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Babbitt
of course your lease stands. But theres one other thing Id
like to do. Ill tell the owner not to pay us the commission
but apply it to your rent. No! Straight! I want to. To be
frank, this thing shakes me up bad. I suppose Ive always
been a Practical Business Man. Probably Ive told one or
two fairy stories in my time, when the occasion called for
it you know: sometimes you have to lay things on thick,
to impress boneheads. But this is the first time Ive ever
had to accuse one of my own employees of anything more
dishonest than pinching a few stamps. Honest, it would
hurt me if we profited by it. So youll let me hand you the
commission? Good!
II
He walked through the February city, where trucks
flung up a spattering of slush and the sky was dark
above dark brick cornices. He came back miserable. He,
who respected the law, had broken it by concealing the
Federal crime of interception of the mails. But he could
not see Graff go to jail and his wife suffer. Worse, he had
to discharge Graff and this was a part of office routine
which he feared. He liked people so much, he so much
wanted them to like him that he could not bear insulting
them.
Miss McGoun dashed in to whisper, with the excitement
of an approaching scene, Hes here!
Mr Graff? Ask him to come in.
He tried to make himself heavy and calm in his chair,
and to keep his eyes expressionless. Graff stalked in a
man of thirty-five, dapper, eye-glassed, with a foppish
mustache.
Want me? said Graff.
Yes. Sit down.
Graff continued to stand, grunting, I suppose that old
nut Varney has been in to see you. Let me explain about
him. Hes a regular tightwad, and he sticks out for every
cent, and he practically lied to me about his ability to pay
the rent I found that out just after we signed up. And
then another fellow comes along with a better offer for the
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Sinclair Lewis
house, and I felt it was my duty to the firm to get rid of
Varney, and I was so worried about it I skun up there and
got back the lease. Honest, Mr Babbitt, I didnt intend to
pull anything crooked. I just wanted the firm to have all
the commis
Wait now, Stan. This may all be true, but Ive been
having a lot of complaints about you. Now I dont spose
you ever mean to do wrong, and I think if you just get a
good lesson thatll jog you up a little, youll turn out a
first-class realtor yet. But I dont see how I can keep you on.
Graff leaned against the filing-cabinet, his hands in his
pockets, and laughed. So Im fired! Well, old Vision and
Ethics, Im tickled to death! But I dont want you to think
you can get away with any holier-than-thou stuff. Sure Ive
pulled some raw stuff a little of it but how could I
help it, in this office?
Now, by God, young man
Tut, tut! Keep the naughty temper down, and dont
holler, because everybody in the outside office will hear
you. Theyre probably listening right now. Babbitt, old
dear, youre crooked in the first place and a damn skinflint
in the second. If you paid me a decent salary I wouldnt
have to steal pennies off a blind man to keep my wife
from starving. Us married just five months, and her the
nicest girl living, and you keeping us flat broke all the
time, you damned old thief, so you can put money away
for your saphead of a son and your wishywashy fool of a
daughter! Wait, now! Youll by God take it, or Ill bellow
so the whole office will hear it! And crooked Say, if I
told the prosecuting attorney what I know about this last
Street Traction option steal, both you and me would go to
jail, along with some nice, clean, pious, high-up traction
guns!
Well, Stan, looks like we were coming down to cases.
That deal There was nothing crooked about it. The only
way you can get progress is for the broad-gauged men to
get things done; and they got to be rewarded
Oh, for Petes sake, dont get virtuous on me! As I
gather it, Im fired. All right. Its a good thing for me. And
if I catch you knocking me to any other firm, Ill squeal all
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Babbitt
I know about you and Henry T. and the dirty little
lickspittle deals that you corporals of industry pull off for
the bigger and brainier crooks, and youll get chased out
of town. And me youre right, Babbitt, Ive been going
crooked, but now Im going straight, and the first step will
be to get a job in some office where the boss doesnt talk
about Ideals. Bad luck, old dear, and you can stick your
job up the sewer!
Babbitt sat for a long time, alternately raging, Ill have
him arrested, and yearning I wonder No, Ive never
done anything that wasnt necessary to keep the Wheels of
Progress moving.
Next day he hired in Graffs place Fritz Weilinger, the
salesman of his most injurious rival, the East Side Homes
and Development Company, and thus at once annoyed his
competitor and acquired an excellent man. Young Fritz was
a curly-headed, merry, tennis-playing youngster. He made
customers welcome to the office. Babbitt thought of him as
a son, and in him had much comfort.
III
An abandoned race-track on the outskirts of Chicago, a
plot excellent for factory sites, was to be sold, and Jake
Offut asked Babbitt to bid on it for him. The strain of the
Street Traction deal and his disappointment in Stanley
Graff had so shaken Babbitt that he found it hard to sit at
his desk and concentrate. He proposed to his family,
Look here, folks! Do you know whos going to trot up to
Chicago for a couple of days just week-end; wont lose
but one day of school know whos going with that
celebrated business-ambassador, George F. Babbitt? Why,
Mr Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt!
Hurray! Ted shouted, and Oh, maybe the Babbitt
men wont paint that lil ole town red!
And, once away from the familiar implications of home,
they were two men together. Ted was young only in his
assumption of oldness, and the only realms, apparently, in
which Babbitt had a larger and more grown-up knowledge
than Teds were the details of real estate and the phrases
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Sinclair Lewis
of politics. When the other sages of the Pullman smokingcompartment had left them to themselves, Babbitts voice
did not drop into the playful and otherwise offensive tone
in which one addresses children but continued its
overwhelming and monotonous rumble, and Ted tried to
imitate it in his strident tenor:
Gee, dad, you certainly did show up that poor boot
when he got flip about the League of Nations!
Well, the trouble with a lot of these fellows is, they
simply dont know what theyre talking about. They dont
get down to facts... What do you think of Ken Escott?
Ill tell you, dad: it strikes me Ken is a nice lad; no
special faults except he smokes too much; but slow, Lord!
Why, if we dont give him a shove the poor dumb-bell
never will propose! And Rone just as bad. Slow.
Yes, I guess youre right. Theyre slow. They havent
either one of em got our pep.
Thats right. Theyre slow. I swear, dad, I dont know
how Rone got into our family! Ill bet, if the truth were
known, you were a bad old egg when you were a kid!
Well, I wasnt so slow!
Ill bet you werent! Ill bet you didnt miss many tricks!
Well, when I was out with the girls I didnt spend all
the time telling em about the strike in the knitting industry!
They roared together, and together lighted cigars.
What are we going to do with em? Babbitt consulted.
Gosh, I dont know. I swear, sometimes I feel like taking
Ken aside and putting him over the jumps and saying to him,
Young fella me lad, are you going to marry young Rone, or
are you going to talk her to death? Here you are getting on
toward thirty, and youre only making twenty or twenty-five
a week. When you going to develop a sense of responsibility
and get a raise? If theres anything that George F. or I can do
to help you, call on us, but show a little speed, anyway!
Well, at that, it might not be so bad if you or I talked
to him, except he might not understand. Hes one of these
high brows. He cant come down to cases and lay his
cards on the table and talk straight out from the shoulder,
like you or I can.
Thats right, hes like all these highbrows.
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Babbitt
Thats so, like all of em.
Thats a fact.
They sighed, and were silent and thoughtful and happy.
The conductor came in. He had once called at Babbitts
office, to ask about houses. Hare you, Mr Babbitt! We
going to have you with us to Chicago? This your boy?
Yes, this is my son Ted.
Well now, what do you know about that! Here I been
thinking you were a youngster yourself, not a day over
forty, hardly, and you with this great big fellow!
Forty? Why, brother, Ill never see forty-five again!
Is that a fact! Wouldnt hardly a thought it!
Yes, sir, its a bad give-away for the old man when he
has to travel with a young whale like Ted here!
Youre right, it is. To Ted: I suppose youre in college
now.
Proudly, No, not till next fall. Im just kind of giving
the diffrent colleges the once-over now.
As the conductor went on his affable way, huge watchchain jingling against his blue chest, Babbitt and Ted
gravely considered colleges. They arrived at Chicago late
at night; they lay abed in the morning, rejoicing, Pretty
nice not to have to get up and get down to breakfast,
heh? They were staying at the modest Eden Hotel, because
Zenith business men always stayed at the Eden, but they
had dinner in the brocade and crystal Versailles Room of
the Regency Hotel. Babbitt ordered Blue Point oysters with
cocktail sauce, a tremendous steak with a tremendous
platter of French fried potatoes, two pots of coffee, apple
pie with ice cream for both of them and, for Ted, an extra
piece of mince pie.
Hot stuff! Some feed, young fella! Ted admired.
Huh! You stick around with me, old man, and Ill show
you a good time!
They went to a musical comedy and nudged each other
at the matrimonial jokes and the prohibition jokes; they
paraded the lobby, arm in arm, between acts, and in the
glee of his first release from the shame which dissevers
fathers and sons Ted chuckled, Dad, did you ever hear
the one about the three milliners and the judge?
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Sinclair Lewis
When Ted had returned to Zenith, Babbitt was lonely.
As he was trying to make alliance between Offutt and
certain Milwaukee interests which wanted the race-track
plot, most of his time was taken up in waiting for
telephone calls... Sitting on the edge of his bed, holding
the portable telephone, asking wearily, Mr Sagen not in
yet? Didn he leave any message for me? All right, Ill hold
the wire. Staring at a stain on the wall, reflecting that it
resembled a shoe, and being bored by this twentieth
discovery that it resembled a shoe. Lighting a cigarette;
then, bound to the telephone with no ashtray in reach,
wondering what to do with this burning menace and
anxiously trying to toss it into the tiled bathroom. At last,
on the telephone, No message, eh? All right, Ill call up
again.
One afternoon he wandered through snow-rutted streets
of which he had never heard, streets of small tenements
and two-family houses and marooned cottages. It came to
him that he had nothing to do, that there was nothing he
wanted to do. He was bleakly lonely in the evening, when
he dined by himself at the Regency Hotel. He sat in the
lobby afterward, in a plush chair bedecked with the SaxeCoburg arms, lighting a cigar and looking for some one
who would come and play with him and save him from
thinking. In the chair next to him (showing the arms of
Lithuania) was a half-familiar man, a large red-faced man
with pop eyes and a deficient yellow mustache. He seemed
kind and insignificant, and as lonely as Babbitt himself. He
wore a tweed suit and a reluctant orange tie.
It came to Babbitt with a pyrotechnic crash. The melancholy
stranger was Sir Gerald Doak.
Instinctively Babbitt rose, bumbling, Howre you, Sir
Gerald? Member we met in Zenith, at Charley McKelveys?
Babbitts my name real estate.
Oh! How d you do. Sir Gerald shook hands flabbily.
Embarrassed, standing, wondering how he could retreat,
Babbitt maundered, Well, I suppose you been having a
great trip since we saw you in Zenith.
Quite. British Columbia and California and all over the
place, he said doubtfully, looking at Babbitt lifelessly.
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Babbitt
How did you find business conditions in British Columbia?
Or I suppose maybe you didnt look into em. Scenery and
sport and so on?
Scenery? Oh, capital. But business conditions You
know, Mr Babbitt, theyre having almost as much
unemployment as we are. Sir Gerald was speaking warmly
now.
So? Business conditions not so doggone good, eh?
No, business conditions werent at all what Id hoped
to find them.
Not good, eh?
No, not not really good.
Thats a darn shame. Well I suppose youre waiting for
somebody to take you out to some big shindig, Sir Gerald.
Shindig? Oh. Shindig. No, to tell you the truth, I was
wondering what the deuce I could do this evening. Dont
know a soul in Tchicahgo. I wonder if you happen to
know whether theres a good theater in this city?
Good? Why say, theyre running grand opera right
now! I guess maybe youd like that.
Eh? Eh? Went to the opera once in London. Covent
Garden sort of thing. Shocking! No, I was wondering if
there was a good cinema-movie.
Babbitt was sitting down, hitching his chair over, shouting,
Movie? Say, Sir Gerald, I supposed of course you had a
raft of dames waiting to lead you out to some soiree
God forbid!
but if you havent, what do you say you and me go
to a movie? Theres a peach of a film at the Grantham: Bill
Hart in a bandit picture.
Right-o! Just a moment while I get my coat.
Swollen with greatness, slightly afraid lest the noble
blood of Nottingham change its mind and leave him at any
street corner, Babbitt paraded with Sir Gerald Doak to the
movie palace and in silent bliss sat beside him, trying not
to be too enthusiastic, lest the knight despise his adoration
of six-shooters and broncos. At the end Sir Gerald murmured,
Jolly good picture, this. So awfully decent of you to take
me. Havent enjoyed myself so much for weeks. All these
Hostesses they never let you go to the cinema!
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Sinclair Lewis
The devil you say! Babbitts speech had lost the
delicate refinement and all the broad As with which he
had adorned it, and become hearty and natural. Well, Im
tickled to death you liked it, Sir Gerald.
They crawled past the knees of fat women into the
aisle; they stood in the lobby waving their arms in the rite
of putting on overcoats. Babbitt hinted, Say, how about a
little something to eat? I know a place where we could get
a swell rarebit, and we might dig up a little drink that
is, if you ever touch the stuff.
Rather! But why dont you come to my room? Ive some
Scotch not half bad.
Oh, I dont want to use up all your hootch. Its darn
nice of you, but You probably want to hit the hay.
Sir Gerald was transformed. He was beefily yearning.
Oh really, now; I havent had a decent evening for so
long! Having to go to all these dances. No chance to
discuss business and that sort of thing. Do be a good chap
and come along. Wont you?
Will I? You bet! I just thought maybe Say, by
golly, it does do a fellow good, dont it, to sit and visit
about business conditions, after hes been to these
balls and masquerades and banquets and all that society
stuff. I often feel that way in Zenith. Sure, you bet Ill
come.
Thats awfully nice of you. They beamed along the
street. Look here, old chap, can you tell me, do American
cities always keep up this dreadful social pace? All these
magnificent parties?
Go on now, quit your kidding! Gosh, you with court
balls and functions and everything
No, really, old chap! Mother and I Lady Doak, I
should say, we usually play a hand of bezique and go to
bed at ten. Bless my soul, I couldnt keep up your beastly
pace! And talking! All your American women, they know
so much culture and that sort of thing. This
Mrs McKelvey your friend
Yuh, old Lucile. Good kid.
she asked me which of the galleries I liked best in
Florence. Or was it in Firenze? Never been in Italy in my
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Babbitt
life! And primitives. Did I like primitives. Do you know
what the deuce a primitive is?
Me? I should say not! But I know what a discount for
cash is.
Rather! So do I, by George! But primitives!
Yuh! Primitives!
They laughed with the sound of a Boosters luncheon.
Sir Geralds room was, except for his ponderous and
durable English bags, very much like the room of George F.
Babbitt; and quite in the manner of Babbitt he disclosed a
huge whisky flask, looked proud and hospitable, and chuckled,
Say, when, old chap.
It was after the third drink that Sir Gerald proclaimed,
How do you Yankees get the notion that writing chaps
like Bertrand Shaw and this Wells represent us? The real
business England, we think those chaps are traitors. Both
our countries have their comic Old Aristocracy you
know, old county families, hunting people and all that sort
of thing and we both have our wretched labor leaders,
but we both have a backbone of sound business men who
run the whole show.
You bet. Heres to the real guys!
Im with you! Heres to ourselves!
It was after the fourth drink that Sir Gerald asked
humbly, What do you think of North Dakota mortgages?
but it was not till after the fifth that Babbitt began to call
him Jerry, and Sir Gerald confided, I say, do you mind if
I pull off my boots? and ecstatically stretched his knightly
feet, his poor, tired, hot, swollen feet out on the bed.
After the sixth, Babbitt irregularly arose. Well, I better
be hiking along. Jerry, youre a regular human being! I
wish to thunder wed been better acquainted in Zenith.
Lookit. Cant you come back and stay with me a while?
So sorry must go to New York to-morrow. Most
awfully sorry, old boy. I havent enjoyed an evening so
much since Ive been in the States. Real talk. Not all this
social rot. Id never have let them give me the beastly
title and I didnt get it for nothing, eh? if Id thought
Id have to talk to women about primitives and polo!
Goodish thing to have in Nottingham, though; annoyed
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Sinclair Lewis
the mayor most frightfully when I got it; and of course
the missus likes it. But nobody calls me Jerry now
He was almost weeping. and nobody in the States has
treated me like a friend till to-night! Good-by, old chap,
good-by! Thanks awfully!
Dont mention it, Jerry. And remember whenever you
get to Zenith, the latch-string is always out.
And dont forget, old boy. if you ever come to
Nottingham, Mother and I will be frightfully glad to see
you. I shall tell the fellows in Nottingham your ideas
about Visions and Real Guys at our next Rotary Club
luncheon.
IV
Babbitt lay abed at his hotel, imagining the Zenith
Athletic Club asking him, What kind of a time dyou
have in Chicago? and his answering, Oh, fair; ran
around with Sir Gerald Doak a lot; picturing himself
meeting Lucile McKelvey and admonishing her, Youre all
right, Mrs Mac, when you arent trying to pull this
highbrow pose. Its just as Gerald Doak says to me in
Chicago oh, yes, Jerrys an old friend of mine the
wife and I are thinking of running over to England to
stay with Jerry in his castle, next year and he said to
me, Georgie, old bean, I like Lucile first-rate, but you
and me, George, we got to make her get over this hightytighty hooptediddle way shes got.
But that evening a thing happened which wrecked his
pride.
V
At the Regency Hotel cigar-counter he fell to talking with
a salesman of pianos, and they dined together. Babbitt was
filled with friendliness and well-being. He enjoyed the
gorgeousness of the dining-room: the chandeliers, the looped
brocade curtains, the portraits of French kings against
panels of gilded oak. He enjoyed the crowd: pretty women,
good solid fellows who were liberal spenders.
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