Let's Go See

BY now we have all managed, in various ways, the questions of what to do with moths, annual seedlings, and the young. The last fall roughly into three Motor Age groups: the ones you keep from under wheels, the ones you allow to go if they are home not later than seven, and the ones who persuade you that unless they can borrow the family car for indefinitely protracted periods their entire future is in jeopardy. . . . If you have ever seen the thousand-strong exodus to summer camps from the Grand Central Station early in July, you understand that the loud rumbling noise is not the trains, but the Pied Piper turning in his grave. . . . We personally, having had an uncle who refused to go to picnics on the grounds that he did go to one once, make for Now York pavements — as a starter, anyhow.

LOTS of outdoor eating — either on sidewalks or roofs. . . . Jardin du Perroquet, at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, is the most agreeable downtown place. . . . The Marguery’s Pavilion is leisurely, and the food topnotch. . . . If you feel strong enough, hear and see Johnny Payne — the swing-cultists’ idol — in the Elysee Bar. . . . The Hartmans dance on the Pierre roof. . . . Mary Martin sings at suppertime in the Rainbow Room. . . . On a hot night the Marine Roof of the Bossort, in Brooklyn, really is a seagoing sort of place. You can’t see the Fair from it; but you can see the spire of Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church. Frankly a welcome change. . . .

DESPITE the Fair’s still competition, several shows on Broadway are going strong. . . . Philip Barry’s Philadelphia Story is mostly Katharine Hepburn delivering Main Line repartee from an exceedingly pretty dead-pan. . . . Laurette Taylor makes the revival of Outward Bound exciting and moving. . . . Pins and Needles, 1939 has the best of the original songs and some good new ones. . . .

BRITISH-GAUMONT will be broadcasting television to some of the Broadway theatres in a week or so. . . . General Electric and R C A have television shows at the Fair. . . . The results are a good deal like those fat small books of pictures you used to hold up to your eye and flip through with your thumb. Still and all, it’s Progress. . . .

THE concerts at the Lewisohn Stadium are among the pleasantest institutions of New York summers. You needn’t buy seats ahead. . . .

You might dine early, near enough by, at the old Claremont Inn, overlooking the Hudson at 124th Street. . . . The Claremont was flourishing when the Eden Musée on 14th Street was just around the corner from F. A. O. Schwarz. . . . Its successor, the new Wax Museum on 50th, has no Chamber of Horrors, which seems a pity. . . . But the Paris Musée Grévin made it, arid it’s good. . . .

THINGS are sort of shaking into shape at the Pair. . . . That giant cash register is at last working. Rings up the attendance right before your eyes. Cynics are a touch suspicious of the figures. They set the thing ahead when they finally got it going. Supposed to be the gross total now. . . . But how they decided is shrouded in mystery. . . .

THE classical music programs in the Hall of Music have been canceled. Nobody came. . . . There will be Pops, or something of the kind, and Olin Downes resigned his Fair Music Chairmanship because of the change. . . . But — score a cultural offset — the short Shakespearean plays in Olde England are crowded. . . . However, General Motors is the hit of the whole Flushing Shangri-La. Mile-long waiting lines all the time. . . .

THE Kennington bust of T. E. Lawrence is in the British Pavilion art gallery. Came too late for the first catalogue. . . . And no one knows the whereabouts of the Slobodkin statue of Lincoln which stood in the Garden Court. One of the Commissioners decided ’it just wasn’t right,’ and statue and sculpture have both vanished. . . . There is probably no connection, but it seems that early one morning last week a note was found penciled on the back of the Freedom of Speech statue. Says you! (it read) D. J. K. Sioux City. . . . They got it washed off before opening hours.

LOGICALLY — but with curious effect — there are no ikons or other religious symbols in the fabulous Russian Building. . . . Fronted by its great stainless-steel Feyda, it is to be set up as a permanent structure in Moscow. Perhaps that is U. S. S. R. symbolism. . . .

LOTS of people are coming in their own boats. Motley collection, ranging from precarious twenty-footers to Diesel-powered yachts. . . . Flushing Bay Basin has mooring for three hundred. . . . Rather looked down on by those who arrange to tie up at the New York Yacht Club in the East River. . . .

EVEN though the artists are agonizing over the fact that the mural colors are fading a little, dark glasses are handy. . . . Cotton in your ears helps at the Aquacade. The loud-speaker system is stepped up pretty high. . . . The evening, because of the recurrent dream of the lights, is the best time. . . . The Danish Pavilion and the French Building both have superlative food. . . . Come right down to it, the ideal guide is a coldly discriminating friend, who knows what to be world-weary about and what to admire. Failing such, make a beeline for what you simply have to see. All those jokes about broken arches and the growing wealth of chiropodists are proving, like the Proverbs, tiresomely true. . . .

You can’t get away from New York’s skyline. You are always looking up at it or down from it. . . . The Museum of the City of New York has just opened an Evolution of the Skyscraper exhibit. Takes you back before the Flatiron Building. Plans, pictures, and the Museum’s specially famous scale models, which tend to make you feel like Alice in her tall periods. . . . The Metropolitan has assembled a most extraordinary loan exhibit — Life in America. . . . The genre paintings are the most fun, and the like of the whole thing will probably never be under one roof again. . . .

GETS you thinking about what painting trends do to house decorations. . . . Ruby Ross Wood, at 460 Park, is one of the places where this trompe-l’œil business can be seen at its best. . . . It was certainly forecast by the man who Thought he saw an elephant upon the mantelpiece, He looked again. . . . Knowing people are forever telling us that it all began when an artist went mildly mad doing murals in a villa outside Venice. When you pin them down, their erudition fails them — we don’t yet know what artist, nor what villa. . . .

ON Second Avenue, near 60th, the Atlas Importing Company has herbs you’ve never heard of. . . . The Bazar Français casserole dishes are the things to do that kind of cooking in. . . . There’s a Spanish grocery at 208 West 14th where, among less unlikely things, you can get real Spanish espadrilles. . . . Also on 14th is the New York Band Instrument Company. Here, and at the Gramophone Shop, are all the out-of-the-way and foreign records. Ask about Caspar Reardon, the hot harpist. And the Decca Caribbean records, of which our favorite is the Duke and Duchess of Kent. . . . When you’re down there find out what foreign movie is running at the Cameo, on Union Square. Lots of foreign films show there and no place else. . . . On West 12th Street the New School for Social Research is physically distinguished for its architecture, its Benson and Orcozo murals; socially distinguished for its own teaching, and the University in Exile. . . . Around the corner on West 11th is the last remaining row of balconied early-Victorian houses left in the town. . . .

ALL the big hotels and department stores have special information places. No charge. . . . Macy’s claim the people at theirs speak twenty-six languages. . . . Jambo, toto! These are free. . . . For a fee Your Secretary, 29 East 69th, will provide anything from a reliable nursemaid to an elephant gun or a passage to Tahiti.

NOT so far away, at New London, Connecticut, on June 23, are the Yale-Harvard boat races. ... The Thames jammed with festive boats and the boats jammed with festive collegians. . . . The next day the Eastern Yacht Club ocean race to Marblehead sets out from there. Grand sight to see the sails rounding Eastern Point. . . . New London is a vivid sample of what the hurricane did, and of how New England is taking it. Sure, the trees are down, and new trees set up. Sure, the boats and docks were smashed; there are new boats and docks all over the coast. . . . Remember what was said by this year’s most famous American travelers? . . . Is it all oranges ever’ where? . . . Well, maybe not ever where, but plenty places.

MUSIC Mountain, outside Falls Village, Connecticut, begins its Sunday concerts now. . . . In Norfolk on the village green is Cora Brown’s excellent Inn. You can ski on pine needles in Norfolk if you want to. . . .

DRIVING down through Hartford, lunch at Honiss’ Oyster House, as indigenous as the life-insurance companies. Sawdust on the floor, old prints, waiters nearly as old. . . .

IN Newport, on July 3, the Master-Apprentices open their summer theatre. . . . There lives in Newport, among other people you have heard of, John Benson, the young sculptor, who is so enchanted with beautiful lettering that he makes classically admirable tombstones. . . . Don’t miss Bristol, Rhode Island, if you care about old houses. . . .

ALL the New England museums have special summer shows. . . . Worcester’s energetic Francis Taylor is having an exhibit with one hand and reconstructing his museum with the other. . . . June 28 gives you a chance to go inside the houses on Chestnut Street, Salem. Many people think this the most distinguished street in the country. . . . Marblehead’s gardens are open the same day. . . . The Esplanade concerts in Boston begin early in July, and on the 23rd there’ll be model yacht racing on the Charles. The owners, in their frenzy, are as good a show as the boats. . . . The Blue Ship, on T Wharf, redeems itself from being a wee touch quaint by giving you a chance to eat right in the middle of the harbor traffic. . . . Brattle Hall in Cambridge is housing the Straw Hat theatre. . . . Funny thing. the two most attractivelooking apartment houses around Boston are the Harvard Houses and Old Harbor Village; tenants of both strictly limited, more applications than admissions. . . .

THE Cape Playhouse and the Cape Cinema, at Dennis, are the deans of all the summer theatres. . . . Since they moved the old meetinghouse on to the farm, and young Rockwell Kent painted the walls in the microscopic movie house, a lot of famous plays have had their first nights there. . . . The Cape is cluttered in a lot of places, but Yarmouth Port is not one of them. . . . The Anchorage there is rather like the best of the Bermuda guesthouses. Very small. . . .

TUNA and swords and blues are beginning to run. . . . Someone took a 710-pound tuna in Ipswich Bay last summer. . . . If you want to charter a boat, complete with pulpit and tackle, the Massachusetts Development Company, in Boston, will set you out from Marblehead or Gloucester in whatever style or direction you please. . . . The Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole knows all about what goes on under sea water. . . . Pull will get you out on their specimen collecting boat. Good sailors, only. It’s a rough trip. . . . Down there the West Falmouth Inn is a quiet place — nice people, very nice food. . . .

OF course if you begin to get scientific about fish and bird life there’s no knowing. . . . A bird-stalking Bostonian saw a gull eating a fish on Ipswich Beach. Gull and fish both new to him. He photographed the gull and took what was left of the fish to be identified. Turned out to be an ivory gull, not native to the U.S.A., and a European carp, also never seen in these parts. . . . The gull left no address, but the carp had escaped from the Cranes’ pool. They just happened to run into each other. . . .