Books: Everything the Best

SNOOT IF YOU MUST—Lucius Beebe—Applefon-Century ($2.50).

Lucius Morris Beebe, gourmandizing descendant of a long line of cheese-paring Yankees, was ejected from two schools (once for exploding homemade bombs), expelled from two colleges. Yale classmates were not overly surprised when youthful Lucius swept a tableful of dishes to the floor of Billy Bander’s Eating House, crying: “Come, come, Bander, give us your best delft and pewter, Bander, none of this rude crockery!” But Yale authorities were annoyed when Lucius appeared conspicuously in a box at the Hyperion Burlesque Theater, cried: “I am Professor [Henry Hallam] Tweedy of the Yale Divinity School!” and tossed an empty bottle to the stage. Shortly thereafter, Lucius left Yale and entered Harvard.

At Harvard, Lucius chartered a plane from which he attempted to festoon the late J. P. Morgan’s yacht, Corsair, with toilet paper, initiated a poll to decide whether Harvard should trade President Lowell and three full professors for a good running backfield (the motion was lost, 1,234-to-1,227), borrowed and surreptitiously published manuscript poems by Poet Edwin Arlington Robinson. Shortly thereafter, Lucius left Harvard and joined the staff of the New York Herald Tribune.

Since then Lucius Beebe has:

> Diverted 2,000,000 syndicated readers with This New York, his weekly column of snooty glamor gossip.

> Become café society’s chief spokesman.

> Become the No. 1 U.S. mauve elegant, regularly made the lists of the nation’s “Ten-Best-Dressed.” (Once shouldered off the list by Harvard Prexy James B. Conant, Beebe cried: “Why, for years Conant has been notorious for his soup stains. He carries a whole carte du jour on his vest.”)

> Acquired a wardrobe of 40 suits, 20 shirts, 25 ties, half a dozen pairs of shoes, two mink-lined topcoats, three gold cigaret cases valued at $700 apiece, a star sapphire ring ($1,200), high yellow button shoes for race meetings, an 18-carat, 110-penny-weight watch chain 17 inches long; and from his writings, endorsements.

Butlered Bon Ton. Last week Lucius made news again. Snoot If You Must is autobiography in the sense that Lucius’ life, as reported by Author Beebe, has consisted chiefly of eating and dressing in public. The book reports Lucius’ ad ventures with “butlered bon ton.” Its index of exquisites runs from Abdy (Lady lya) to Zerbe (Jerome). It lists almost every gastronomic heaven from Manhattan to Hollywood, supplies food for every thing but thought.

Best tidbits in Snoot If You Must are its stories. Samples:

Once Beebe came upon a noted gastronome glaring with horror at a row of orchids on his table. “Throw wide the windows!” cried the gourmet. “Air the rooms! Is the bouquet of my wines to have to conflict with these stinking flowers?”

Beebe reports a menu, prepared for Cognac King Walter Dupuys: The hors d’oeuvres alone took up a half page of small type and were served to the accompaniment of “an ensemble of harp, flute, two violins and guitar, [playing] Venetian songs of gaiety.” The soup required a guitar rendering of Moszkowski’s Malagueña, the escarole salad the playing of Götterdämmerung. Some 4,000 canaries chirped together with Italian and Hawaiian singers, against a backdrop painted by the Metropolitan Opera’s Scenarist Rosa. Alpine scenes were made of 400 baskets of strawberries, nougat (for roads), sugar and tartar (for snow).

At Bleeck’s Artists & Writers Restaurant on Manhattan’s 40th Street, one Henry George consumed at a sitting “six dozen Cotuit oysters, a two-quart tureen of mock turtle soup, a roast . . . weighing just under six pounds, four steak . . . slabs of cold Virginia ham, a dozen scones filled with whipped cream, three bottles of claret, 18 bottles of beer, and countless . . . rolls, butter, radishes, coffee, and sweet oddments.” At Bleeck’s too, Actress Helen Hayes found Playwright Nunnally Johnson “beating his third wife, whom he had married that afternoon, over the head with a silver-handled umbrella, a wedding present . . . screaming the while: ‘You’ll never have my autograph, woman!'”