Babbitt

S >> Sinclair Lewis >> Babbitt


In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt house: It was not
a home.


II

Often of a morning Babbitt came bouncing and jesting in to breakfast.
But things were mysteriously awry to-day. As he pontifically tread the
upper hall he looked into Verona's bedroom and protested, "What's the
use of giving the family a high-class house when they don't appreciate
it and tend to business and get down to brass tacks?"

He marched upon them: Verona, a dumpy brown-haired girl of twenty-two,
just out of Bryn Mawr, given to solicitudes about duty and sex and
God and the unconquerable bagginess of the gray sports-suit she was now
wearing. Ted--Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt--a decorative boy of seventeen.
Tinka--Katherine--still a baby at ten, with radiant red hair and a
thin skin which hinted of too much candy and too many ice cream sodas.
Babbitt did not show his vague irritation as he tramped in. He really
disliked being a family tyrant, and his nagging was as meaningless as it
was frequent. He shouted at Tinka, "Well, kittiedoolie!" It was the only
pet name in his vocabulary, except the "dear" and "hon." with which he
recognized his wife, and he flung it at Tinka every morning.

He gulped a cup of coffee in the hope of pacifying his stomach and his
soul. His stomach ceased to feel as though it did not belong to him,
but Verona began to be conscientious and annoying, and abruptly there
returned to Babbitt the doubts regarding life and families and business
which had clawed at him when his dream-life and the slim fairy girl had
fled.

Verona had for six months been filing-clerk at the Gruensberg Leather
Company offices, with a prospect of becoming secretary to Mr. Gruensberg
and thus, as Babbitt defined it, "getting some good out of your
expensive college education till you're ready to marry and settle down."

But now said Verona: "Father! I was talking to a classmate of mine
that's working for the Associated Charities--oh, Dad, there's the
sweetest little babies that come to the milk-station there!--and I feel
as though I ought to be doing something worth while like that."

"What do you mean 'worth while'? If you get to be Gruensberg's
secretary--and maybe you would, if you kept up your shorthand and didn't
go sneaking off to concerts and talkfests every evening--I guess you'll
find thirty-five or forty bones a week worth while!"

"I know, but--oh, I want to--contribute--I wish I were working in a
settlement-house. I wonder if I could get one of the department-stores
to let me put in a welfare-department with a nice rest-room and chintzes
and wicker chairs and so on and so forth. Or I could--"

"Now you look here! The first thing you got to understand is that all
this uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothing
in God's world but the entering wedge for socialism. The sooner a man
learns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn't expect a lot of free
grub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his
kids unless he earns 'em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job and
produce--produce--produce! That's what the country needs, and not all
this fancy stuff that just enfeebles the will-power of the working man
and gives his kids a lot of notions above their class. And you--if you'd
tend to business instead of fooling and fussing--All the time! When I
was a young man I made up my mind what I wanted to do, and stuck to it
through thick and thin, and that's why I'm where I am to-day, and--Myra!
What do you let the girl chop the toast up into these dinky little
chunks for? Can't get your fist onto 'em. Half cold, anyway!"

Ted Babbitt, junior in the great East Side High School, had been making
hiccup-like sounds of interruption. He blurted now, "Say, Rone, you
going to--"

Verona whirled. "Ted! Will you kindly not interrupt us when we're
talking about serious matters!"

"Aw punk," said Ted judicially. "Ever since somebody slipped up and let
you out of college, Ammonia, you been pulling these nut conversations
about what-nots and so-on-and-so-forths. Are you going to--I want to use
the car tonight."

Babbitt snorted, "Oh, you do! May want it myself!" Verona protested,
"Oh, you do, Mr. Smarty! I'm going to take it myself!" Tinka wailed,
"Oh, papa, you said maybe you'd drive us down to Rosedale!" and Mrs.
Babbitt, "Careful, Tinka, your sleeve is in the butter." They glared,
and Verona hurled, "Ted, you're a perfect pig about the car!"

"Course you're not! Not a-tall!" Ted could be maddeningly bland. "You
just want to grab it off, right after dinner, and leave it in front of
some skirt's house all evening while you sit and gas about lite'ature
and the highbrows you're going to marry--if they only propose!"

"Well, Dad oughtn't to EVER let you have it! You and those beastly Jones
boys drive like maniacs. The idea of your taking the turn on Chautauqua
Place at forty miles an hour!"

"Aw, where do you get that stuff! You're so darn scared of the car that
you drive up-hill with the emergency brake on!"

"I do not! And you--Always talking about how much you know about motors,
and Eunice Littlefield told me you said the battery fed the generator!"

"You--why, my good woman, you don't know a generator from a
differential." Not unreasonably was Ted lofty with her. He was a natural
mechanic, a maker and tinkerer of machines; he lisped in blueprints for
the blueprints came.

"That'll do now!" Babbitt flung in mechanically, as he lighted the
gloriously satisfying first cigar of the day and tasted the exhilarating
drug of the Advocate-Times headlines.

Ted negotiated: "Gee, honest, Rone, I don't want to take the old boat,
but I promised couple o' girls in my class I'd drive 'em down to
the rehearsal of the school chorus, and, gee, I don't want to, but a
gentleman's got to keep his social engagements."

"Well, upon my word! You and your social engagements! In high school!"

"Oh, ain't we select since we went to that hen college! Let me tell you
there isn't a private school in the state that's got as swell a bunch as
we got in Gamma Digamma this year. There's two fellows that their dads
are millionaires. Say, gee, I ought to have a car of my own, like lots
of the fellows." Babbitt almost rose. "A car of your own! Don't you want
a yacht, and a house and lot? That pretty nearly takes the cake! A boy
that can't pass his Latin examinations, like any other boy ought to, and
he expects me to give him a motor-car, and I suppose a chauffeur, and an
areoplane maybe, as a reward for the hard work he puts in going to the
movies with Eunice Littlefield! Well, when you see me giving you--"

Somewhat later, after diplomacies, Ted persuaded Verona to admit that
she was merely going to the Armory, that evening, to see the dog and
cat show. She was then, Ted planned, to park the car in front of the
candy-store across from the Armory and he would pick it up. There were
masterly arrangements regarding leaving the key, and having the gasoline
tank filled; and passionately, devotees of the Great God Motor, they
hymned the patch on the spare inner-tube, and the lost jack-handle.


Their truce dissolving, Ted observed that her friends were "a scream of
a bunch-stuck-up gabby four-flushers." His friends, she indicated,
were "disgusting imitation sports, and horrid little shrieking ignorant
girls." Further: "It's disgusting of you to smoke cigarettes, and so on
and so forth, and those clothes you've got on this morning, they're too
utterly ridiculous--honestly, simply disgusting."

Ted balanced over to the low beveled mirror in the buffet, regarded his
charms, and smirked. His suit, the latest thing in Old Eli Togs, was
skin-tight, with skimpy trousers to the tops of his glaring tan boots, a
chorus-man waistline, pattern of an agitated check, and across the back
a belt which belted nothing. His scarf was an enormous black silk wad.
His flaxen hair was ice-smooth, pasted back without parting. When he
went to school he would add a cap with a long vizor like a shovel-blade.
Proudest of all was his waistcoat, saved for, begged for, plotted for;
a real Fancy Vest of fawn with polka dots of a decayed red, the points
astoundingly long. On the lower edge of it he wore a high-school button,
a class button, and a fraternity pin.

And none of it mattered. He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes
(which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was not
over-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: "Yes, I
guess we're pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess our
new necktie is some smear!"

Babbitt barked: "It is! And while you're admiring yourself, let me tell
you it might add to your manly beauty if you wiped some of that egg off
your mouth!"

Verona giggled, momentary victor in the greatest of Great Wars, which
is the family war. Ted looked at her hopelessly, then shrieked at Tinka:
"For the love o' Pete, quit pouring the whole sugar bowl on your corn
flakes!"

When Verona and Ted were gone and Tinka upstairs, Babbitt groaned to his
wife: "Nice family, I must say! I don't pretend to be any baa-lamb, and
maybe I'm a little cross-grained at breakfast sometimes, but the way
they go on jab-jab-jabbering, I simply can't stand it. I swear, I feel
like going off some place where I can get a little peace. I do think
after a man's spent his lifetime trying to give his kids a chance and
a decent education, it's pretty discouraging to hear them all the time
scrapping like a bunch of hyenas and never--and never--Curious; here
in the paper it says--Never silent for one mom--Seen the morning paper
yet?"

"No, dear." In twenty-three years of married life, Mrs. Babbitt had seen
the paper before her husband just sixty-seven times.

"Lots of news. Terrible big tornado in the South. Hard luck, all right.
But this, say, this is corking! Beginning of the end for those fellows!
New York Assembly has passed some bills that ought to completely outlaw
the socialists! And there's an elevator-runners' strike in New York and
a lot of college boys are taking their places. That's the stuff! And
a mass-meeting in Birmingham's demanded that this Mick agitator, this
fellow De Valera, be deported. Dead right, by golly! All these agitators
paid with German gold anyway. And we got no business interfering with
the Irish or any other foreign government. Keep our hands strictly off.
And there's another well-authenticated rumor from Russia that Lenin is
dead. That's fine. It's beyond me why we don't just step in there and
kick those Bolshevik cusses out."

"That's so," said Mrs. Babbitt.

"And it says here a fellow was inaugurated mayor in overalls--a
preacher, too! What do you think of that!"

"Humph! Well!"

He searched for an attitude, but neither as a Republican, a
Presbyterian, an Elk, nor a real-estate broker did he have any doctrine
about preacher-mayors laid down for him, so he grunted and went on. She
looked sympathetic and did not hear a word. Later she would read the
headlines, the society columns, and the department-store advertisements.

"What do you know about this! Charley McKelvey still doing the sassiety
stunt as heavy as ever. Here's what that gushy woman reporter says about
last night:"


Never is Society with the big, big S more flattered than when they are
bidden to partake of good cheer at the distinguished and hospitable
residence of Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. McKelvey as they were last night.
Set in its spacious lawns and landscaping, one of the notable sights
crowning Royal Ridge, but merry and homelike despite its mighty stone
walls and its vast rooms famed for their decoration, their home was
thrown open last night for a dance in honor of Mrs. McKelvey's notable
guest, Miss J. Sneeth of Washington. The wide hall is so generous in
its proportions that it made a perfect ballroom, its hardwood floor
reflecting the charming pageant above its polished surface. Even
the delights of dancing paled before the alluring opportunities for
tete-a-tetes that invited the soul to loaf in the long library before
the baronial fireplace, or in the drawing-room with its deep comfy
armchairs, its shaded lamps just made for a sly whisper of pretty
nothings all a deux; or even in the billiard room where one could take
a cue and show a prowess at still another game than that sponsored by
Cupid and Terpsichore.


There was more, a great deal more, in the best urban journalistic
style of Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, the popular society editor of the
Advocate-Times. But Babbitt could not abide it. He grunted. He wrinkled
the newspaper. He protested: "Can you beat it! I'm willing to hand a lot
of credit to Charley McKelvey. When we were in college together, he was
just as hard up as any of us, and he's made a million good bucks out
of contracting and hasn't been any dishonester or bought any more city
councils than was necessary. And that's a good house of his--though it
ain't any 'mighty stone walls' and it ain't worth the ninety thousand
it cost him. But when it comes to talking as though Charley McKelvey
and all that booze-hoisting set of his are any blooming bunch of of, of
Vanderbilts, why, it makes me tired!"

Timidly from Mrs. Babbitt: "I would like to see the inside of their
house though. It must be lovely. I've never been inside."

"Well, I have! Lots of--couple of times. To see Chaz about business
deals, in the evening. It's not so much. I wouldn't WANT to go there to
dinner with that gang of, of high-binders. And I'll bet I make a whole
lot more money than some of those tin-horns that spend all they got on
dress-suits and haven't got a decent suit of underwear to their name!
Hey! What do you think of this!"

Mrs. Babbitt was strangely unmoved by the tidings from the Real Estate
and Building column of the Advocate-Times:

Ashtabula Street, 496--J. K. Dawson to
Thomas Mullally, April 17, 15.7 X 112.2,
mtg. $4000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nom

And this morning Babbitt was too disquieted to entertain her with items
from Mechanics' Liens, Mortgages Recorded, and Contracts Awarded. He
rose. As he looked at her his eyebrows seemed shaggier than usual.
Suddenly:

"Yes, maybe--Kind of shame to not keep in touch with folks like the
McKelveys. We might try inviting them to dinner, some evening. Oh,
thunder, let's not waste our good time thinking about 'em! Our little
bunch has a lot liver times than all those plutes. Just compare a real
human like you with these neurotic birds like Lucile McKelvey--all
highbrow talk and dressed up like a plush horse! You're a great old
girl, hon.!"

He covered his betrayal of softness with a complaining: "Say, don't let
Tinka go and eat any more of that poison nutfudge. For Heaven's sake,
try to keep her from ruining her digestion. I tell you, most folks don't
appreciate how important it is to have a good digestion and regular
habits. Be back 'bout usual time, I guess."

He kissed her--he didn't quite kiss her--he laid unmoving lips against
her unflushing cheek. He hurried out to the garage, muttering: "Lord,
what a family! And now Myra is going to get pathetic on me because we
don't train with this millionaire outfit. Oh, Lord, sometimes I'd like
to quit the whole game. And the office worry and detail just as bad. And
I act cranky and--I don't mean to, but I get--So darn tired!"




CHAPTER III

To George F. Babbitt, as to most prosperous citizens of Zenith, his
motor car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism. The office was his
pirate ship but the car his perilous excursion ashore.

Among the tremendous crises of each day none was more dramatic than
starting the engine. It was slow on cold mornings; there was the long,
anxious whirr of the starter; and sometimes he had to drip ether into
the cocks of the cylinders, which was so very interesting that at lunch
he would chronicle it drop by drop, and orally calculate how much each
drop had cost him.

This morning he was darkly prepared to find something wrong, and he felt
belittled when the mixture exploded sweet and strong, and the car didn't
even brush the door-jamb, gouged and splintery with many bruisings by
fenders, as he backed out of the garage. He was confused. He shouted
"Morning!" to Sam Doppelbrau with more cordiality than he had intended.

Babbitt's green and white Dutch Colonial house was one of three in that
block on Chatham Road. To the left of it was the residence of Mr. Samuel
Doppelbrau, secretary of an excellent firm of bathroom-fixture jobbers.
His was a comfortable house with no architectural manners whatever; a
large wooden box with a squat tower, a broad porch, and glossy paint
yellow as a yolk. Babbitt disapproved of Mr. and Mrs. Doppelbrau as
"Bohemian." From their house came midnight music and obscene laughter;
there were neighborhood rumors of bootlegged whisky and fast motor
rides. They furnished Babbitt with many happy evenings of discussion,
during which he announced firmly, "I'm not strait-laced, and I don't
mind seeing a fellow throw in a drink once in a while, but when it comes
to deliberately trying to get away with a lot of hell-raising all the
while like the Doppelbraus do, it's too rich for my blood!"

On the other side of Babbitt lived Howard Littlefield, Ph.D., in a
strictly modern house whereof the lower part was dark red tapestry
brick, with a leaded oriel, the upper part of pale stucco like spattered
clay, and the roof red-tiled. Littlefield was the Great Scholar of the
neighborhood; the authority on everything in the world except babies,
cooking, and motors. He was a Bachelor of Arts of Blodgett College,
and a Doctor of Philosophy in economics of Yale. He was the
employment-manager and publicity-counsel of the Zenith Street Traction
Company. He could, on ten hours' notice, appear before the board of
aldermen or the state legislature and prove, absolutely, with figures
all in rows and with precedents from Poland and New Zealand, that the
street-car company loved the Public and yearned over its employees;
that all its stock was owned by Widows and Orphans; and that whatever it
desired to do would benefit property-owners by increasing rental values,
and help the poor by lowering rents. All his acquaintances turned
to Littlefield when they desired to know the date of the battle of
Saragossa, the definition of the word "sabotage," the future of the
German mark, the translation of "hinc illae lachrimae," or the number of
products of coal tar. He awed Babbitt by confessing that he often sat up
till midnight reading the figures and footnotes in Government reports,
or skimming (with amusement at the author's mistakes) the latest volumes
of chemistry, archeology, and ichthyology.

But Littlefield's great value was as a spiritual example. Despite
his strange learnings he was as strict a Presbyterian and as firm a
Republican as George F. Babbitt. He confirmed the business men in the
faith. Where they knew only by passionate instinct that their system of
industry and manners was perfect, Dr. Howard Littlefield proved it
to them, out of history, economics, and the confessions of reformed
radicals.

Babbitt had a good deal of honest pride in being the neighbor of such a
savant, and in Ted's intimacy with Eunice Littlefield. At sixteen
Eunice was interested in no statistics save those regarding the ages
and salaries of motion-picture stars, but--as Babbitt definitively put
it--"she was her father's daughter."

The difference between a light man like Sam Doppelbrau and a really fine
character like Littlefield was revealed in their appearances. Doppelbrau
was disturbingly young for a man of forty-eight. He wore his derby on
the back of his head, and his red face was wrinkled with meaningless
laughter. But Littlefield was old for a man of forty-two. He was tall,
broad, thick; his gold-rimmed spectacles were engulfed in the folds of
his long face; his hair was a tossed mass of greasy blackness; he puffed
and rumbled as he talked; his Phi Beta Kappa key shone against a spotty
black vest; he smelled of old pipes; he was altogether funereal
and archidiaconal; and to real-estate brokerage and the jobbing of
bathroom-fixtures he added an aroma of sanctity.

This morning he was in front of his house, inspecting the grass parking
between the curb and the broad cement sidewalk. Babbitt stopped his car
and leaned out to shout "Mornin'!" Littlefield lumbered over and stood
with one foot up on the running-board.

"Fine morning," said Babbitt, lighting--illegally early--his second
cigar of the day.

"Yes, it's a mighty fine morning," said Littlefield.

"Spring coming along fast now."

"Yes, it's real spring now, all right," said Littlefield.

"Still cold nights, though. Had to have a couple blankets, on the
sleeping-porch last night."

"Yes, it wasn't any too warm last night," said Littlefield.

"But I don't anticipate we'll have any more real cold weather now."

"No, but still, there was snow at Tiflis, Montana, yesterday," said the
Scholar, "and you remember the blizzard they had out West three days
ago--thirty inches of snow at Greeley, Colorado--and two years ago we
had a snow-squall right here in Zenith on the twenty-fifth of April."

"Is that a fact! Say, old man, what do you think about the Republican
candidate? Who'll they nominate for president? Don't you think it's
about time we had a real business administration?"

"In my opinion, what the country needs, first and foremost, is a good,
sound, business-like conduct of its affairs. What we need is--a business
administration!" said Littlefield.

"I'm glad to hear you say that! I certainly am glad to hear you say
that! I didn't know how you'd feel about it, with all your associations
with colleges and so on, and I'm glad you feel that way. What the
country needs--just at this present juncture--is neither a college
president nor a lot of monkeying with foreign affairs, but a good--sound
economical--business--administration, that will give us a chance to have
something like a decent turnover."

"Yes. It isn't generally realized that even in China the schoolmen are
giving way to more practical men, and of course you can see what that
implies."

"Is that a fact! Well, well!" breathed Babbitt, feeling much calmer, and
much happier about the way things were going in the world. "Well, it's
been nice to stop and parleyvoo a second. Guess I'll have to get down to
the office now and sting a few clients. Well, so long, old man. See you
tonight. So long."


II

They had labored, these solid citizens. Twenty years before, the hill
on which Floral Heights was spread, with its bright roofs and immaculate
turf and amazing comfort, had been a wilderness of rank second-growth
elms and oaks and maples. Along the precise streets were still a few
wooded vacant lots, and the fragment of an old orchard. It was brilliant
to-day; the apple boughs were lit with fresh leaves like torches of
green fire. The first white of cherry blossoms flickered down a gully,
and robins clamored.

Babbitt sniffed the earth, chuckled at the hysteric robins as he would
have chuckled at kittens or at a comic movie. He was, to the eye, the
perfect office-going executive--a well-fed man in a correct brown soft
hat and frameless spectacles, smoking a large cigar, driving a good
motor along a semi-suburban parkway. But in him was some genius of
authentic love for his neighborhood, his city, his clan. The winter was
over; the time was come for the building, the visible growth, which to
him was glory. He lost his dawn depression; he was ruddily cheerful when
he stopped on Smith Street to leave the brown trousers, and to have the
gasoline-tank filled.

The familiarity of the rite fortified him: the sight of the tall red
iron gasoline-pump, the hollow-tile and terra-cotta garage, the window
full of the most agreeable accessories--shiny casings, spark-plugs with
immaculate porcelain jackets tire-chains of gold and silver. He was
flattered by the friendliness with which Sylvester Moon, dirtiest and
most skilled of motor mechanics, came out to serve him. "Mornin', Mr.
Babbitt!" said Moon, and Babbitt felt himself a person of importance,
one whose name even busy garagemen remembered--not one of these
cheap-sports flying around in flivvers. He admired the ingenuity of the
automatic dial, clicking off gallon by gallon; admired the smartness
of the sign: "A fill in time saves getting stuck--gas to-day 31 cents";
admired the rhythmic gurgle of the gasoline as it flowed into the tank,
and the mechanical regularity with which Moon turned the handle.

"How much we takin' to-day?" asked Moon, in a manner which combined the
independence of the great specialist, the friendliness of a familiar
gossip, and respect for a man of weight in the community, like George F.
Babbitt.

"Fill 'er up."

"Who you rootin' for for Republican candidate, Mr. Babbitt?"

"It's too early to make any predictions yet. After all, there's still
a good month and two weeks--no, three weeks--must be almost three
weeks--well, there's more than six weeks in all before the Republican
convention, and I feel a fellow ought to keep an open mind and give
all the candidates a show--look 'em all over and size 'em up, and then
decide carefully."