It was only that, in Alsopian phrase, his “sphere had widened.” He had come from the provincial community of the Baptist college to the city. And that staggering transition, so painful, so perilous, and so confusing to so many other men had been for Alsop triumphantly easy. He had taken to the city like a duck to water. And in that complete and rapturous immersion was revealed, along with all that was shapeless in his character, also all that was warm and imaginative and good.
Some come to the city, no doubt, with wire-taut nerves, with trembling apprehension, with a resolution of grim conflict desperate struggle, and the conviction they must do or die. Some, shackled by old fears, still cumbered with the harness of old prejudice, come to it doubtfully and with mistrust. And for them, the city that they find will be a painful one. And some come to it with exultancy and hope, as men rush forward to embrace a beloved mistress, whom they have never seen but of whom they have always known, and it was in this way that Alsop—Alsop of the bulging belly and the butter-tub of fat—it was in just this way that Alsop came.
It never occurred to him that he might fail. And indeed with faith like his, with such devotion as he brought, the chance of failure was impossible. Other men might rise to greater summit in the city’s life. Other men might rise to greater substance of success, of wealth, of fame, achievement, or reputation. But no man would ever belong more truly to the city, or the city’s life to him, than Gerald Alsop.
He was made for it; it was made for him. Here was a point that he could swim in, a pool where he could fish. Here was the food for all his thousand appetites, the provender for his hundred mouths. Here was living water for the quenchless sponge that was himself: the rumor with the million tongues that could feed forever his insatiate ear, the chronicle of eight million lives that could appease his ceaseless thirst for human history.
Alsop was a man who had to live through others. He was an enormous Ear, Eye, Nose, Throat, and absorptive sponge of gluttonous humanity—he was not a thrust or arm—and in such a way as this, and so perfectly, so completely, the city was his oyster. And in his way he was incomparable. All that was best in him was here revealed. He communicated to everyone around him the contagion of his own enthusiasm, the sense of magic and of rapture which the city gave to him. With him, an excursion of any sort was a memorable event. A trip downtown in the subway, the gaudy lights, the thronging traffics of Times Square, the cut-rate ticket basement of Gray’s Pharmacy, the constant nocturnal magic of the theatres, the cheap restaurants, a cafeteria or a lunchroom, a chop suey place, the strange faces, signs, and lights, the foreign vegetables, the unknown edibles of Chinatown—all this was simply magic. He was living in an enchanted world, he carried it with him everywhere he went.
His was the temper of the insatiable romantic. In no time at all, instantly, immediately, he inherited the city’s hunger for celebrity. If he could not be great himself, he wanted to be near those who were. He lapped up every scrap of gossip about celebrated people he could read or hear. The records, diaries, comments, observations of the newspaper columnists were gospel to him. The pronouncements of a certain well-known dramatic critic, Cotswold, were like holy writ: he memorized them down to the last whimsical caprice of ornate phrasing. He went religiously to see every play the critic praised. One night he saw the great man himself, a fat and puffy little butter-ball of a man, in the interim between the acts, with another celebrated critic and a famous actress. When Alsop returned home he was transported—if he had seen Shakespeare talking to Ben Jonson, his emotion could not have been so great.
He became a watcher around stage doors. It was the period of the Ziegfeld shows, the glorified chorines, the proud, lavish flesh draped in a fold of velvet. Alsop now was everywhere, he delighted in these glorified carnalities. The girls were famous, he watched till they came out, and, like some ancient lecher, he licked his chops and gloated while the Ziegfeld Beauties and their moneyed purchasers walked away. The meeting of expensive flesh with shirt front, tails, and tall silk hatdom now delighted him. Strange work for old Pine Rock?—By no means: it was enhaloed now, set like a jewel in the great Medusa of the night, privileged by power and wealth and sanctioned by publicity. The aged lecher licking his dry lips and waiting with dead eyes for his young whore of Babylon, delighted Alsop now. He told of such a one: the beauty, already famed in print, came by—the aged lecher fawned upon her—” Oh, for Christ’s sake!” said the beauty wearily, passing on.