Under the Roots of Manhattan

DEAR Jean:—I'm having the time of my life. The FinleyJohnsons are coming hack to town right after Labor Day and they've asked me to try to find an apartment for them. I'm really terribly flattered, because even if I do know the real estate business from the ground up (some pun, eh Toots?), it still is true that they're the most particular people in the world:—the sort of people who don't have to look at the artist's signature before they can tell you a good French painting from a phony, who never go wrong on their cars or their dogs, and who always know the right wine to order with the right fish. (Have a little kümmel with your herring, Miss Schmaltz?) In other words, they know quality when they see it, and you can't fool them—not even once.

It's quite a job, hut after all, they have come to the right person—how that laurel wreath scratches my brow! —and I'm really giving it all I've got. I'm not going to make any definite choice for them, hut I'm going to look over a few of the places I know are the type of thing they'd like, and make a hatch of notes for them on the best bets. I started in today with the WaldorfAstoria Towers. They want to live in an apartment hotel, because, after all, Mrs. Finley-Johnson isn't the sort of person who wants to bother with running her own place, and they both love lots and lots of service, and then, too, they can get any kind of a lease they want and don't have to bother being tied up with any of those yearto-year propositions.

The Waldorf-Astoria Towers are really magnificent. In the first place, the entrance is separate from the hotel, itself, so you don't have that transient feeling of having to go in and out through a big lobby and fall over hell hops all the time. They've got a little Concierge Bureau there, where they take messages for you, give your orders to valets and maids, and render all sorts of services. Also, because of this separate entrance business, you can drive your car practically right into the special elevators for your apartment.

The apartments themselves are something to leave you in a swoon. They vary in size from two to eight rooms; they all have private foyer entrances, serving pantrys and chromium and marble bathrooms with glass-enclosed showers. Most of them have what they call boudoir dressing-rooms, too, with dazzling mirrored walls and wardrobe fitted closets; and some of the larger apartments have terraces, and a maid's room and bath.

Every one of these suites is different. They were each designed by some well known decorator—some one like Arthur S. Vernay or Mrs. Charles Sabin or W. and J. Sloane—and they really do represent a great variety in definitely distinguished taste and beauty.

What fascinated me were the room service kitchens, where they will follow out your own special recipes (I bet they could even make Aunt Minnie's Upside-Down Brown Betty!), if you want them, too, and they even have a children's dietitian to supervise the amount of spinach, etc., to make your urchin sturdy. They also have a supervised children's play room, an emergency hospital, medical and dental service, secretaries and even interpreters—mind you!—and, of course, special quarters and dining-halls for personal servants. In fact, I can't think of any service you can't get there. It's a case of—you name it; they have it.

I'll write you again in a couple of days. I expect to swipe enough elegant hotel stationery to last me for the rest of my life. So if you get a letter from me at the age of eighty, with SherryNetherland on it, don't get excited. It'll just be me, up in my room at the Old Ladies' Home, using up the last souvenir of my 1935 Grand Tour of Inspection.

Love,

KATE

DEAR Jean:—I haven't written before because I've been in a whirl. This is the Sherry-Netherland stationery I threatened you with last time. And that's one hotel I'm quite mad about, too. It has a perfectly superb location—from many of the apartments you can see Central Park and Fifth Avenue and the Plaza Square, and of course it's just a step from 57th Street and all those divine shops, and next door to the subway, which would be nice for Mr. FinleyJohnson, because he likes to get down to Wall Street as quickly as possible in the morning—being the type of Captain of Industry and King of Finance who got where he is by not lolling around.

The arrangements here are very flexible. You can take an apartment by the day, week, month or year; and you can get your meals at fixed, prearranged prices, if you care to. The cuisine is absolutely unexcelled—after all, it's under Theophile, Sherry's famous chef—and you can eat either in your apartment—each suite has a serving pantry and a refrigerator—or in the dining-room, which is simply charming. The apartments are all beautifully decorated, but you can have them done over to suit your own taste, if you want to.

I also went over to The Drake, at 440 Park. This really merits that too often loosely-bandied word, "exclusive", and you can tell it the moment you walk into the lobby—with those especialy designed and woven carpets that I practically sank into up to my ankles every step I took. The apartments here run from two rooms up, with foyer, serving pantry with refrigerator, and a bath for each bedroom. More than Uf of them have a southern exposure ad some of them have roof terraces. Everyone knows about the Drake restaurant, and it doesn't need any extra ballyhoo. It speaks for itself.

I finished up at The Barclay—you know, the place with my favorite bar. Up until yesterday, I'd never seen the rest of the hotel. I've spent practically half my youth in that bar but I never leaned to be able to get beyond it. However, now that I've made the break, I must say that the rest of the place is quite up to the standard. The apartments are quiet and dignified and charming, and you can take them for along or as short a period as you wish -without a lease, even, if you want to.

Furthermore, it's the only place I can think of off-hand where I ever heard of getting room service without any extra (charge. This means bar service, too. (Ahthere, fellow tippler!) The whole place is amazingly economical when you consider its smartness.

Of course, the trouble is that I'm petting so that I feel as if I, myself, lived at all of these places, simultaneeasly. I had a terrible nightmare last night in which I dreamed that I wore table tippet right in under one of those Waldorf Towers glass-enclosed (bowers and that when I came out again it had turned into a live muskrat ad 1 was chasing it through the Drake doing-room.

Love,

KATE

DEAR Jean:—This will be very brief as I'm going to the country for the weekend, and I'm sitting around, up to my ears in tennis rackets and golf clubs. I just got home and started to pack a few minutes ago. I went to Pierre's today and, really, I'm in love with that place. Jean, it has such distinction— such a feeling of—well, in a person you call it a manner—of quality. Of course, it's always had a good name, socially, the service is the kind that makes you led like an Oriental potentate, and the apartments are lovely: The whole atmosphere has a spirit of graciousness and dignity.

I must finish packing now. Love,

KATE

DEAR Jean:—I enjoyed your letter. It's frightfully hot here, but I feel sort of cool and rested, nevertheless. Perhaps it's because I spent most of today in Delmonico's. There's something about that place that's refreshing and serene. It may be the great feeling of tradition that sort of lurks around in every corner and sneaks up on you from behind the walls. After all, the name of Delmonico has been famous in the tavern line for years. I think it was in 1827 that the first Delmonico restaurant was opened down on William Street by John Delmonico, a Swiss sailor. About twenty years later, the first Delmonico hotel was started on lower Broadway. They kept on moving uptown, through the years, until the present hotel, at Park Avenue and 59th Street. In some inexplicable way, there seems to be a flavor of the past about it—something legendary and glamorous—combined with the most modern of service and convenience. The suites run from one room to five, and the food is everything it should be in a place famous for over a hundred years for its cuisine.

I went to Mayfair House earlier this morning. That's on Park at 65th Street. You remember, we went to the opening of that grand new bar of theirs last year. I'm still crazy about the bar, and the rest of the place, too. The rooms are especially large, for a New York apartment hotel, and they all have serving pantries and magnificent closets. Many of the suites have real, honest-to-God fireplaces, too, where you burn wood logs—none of those little fake smelly gas things. It's very smart and fashionable, in a discreet way, and the sort of place for people with impeccable tastes, like the FinleyJohnsons.

I had a superb weekend, got a wonderful burn, and look like the rotogravure pictures of the Healthiest Boy and Girl in Dutchess County. Write me again soon. But what do you mean by naming your new Siamese cat Kate? Is there nothing sacred to you?

Love,

KATE

DEAR JEAN: —I've just come back from Washington Park, and honestly, Jean, that neighborhood has something! It's historic and beautiful—and then there are those trees— which, as you may have heard somewhere, only God can make—and a certain placid quietness in the air. The apartment hotel at No. 1 Fifth Avenue is probably the nicest place in the section. It's big and modern and all that, yet it seems to blend in with the rest of the street. You can have any exposure you want—and from the terrace on the 20th floor, you can actually see the Statue of Liberty. On the sixth floor, they have one lovely apartment with a corner living-room which gives you a view of the Washington Arch— which always thrills me when I first catch a glimpse of it—and of two or three little gardens attached to neighboring houses. They have a specialty of twoand three-room suites here, and you can get them either furnished or unfurnished.

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I've certainly got enough to show the Finley-Johnsons. They can't go wrong on any of these. It's merely up to them to choose the location they prefer—and then live happily ever afterward.

Love,

KATE

DEAR JEAN :—Nothing daunted, I am still up and at 'em. Just ask me anything about leases—all right, go ahead and ask me!—and I will overwhelm you on the spot. I am a walking guide to Manhattan's apartment hotels and can tell you at a moment's notice all about circulating ice water and southern exposures. I have servidors on the tip of my tongue (uncomfortable? Not at all. I balance them with the greatest of ease.) I sent you a postcard from the Madison this morning, chiefly because I found it lying around on a writing desk. You know me—always an eye out for postcards and two eyes out for free ones. It shows you a little sketch of the Madison cafe, with that insane, gay, charming carrousel bar of theirs. I don't know whether you ever went there with me or not. You know where it is, of course—at 15 East 58th Street. I remember now, it was the Green Room in the Madison that we went to the night after seeing Point Valaine (which sent all the men in the audience home with suppressed desires to start spitting at their own wives—after all, why should Alfred Lunt have all the fun, just because he's an actor?).

As an apartment hotel, the Madison couldn't be nicer. After all, it's had a superior reputation for years and years and years, and only the very nicest people stay there. It has a definite air of breeding about it. The rooms in the apartments are in the most discriminating taste, and the bathrooms are the kind that make you sing like a linnet in your tub.

They're famous for their cuisine there, too. They make all sorts of dishes, with marvelous French sauces —something elegant, baby! said she, licking her chops—and served with that perfect, unobtrusive attention which always goes to my head like wine and gives me delusions of grandeur. I always say, be it ever so humble, there's no place like a pedestal.

Love,

KATE

DEAR Jean:—I've been loafing around for a couple of days—going to movies (I saw Charles Boyer, who is my Ideal Man) and trying to decide whether I should do exercises to reduce, or just cut out eating. But doing exercises makes me feel like a fool, and if I don't eat I get dizzy spells and a nasty disposition and go around snapping and snarling at my best friends and threatening to kick little children in the teeth. So I shelved the whole business and went around to Chatham Walk for Sunday breakfast yesterday, around one o'clock. (Yes, I still have to get my fourteen hours sleep, or I'm not myself.) So I sat down there in that lovely, quiet, secluded garden, and ate enormous quantities of scrambled eggs and little sausages and divine coffee, and the first thing I knew, I was feeling as chipper as they come. It's really wonderful what the right atmosphere will do to relieve a bad case of Weltschmerz or Zeitgeist (whoever said the Americans are not good linguists? Just point me out to them) —and the Chatham has that atmosphere—the kind that puts you right at your ease.

While I was sitting there, beaming at the world, the Finley-Johnsons crossed my mind. That is really a lie. They are never out of my mind. I sleep, think, breathe Finley-Johnsons. I eat Finley-Johnsons (try them fried sometime, with a dash of paprika—but delicious, my dear!) So, ever alert, I upped from my table and went dashing in to inspect what the Chatham has to offer in the way of apartments. They are just as charming as their garden, and run all the way from single rooms with bath, to apartments of six rooms with private dining-room, pantry and servants' quarters.

There are three restaurants in the place, by the way. In addition to Chatham Walk, they have the Adam dining-room and then the Grill, which is not so formal. The food is simply swell in all of them.

Love,

KATE

DEAR Jean:—Quick, Ellsworth, the smelling salts and a pinch of snuff! I just got a letter from Mrs. FinleyJohnson, and they don't want an apartment after all. They are going to London for the entire autumn. And how have you been?

For heaven's sake, if you hear of anyone who does want one, send him to me. I can't bear the thought of all these masses of knowledge coagulating in my little head without doing anyone any good.

Love—and a few faint expletives, KATE