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Title: Our Mr. Wrenn The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man

Author: Sinclair Lewis

Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4961] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on April 4, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR MR. WRENN ***

This eBook was edited by Charles Aldarondo (www.aldarondo.net).

OUR MR. WRENN

THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A GENTLE MAN

SINCLAIR LEWIS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

MCMXIV

TO GRACE LIVINGSTONE HEGGER

CHAPTER I

MR. WRENN IS LONELY

The ticket-taker of the Nickelorion Moving-Picture Show is a public personage, who stands out on

Fourteenth Street, New York, wearing a gorgeous light-blue coat of numerous brass buttons. He

nods to all the patrons, and his nod is the most cordial in town. Mr. Wrenn used to trot down to

Fourteenth Street, passing ever so many other shows, just to get that cordial nod, because he had a

lonely furnished room for evenings, and for daytime a tedious job that always made his head stuffy.

He stands out in the correspondence of the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company as "Our Mr.

Wrenn," who would be writing you directly and explaining everything most satisfactorily. At thirty-

four Mr. Wrenn was the sales-entry clerk of the Souvenir Company. He was always bending over

bills and columns of figures at a desk behind the stock-room. He was a meek little bachlor—a

person of inconspicuous blue ready-made suits, and a small unsuccessful mustache.

To-day—historians have established the date as April 9, 1910—there had been some confusing

mixed orders from the Wisconsin retailers, and Mr. Wrenn had been "called down" by the office

manager, Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle. He needed the friendly nod of the Nickelorion ticket-taker. He

found Fourteenth Street, after office hours, swept by a dusty wind that whisked the skirts of

countless plump Jewish girls, whose V-necked blouses showed soft throats of a warm brown. Under

the elevated station he secretly made believe that he was in Paris, for here beautiful Italian boys

swayed with trays of violets; a tramp displayed crimson mechanical rabbits, which squeaked, on

silvery leading-strings; and a newsstand was heaped with the orange and green and gold of

magazine covers.

"Gee!" inarticulated Mr. Wrenn. "Lots of colors. Hope I see foreign stuff like that in the moving

pictures."

He came primly up to the Nickelorion, feeling in his vest pockets for a nickel and peering around

the booth at the friendly ticket-taker. But the latter was thinking about buying Johnny's pants.

Should he get them at the Fourteenth Street Store, or Siegel-Cooper's, or over at Aronson's, near

home? So ruminating, he twiddled his wheel mechanically, and Mr. Wrenn's pasteboard slip was

indifferently received in the plate-glass gullet of the grinder without the taker's even seeing the

clerk's bow and smile.

Mr. Wrenn trembled into the door of the Nickelorion. He wanted to turn back and rebuke this

fellow, but was restrained by shyness. He had liked the man's "Fine evenin', sir "—rain or shine—

but he wouldn't stand for being cut. Wasn't he making nineteen dollars a week, as against the ticket-

taker's ten or twelve? He shook his head with the defiance of a cornered mouse, fussed with his

mustache, and regarded the moving pictures gloomily.

They helped him. After a Selig domestic drama came a stirring Vitagraph Western scene, "The Goat

of the Rancho," which depicted with much humor and tumult the revolt of a ranch cook, a

Chinaman. Mr. Wrenn was really seeing, not cow-punchers and sage-brush, but himself, defying the

office manager's surliness and revolting against the ticket-man's rudeness. Now he was ready for the

nearly overpowering delight of travel-pictures. He bounced slightly as a Gaumont film presented

Java.

He was a connoisseur of travel-pictures, for all his life he had been planning a great journey.

Though he had done Staten Island and patronized an excursion to Bound Brook, neither of these

was his grand tour. It was yet to be taken. In Mr. Wrenn, apparently fastened to New York like a

domestic-minded barnacle, lay the possibilities of heroic roaming. He knew it. He, too, like the man

who had taken the Gaumont pictures, would saunter among dusky Javan natives in "markets with

tiles on the roofs and temples and—and—uh, well—places!" The scent of Oriental spices was in his

broadened nostrils as he scampered out of the Nickelorion, without a look at the ticket-taker, and

headed for "home"—for his third-floor-front on West Sixteenth Street. He wanted to prowl through

his collection of steamship brochures for a description of Java. But, of course, when one's landlady

has both the sciatica and a case of Patient Suffering one stops in the basement dining-room to

inquire how she is.

Mrs. Zapp was a fat landlady. When she sat down there was a straight line from her chin to her

knees. She was usually sitting down. When she moved she groaned, and her apparel creaked. She

groaned and creaked from bed to breakfast, and ate five griddle-cakes, two helpin's of scrapple, an

egg, some rump steak, and three cups of coffee, slowly and resentfully. She creaked and groaned

from breakfast to her rocking-chair, and sat about wondering why Providence had inflicted upon her

a weak digestion. Mr. Wrenn also wondered why, sympathetically, but Mrs. Zapp was too

conscientiously dolorous to be much cheered by the sympathy of a nigger-lovin' Yankee, who

couldn't appreciate the subtle sorrows of a Zapp of Zapp's Bog, allied to all the First Families of

Virginia.

Mr. Wrenn did nothing more presumptuous than sit still, in the stuffy furniture-crowded basement

room, which smelled of dead food and deader pride in a race that had never existed. He sat still

because the chair was broken. It had been broken now for four years.

For the hundred and twenty-ninth time in those years Mrs. Zapp said, in her rich corruption of

Southern negro dialect, which can only be indicated here, "Ah been meaning to get that chair

mended, Mist' Wrenn." He looked gratified and gazed upon the crayon enlargements of Lee

Theresa, the older Zapp daughter (who was forewoman in a factory), and of Godiva. Godiva Zapp

was usually called "Goaty," and many times a day was she called by Mrs. Zapp. A tamed child

drudge was Goaty, with adenoids, which Mrs. Zapp had been meanin' to have removed, and which

she would continue to have benevolent meanin's about till it should be too late, and she should

discover that Providence never would let Goaty go to school.

"Yes, Mist' Wrenn, Ah told Goaty she was to see the man about getting that chair fixed, but she nev'

does nothing Ah tell her."

In the kitchen was the noise of Goaty, ungovernable Goaty, aged eight, still snivelingly washing,

though not cleaning, the incredible pile of dinner dishes. With a trail of hesitating remarks on the

sadness of sciatica and windy evenings Mr. Wrenn sneaked forth from the august presence of Mrs.

Zapp and mounted to paradise—his third-floor-front.

It was an abjectly respectable room—the bedspread patched; no two pieces of furniture from the

same family; half-tones from the magazines pinned on the wall. But on the old marble mantelpiece

lived his friends, books from wanderland. Other friends the room had rarely known. It was hard

enough for Mr. Wrenn to get acquainted with people, anyway, and Mrs. Zapp did not expect her

gennulman lodgers to entertain. So Mr. Wrenn had given up asking even Charley Carpenter, the

assistant bookkeeper at the Souvenir Company, to call. That left him the books, which he now

caressed with small eager finger-tips. He picked out a P. & O. circular, and hastily left for fairyland.

The April skies glowed with benevolence this Saturday morning. The Metropolitan Tower was

singing, bright ivory tipped with gold, uplifted and intensely glad of the morning. The buildings

walling in Madison Square were jubilant; the honest red-brick fronts, radiant; the new marble, witty.

The sparrows in the middle of Fifth Avenue were all talking at once, scandalously but cleverly. The

polished brass of limousines threw off teethy smiles. At least so Mr. Wrenn fancied as he whisked

up Fifth Avenue, the skirts of his small blue double-breasted coat wagging. He was going blocks out

of his way to the office; ready to defy time and eternity, yes, and even the office manager. He had

awakened with Defiance as his bedfellow, and throughout breakfast at the hustler Dairy Lunch

sunshine had flickered over the dirty tessellated floor.

He pranced up to the Souvenir Company's brick building, on Twenty-eighth Street near Sixth

Avenue. In the office he chuckled at his ink-well and the untorn blotters on his orderly desk.

Though he sat under the weary unnatural brilliance of a mercury-vapor light, he dashed into his

work, and was too keen about this business of living merrily to be much flustered by the bustle of

the lady buyer's superior " Good morning." Even up to ten-thirty he was still slamming down papers

on his desk. Just let any one try to stop his course, his readiness for snapping fingers at The Job; just

let them try it, that was all he wanted!

Then he was shot out of his chair and four feet along the corridor, in reflex response to the surly

"Bur-r-r-r-r" of the buzzer. Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle, the manager, desired to see him. He

scampered along the corridor and slid decorously through the manager's doorway into the long sun-

bright room, ornate with rugs and souvenirs. Seven Novelties glittered on the desk alone, including

a large rococo Shakespeare-style glass ink-well containing cloves and a small iron Pittsburg-style

one containing ink. Mr. Wrenn blinked like a noon-roused owlet in the brilliance. The manager

dropped his fist on the desk, glared, smoothed his flowered prairie of waistcoat, and growled, his

red jowls quivering:

"Look here, Wrenn, what's the matter with you? The Bronx Emporium order for May Day novelties

was filled twice, they write me."

"They ordered twice, sir. By 'phone," smiled Mr. Wrenn, in an agony of politeness.

"They ordered hell, sir! Twice—the same order?"

"Yes, sir; their buyer was prob—"

"They say they've looked it up. Anyway, they won't pay twice. I know, em. We'll have to crawl

down graceful, and all because you—I want to know why you ain't more careful!"

The announcement that Mr. Wrenn twice wriggled his head, and once tossed it, would not half

denote his wrath. At last! It was here—the time for revolt, when he was going to be defiant. He had

been careful; old Goglefogle was only barking; but why should he be barked at? With his voice

palpitating and his heart thudding so that he felt sick he declared:

"I'm sure , sir, about that order. I looked it up. Their buyer was drunk!"

It was done. And now would he be discharged? The manager was speaking:

"Probably. You looked it up, eh? Um! Send me in the two order-records. Well. But, anyway, I want

you to be more careful after this, Wrenn. You're pretty sloppy. Now get out. Expect me to make

firms pay twice for the same order, cause of your carelessness?"

Mr. Wrenn found himself outside in the dark corridor.

The manager hadn't seemed much impressed by his revolt.

The manager wasn't. He called a stenographer and dictated:

"Bronx Emporium:

"GENTLEMEN:—Our Mr. Wrenn has again (underline that `again,' Miss Blaustein), again looked

up your order for May Day novelties. As we wrote before, order certainly was duplicated by 'phone.

Our Mr. Wrenn is thoroughly reliable, and we have his records of these two orders. We shall

therefore have to push collection on both—"

After all, Mr. Wrenn was thinking, the crafty manager might be merely concealing his hand.

Perhaps he had understood the defiance. That gladdened him till after lunch. But at three, when his

head was again foggy with work and he had forgotten whether there was still April anywhere, he

began to dread what the manager might do to him. Suppose he lost his job; The Job! He worked

unnecessarily late, hoping that the manager would learn of it. As he wavered home, drunk with

weariness, his fear of losing The Job was almost equal to his desire to resign from The Job.

He had worked so late that when he awoke on Sunday morning he was still in a whirl of figures. As

he went out to his breakfast of coffee and whisked wheat at the Hustler Lunch the lines between the

blocks of the cement walk, radiant in a white flare of sunshine, irritatingly recalled the cross-lines of

order-lists, with the narrow cement blocks at the curb standing for unfilled column-headings. Even

the ridges of the Hustler Lunch's imitation steel ceiling, running in parallel lines, jeered down at

him that he was a prosaic man whose path was a ruler.

He went clear up to the branch post-office after breakfast to get the Sunday mail, but the mail was a

disappointment. He was awaiting a wonderful fully illustrated guide to the Land of the Midnight

Sun, a suggestion of possible and coyly improbable trips, whereas he got only a letter from his

oldest acquaintance—Cousin John, of Parthenon, New York, the boy-who-comes-to-play of Mr.

Wrenn's back-yard days in Parthenon. Without opening the letter Mr. Wrenn tucked it into his inside

coat pocket, threw away his toothpick, and turned to Sunday wayfaring.

He jogged down Twenty-third Street to the North River ferries afoot. Trolleys took money, and of

course one saves up for future great traveling. Over him the April clouds were fetterless vagabonds

whose gaiety made him shrug with excitement and take a curb with a frisk as gambolsome as a

Central Park lamb. There was no hint of sales-lists in the clouds, at least. And with them Mr.

Wrenn's soul swept along, while his half-soled Cum-Fee-Best $3.80 shoes were ambling past

warehouses. Only once did he condescend to being really on Twenty-third Street. At the Ninth

Avenue corner, under the grimy Elevated, he sighted two blocks down to the General Theological

Seminary's brick Gothic and found in a pointed doorway suggestions of alien beauty.

But his real object was to loll on a West and South Railroad in luxury, and go sailing out into the

foam and perilous seas of North River. He passed through the smoking-cabin. He didn't smoke—the

habit used up travel-money. Once seated on the upper deck, he knew that at last he was outward-

bound on a liner. True, there was no great motion, but Mr. Wrenn was inclined to let realism off

easily in this feature of his voyage. At least there were undoubted life-preservers in the white racks

overhead; and everywhere the world, to his certain witnessing, was turned to crusading, to setting

forth in great ships as if it were again in the brisk morning of history when the joy of adventure

possessed the Argonauts.

He wasn't excited over the liners they passed. He was so experienced in all of travel, save the

traveling, as to have gained a calm interested knowledge. He knew the Campagnia three docks

away, and explained to a Harlem grocer her fine points, speaking earnestly of stacks and sticks,

tonnage and knots.

Not excited, but—where couldn't he go if he were pulling out for Arcady on the Campagnia! Gee!

What were even the building-block towers of the Metropolitan and Singer buildings and the Times's

cream-stick compared with some old shrine in a cathedral close that was misted with centuries!

All this he felt and hummed to himself, though not in words. He had never heard of Arcady, though

for many years he had been a citizen of that demesne.

Sure, he declared to himself, he was on the liner now; he was sliding up the muddy Mersey (see the

W. S. Travel Notes for the source of his visions); he was off to St. George's Square for an organ-

recital (see the English Baedeker); then an express for London and—Gee!

The ferryboat was entering her slip. Mr. Wrenn trotted toward the bow to thrill over the bump of the

boat's snub nose against the lofty swaying piles and the swash of the brown waves heaped before

her as she sidled into place. He was carried by the herd on into the station.

He did not notice the individual people in his exultation as he heard the great chords of the station's

paean. The vast roof roared as the iron coursers stamped titanic hoofs of scorn at the little stay-at-

home.

That is a washed-out hint of how the poets might describe Mr.

Wrenn's passion. What he said was "Gee!"

He strolled by the lists of destinations hung on the track gates. Chicago (the plains! the Rockies!

sunset over mining-camps!), Washington, and the magic Southland—thither the iron horses would

be galloping, their swarthy smoke manes whipped back by the whirlwind, pounding out with

clamorous strong hoofs their sixty miles an hour. Very well. In time he also would mount upon the

iron coursers and charge upon Chicago and the Southland; just as soon as he got ready.

Then he headed for Cortlandt Street; for Long Island, City. finally, the Navy Yard. Along his way

were the docks of the tramp steamers where he might ship as steward in the all-promising

Sometime. He had never done anything so reckless as actually to ask a skipper for the chance to go

a-sailing, but he had once gone into a mission society's free shipping-office on West Street where a

disapproving elder had grumped at him, "Are you a sailor? No? Can't do anything for you, my

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