Collection of Characters
For land's sake.
Lilburn never listed collecting interesting characters as a hobby but his letters and columns describe many he came upon in his hobby horse rides. A few interesting examples:
I knew a man out at Pilot Grove who had bad health and the doctor told him he must diet or he would not live long. The man said he just loved to eat and that he would just go on and enjoy food. And after he died, they say he had the most peaceful satisfied look on his face.
From an undated letter in 1932:
Dear Cousin Lillian,
I drove to Bunceton yesterday morning and picked up some more glass. And I found a table that is just rare in the possession of an old bachelor who lives alone. I aim to cultivate him. Money is no object to him. He has 55 walnut trees which he won’t sell. He showed me one for which he has been offered $200 for the main log, twelve feet long. He met me with a rifle and I wondered if he were more eccentric than I had heard. He talks way up high like a lady. He could hardly speak at first and I didn’t understand his predicament until he later explained he had been in the woods hunting and had run all the way to the house when he heard the car. He finally decided to show me his collection of arrowheads and then he showed me some furniture and we looked for glassware of which I found nothing. But he had the rare table I believe is a Duncan-Phyfe. He had a fiddle and a guitar and I coaxed him to play for me, he played a lot of things quite well. He said he “guessed he knowed 500 tunes.” He really was good and I bragged on him so much he took me down to the barn and showed me some rare old furniture. As we went, he asked me if there was anything in there I wanted and being modest I said I would like an old kettle he had, which he gave me. And then I was sorry I hadn’t chosen the day bed or the wide-bed, though he had told me his brother was half interested in these.
In South Missouri towns there are some interesting characters. At one crossroads where we asked an old man for directions to the next town he said very crisply, “turn to the left and drive like hell.” At Mount Vernon, we went to call on the principal of the high school and found her with no stockings on, old worn house shoes and a dirty dress, crying hard times due to the closing of both banks. She said times were so close around there that the school could not get anything in cash for their school activities, and at a recent debate, they passed the plate to get a silver offering for the judges for their trouble in coming and they got just fifty cents.
For Land's Sake
Sometime in 1958 he wrote his sister Anna Rose:
Rosie,
Last Tuesday a handsome gentleman with a shock of white hair came into the office, and said someone told him to come to see me, that we would have much in common: music, collection and what not. He gave me his name, said he hailed from Yonkers, N.Y., and I having recently seen Yonkers from the Hudson River boat, soon had him identifying sights I had seen there. He said his name was Mr. Land and wanted to see my house and I asked what his business was around here. He said he had married Mary Lou Carson’s daughter, the one who has aspired to become famous as an opera singer. I was busy every night but Friday, so we arranged he should come then, bringing Mary Lou and Mary if they cared to come. It turned out they didn’t so he turned up alone in the last word Ford convertible, and I took him around the country to Clark’s Chapel and past the Grandpa houses, etc., before we settled down for the evening at home. He told me secretly of trouble he had had with his wife, how she had done him last winter after she persuaded him to take her to Europe for special voice coaching. She made him hire an extra room for her because she said he snored too loud, left him one night and he had to put the police on her trail to find her in Milano.
In Yonkers, in his 17 room house, the Land’s having lived there 120 years, Mary did not like many things he loved and one day she paid $80 to have what she did not like carted away to the Salvation Army - a whole collection of books, curtains, drapes and what have you! She used his mother’s fine linen every day, had it laundered until it was wearing out...and why? Out here in Missouri at Mary Lou’s he had been using the same napkin for ten days! Mary battered the sterling ware around his house. Out here they had nothing but old 1847 Rogers, which was good enough, and at home his mother always used that for every day. And Mary insisted on this bright new convertible, making him sell his two cars, and why couldn’t she take the train to go into the city, only a twenty minute ride, but no, she must drive it and pay five or six dollars to park, and $15 to get prettied up, and then ride around bareheaded so she could be seen. This is a strain for me to keep secret.
I asked him to sing at church, and after due considration, he consented, asking to rehearse “Tenderly and Softly, Jesus is Calling” and “The Old Rugged Cross.” He had been baritone soloist at St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue in N.Y. for 17 years. He had a voice like a horn on a harbor boat and I asked him to mute it a little for Sunday morning lest the back wall of the church collapse from the vibration.
All the time he was keeping it from Mary Lou and Mary where he was visiting, and he reported that his reception when he went home was anything but cordial. He sang Sunday morning and I think was generally received with pleasure. Lillian invited him to dinner. He said he would like to come but he would have to go home first. If any dinner were in sight, he had better eat there; if not, he would come out. He came out later and reported the girls were playing some game when he came home and paid no attention to him.
For the next three hours we listened to a mixture of his marital troubles and a recital of his relationships with the high and mighty in the social world of New York, especially the great in the field of music - all the famous singers. Great names rolled from his tongue like water from a roof in a rain storm. How tired we got of it. At 4:30 he thought he had better report to the Marys and left. At 8 p.m. he came yoo hooing at the side door, wanting to know if we would put him up overnight. He had gone home; the girls were still playing their game (God knows what?) and he waited until 7:00 thinking they would move and get supper. They didn’t, so he went to the barbecue down on the highway and got his supper. By the time he got back, they were gone and the door was locked. And so could he spend the night with us?
I told him he should go back and sleep all night in the car if necessary and not give them any reason to say he had left home as they might charge him with desertion or something. He thought that good advice and at 10 o’clock he left us tired and worn out.
We had just got to sleep when there was a rap on the door - a vigorous one. I opened up and stepped out and someone who said he was Delgar and had Mr. Land in his car. Mr. Land wanted to know if we would put him up the rest of the night. There had been trouble, a row down at Mary Lou’s and they had phoned for him to come get the “old gentleman” and he didn’t want to take him to jail, and if I didn’t take him in, he would take him over to the Hotel Frederick. Then I realized it was the Sheriff of Howard County, Delgar Wells. I told him I did not want to get embroiled in this family affair, so he said he would take him to Boonville.
Next day he told me what happened. Before he left Sunday night I asked him why he had not told Mary Lou he was coming to my house, there was nothing criminal about it. Next day, he said he was jackass enough to do what I said, and the girls must have said plenty when he told them where he had been. Words must have been flung and finally his wife threw something at him. They grabbed all his clothes and threw them out in the yard and phoned the Sheriff to come and get him for he was disturbing the peace.
Ensconced at the Frederick after midnight, he walked the streets and went to Holt’s restaurant for something to eat several times, then hired a taxi and drove to Mary Lou’s farm, had the taxi stop out by the barn, then he walked to the yard “down the the dark highway, and it was God’s blessing that he wasn’t killed by those enormous trucks.” He got in the sports car and drove it without lights to the highway, then with the lights on to Boonville and parked it in front of the hotel. The next morning he looked out and there were the two Marys climbing into the car and driving off. “What a jackass I was to park it there,” said Arthur Harold Land. He engaged John Stegner to look after his interests although admitting he had let Mary put the car in her name, so he soon found out he had no claim there. He called New York and stopped payment on all checks, lest Mary draw all his money out.
Monday night I was downtown and Lillian was out in the garden when a car drove up and she saw Land go to the door and then right on in, “yoo hooing.” She first thought of hiding out but feared the car might go off leaving him so she went in. The Rev. and Mrs. Viggers of Boonville were headed for Fayette to a meeting and Mr. Land wanted to be dropped off to wait their return. Lillian told him I was downtown and he said what difference does that make? Can’t I stay here with you until he returns? And so he did. She took him in and he sat in our new soft chair that revolves, but before it revolved once he was sound asleep snoring like nobody on earth had ever snored. He had had no sleep for two days and nights. He was still sleeping when I arrived. I sat on the swing in the dark and wondered if the Viggers had let us down and gone home without picking him up. They came back after ten and Mr. Land insisted they must be shown all over the house. I was dead on my feet and thoroughly disgusted by the time they had seen the first floor.
Next day he called to know if we could come to dinner on Wednesday evening at the hotel. By now he had established contact with his banker and seemed to have his wallet refurbished with cash, and he had bought a secondhand station wagon and ordered it repainted white and delivered on Friday afternoon. I made excuses about the dinner hour and then he wanted us to come for lunch. I said there was not time between 12:00 and 1:00. Then yesterday noon he drove over and insisted we come to a dinner party he was having last night...and if we couldn’t come to dinner, could we come to a musical he was giving later. But we had had all we could take and lied until my tongue will be sore about prior engagements. Finally he asked me if I would give or sell him the unfinished portrait which Mary Lou’s grandmother had left. Lord knows how it came into my possession but I showed it to him the first day I saw him...but I told him I didn’t think he had any business with anything that had to do with the woman who had thrown him into the highway. I hope he drives off without contacting me again.
The following summer on an eight-day trip to New York, Lilburn visited Arthur Land in Yonkers. He wrote of this visit to his niece Julia.
I went up to Yonkers for a little visit with Arthur Harold Land, the man who visited here in 1958 and was thrown out in the street by his wife and her mother. I was eager to see him in his home setting, to see if it was as he had said. We arrived at 2:30 and he showed me the 22 room mansion filled with lovely paintings, silver, marble, china, crystal - to the brim but everything was old and sort of shut off and dismal.
When I awoke in the morning, fountains were playing in the yard (in my honor he said) and down below was the mighty Hudson with Palisades across the river covered with beautiful autumn foilage. He took me over Westchester County in his sport car with the top back at the push of a button. It was a beautiful trip and as he has lived there all his life he knew who was everybody’s 1st, 2nd, and 3rd wife, who had lost money, who had spent it there, who was interesting. But he drove with such nonchalance, a lot of the time he was over the line between two lanes so that oncoming traffic was always honking for him to get over. He seemed to pay no attention and the retarded vehicles behind would wait until there was a break and then whiz by with dirty looks from the drivers. Once we stopped for a red light and a big truck pulled along side and the driver said, “why don’t you get your a— back in line and quit your weaving. I’m going to have you arrested for blocking the traffic.” To which he replied, “I’ll have you arrested for being a damn nuisance.” And instead of allowing the truck driver to go on ahead, he pulled quickly forward and kept in the way, with the honking behind getting louder and louder. Arthur Harold appeared oblivious to it all. It rained hard toward the close of day and I begged him to put me on the bus or a train for my return to the city. But, “No,” he said. “Your hospitality to me deserves only that I take you back to your hotel.” And he did and I never shall forget his carefree driving down Riverside Drive and my anxiety when horns were always honking because he was over the line. He would say, “Well, I’ll have you there by 7:15 and I wondered if it would be to a hospital or the morgue. But we made it OK. The next morning when I looked in the mirror there was a curl in my hair.
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