing into the pit a few feet below, and imagining the horseshoe as it might appear were it again frequented by the fashion of the town. This is a theatre, in which, and before which, it has often amused me to fancy myself a man of wealth, when my first diversion would be a complete renovation -- without any reconstruction or vandalism -- of this playhouse, and the production of some play by Shakespeare, for to me, no other theatre in New York, unless it be the Academy of Music, lends itself so readily to a production of Shakespeare as the Thalia.