Remembering the Chelsea

"Don't look; don't look. You don't want to see an old woman pee, do you?" I Turned toward the voice. A woman, not too old--in her late 50s or early 60s--stood near a doorway, her legs spread apart, urinating. It was not quite four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon in April. One or two people passing by turned toward her, shrugged a shoulder, or smiled, or grimaced, and walked on. I looked past her. Twenty-third Street. Discount drugstores, florists' shops, stationery stores, secondhand-office-equipment places. Some things had remained the same. But there were some changes. The ornate grillwork in front of Steak & Brew had once been the impressive front of Cavanagh's Restaurant, a place where--when royalty checks permitted--a writer could be (continued on page 306) Remembering the Chelsea (continued from page 201) sure of good Scotch, a good steak.

I turned toward the building in front of me. The Hotel Chelsea. I had lived here in the Fifties. It looked pretty much the same. I read a plaque beside the entrance.

Landmarks of New York

Chelsea Hotel

Designed by Hubert & Pirsson, The Chelsea was Opened in 1884 as One of the City's Earliest Cooperative Apartment Houses. It Became a Hotel Around 1905. The Florid Cast-Iron Balconies were Made by the Firm of J. B. & J. M. Cornell. Artists and Writers who have lived here include Arthur B. Davies, James T. Farrell, Robert Flaherty, O. Henry, John Sloan, Dylan Thomas And Thomas Wolfe.

"Hey, mister, I'm blocking traffic."

I had forgotten the cabdriver. Mumbling my apologies, I paid him, reached in to get my suitcase and then closed the door. I was going back, moving back into the Chelsea, this time for a week or so--so that I could write about it. A then-and-now article, I thought. The plaque was now, commemorating then. I remembered that Sunday morning, back in the early Sixties. I had received a telephone call from an old friend of mine, Jake Baker, who lived at the Chelsea. The plaque had just gone up.

Jake Baker was born in the Far West. He had been a mining engineer; this was the first of his many professions and avocations. He was also a philosophical anarchist. And he had been a member of the Industrial Workers of the World--a wobbly.

When I first met Jake, he was a man in radical literary circles. He was the founder of Vanguard Press--the house that later published my trilogy Studs Lonigan and 27 other books of mine.

The money to establish Vanguard came from the Garland Fund. Young Garland was heir to $1,000,000. Instead of following the prescribed behavioral patterns of most scions of the time, Garland established a fund through which he gave away most of his fortune for the betterment of mankind by aiding radical, revolutionary and libertarian causes. The magazine New Masses was founded with Garland Fund money. In the Twenties, New Masses had been a spectacular gravy train for the radical intelligentsia and literati. When all the gravy had been sopped, New Masses was taken over by the Communists and remained for years the unacknowledged Communist Party organ.

When Vanguard Press was young, it published an inexpensive series of radical classics--by the historian John William Draper, works based on the Darwin theory of evolution, the great book of the anarchist leader and philosopher Pëtr Kropotkin, Jack London's writings on socialism, Leo Tolstoy's work on pacifism, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Thorstein Veblen's classical social study The Theory of the Leisure Class and The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti. Jake Baker did something unique in publishing. He published books that did not show a profit but did provide young people the opportunity to read great and profoundly stimulating books. In the late Twenties (1928 or 1929), Vanguard Press was sold to James Henle, a former New York World reporter. It was Jim Henle who published my early works.

Jake Baker lived at the Chelsea. Jake was an intelligent man. And a witty man. It was easy to spot him walking along 23rd Street. He stood tall and straight, carrying a cane. Among his friends were Albert Jay Nock, a fine writer and an editor of the liberal weekly Freeman; Henry Hazlitt, editor of The Nation; Howard Scott, in the limelight for a time as the chief proponent of the short-lived movement known as technocracy; V. F. Calverton, editor of the Modern Quarterly; Benjamin Stolberg, the labor journalist who also lived at the Hotel Chelsea; a social worker named Harry Hopkins; Carlo Tresca, the famous and lovable Italian anarchist, who was murdered in 1943 on the corner of 15th Street and Fifth Avenue; Isaac Don Levine; Suzanne LaFollette, another resident of the Hotel Chelsea; Floyd Dell; and a long list of others who belong to a now vanished but once vigorously alive cultural and political American environment. It was the environment from which many of us breathed knowledge and inspiration, ideals and purpose.

On the Sunday morning he telephoned me, Jake told me that my name was on the plaque with those of six dead men. We agreed that the implication was amusing--downright hilarious. Jake speculated on whether or not I had died from natural causes or had committed suicide by jumping out a window. I told Jake that I would send him a poem I had written--My Obituary. Here's how it goes:

One James (T. for Thomas) Farrell

Who might have been this,

And who might have been that,

But who might have been

Neither this nor that,

And who wrote too much,

And who fought too much,

And who kissed too much

For all of his friends

(He needed no enemies)

That man, J. T. F.,

Died last night

Of a deprivation of time.

He willed his dust

To the public domain.

I sent this poem to Jake, using a cabdriver as a messenger. About a half hour later, Jake telephoned me again.

"You are dead, Jim. Not only have I seen your name on a plaque but I have also read your obituary."

"Be sure to tell my friends, Jake."

Jake did tell some people. I received a call from a friend from whom I had not 'heard for quite some time. He told me that he was checking out the rumor that I had killed myself by jumping from a window. I cited Nietzsche's remark on the subject: The man who commits suicide is an optimist; he wants to better his condition.

I was one of the friends Jake invited down to the Chelsea to help him celebrate his 71st birthday. He seemed fine at first, but as the evening went on, I noticed changes in him. He became querulous about small details that the Jake Baker of old would not have noticed. After cocktails in his rooms, he and his wife took their guests to Cavanagh's for dinner. He argued about the position of the table. The steaks had been broiled too long. The drinks had not been mixed properly.

Jake had told me earlier that he had had to retire because of arteriosclerosis. This, plus the fact that he had had many drinks, certainly had something to do with his being cranky. I do not say this critically. I no longer drink, but during our 40 years of friendship, Jake Baker and I had met many, many times and had many, many drinks together. I had never seen Jake drunk--certainly not as drunk as he had seen me. I had seen him high a few times but always in an amusing and civilized way. But on his birthday night, Jake drank more than he usually did. It made me sad to watch him. Jake Baker was a proud man. Behind the querulous old man whose body was betraying him had been a proud young man who had taken sure and purposeful strides in front of the pack. Jake Baker was facing a personal crisis--the crisis of growing old. This can be grim--even insulting--for an intelligent man to contemplate.

What has all this to do with the Hotel Chelsea? Jake Baker could have lived at any hotel. He lived in the Chelsea. He liked it; in fact, he loved the Chelsea. He used to sit in the lobby and watch people coming in and going out. He talked about the changes, the new types, the different kinds of people. His wife, Mildred, continues to live there.

Marcel Proust devotes a long section of his great work to "Place Names: The Place." Proust discusses place names in France. In America there is less richness of place names and the places of place names. The Hotel Chelsea, as a landmark, qualifies as a place name--thereby, a place. And for me personally, the Hotel Chelsea is a private place name in my memory.

• • •

"Oh, Mr. Farrell, it's you. Let me send for Mr. Bard. His office is right over there, right off the lobby. He asked me to let him know when you arrived. Usually he plays tennis on Saturdays, but he didn't today, he wanted to be here when you arrived."

He was a nice-looking young man with a pleasant English accent. I smiled at him, said that of course I'd wait for Mr. Bard, did he mind if I took a look around the lobby to see the paintings? Why, no, of course not, he said. He turned to dispatch someone for Stanley Bard and I turned and walked over to one of the pieces of sculpture nearby. Not bad, I thought, but what might be worse than bad, mediocre. I heard a noise near the door. I looked up. A man was coming in with big amplifiers and what seemed to be electronic equipment. He was dressed in black from head to toe. A young couple sitting on a couch nearby whispered to each other. I thought I overheard the word Hair. The door opened again. A short, pleasant-looking man with gray hair, wearing a well-cut raincoat, walked in. There was something familiar about him. Suddenly, I recognized him.

"Virgil. Virgil Thomson."

He looked at me, questioningly. We had not seen each other in several years.

"It's me, Jim Farrell."

"Why, hello, Jim. Are you moving back? I'm not surprised, you know. Nobody ever leaves the Chelsea. In fact, I understand that that is why you're listed on the plaque with dead men. You had lived here once; you lived here no longer; ergo, you must have died."

We both laughed; I told him why I was back at the Chelsea. He invited me to a small gathering in his suite the next night. He walked to the desk to check on his mail. I watched him. Virgil Thomson is in his middle 70s, but he looks like a man 10 to 15 years younger. Standing beside the other "musician" at the desk, Virgil looked like a respectable businessman. I thought of some of the incisive reviews that he had written as the music critic for the New York Herald Tribune. His compositions, such as Four Saints in Three Acts and Lord Byron, have had a great impact on American music. And the man standing beside him? If he did compose the music for Hair, and if this music does help preserve the memory of mankind and record a perspective of our times, then his is a contribution, too.

"Well, well, well, Mr. Farrell. It's good to see you again. I was looking at some of your books. My father always showed them to people. No matter how many writers he met, he always told them that he and James T. Farrell were friends. I'm glad to have you back in the Chelsea."

• • •

I do not know who on the mayor's committee picked the names of the men to go on the plaque. It's just as well that the committee goes unnamed. The fact that I was presumed to be dead is amusing. But there is another error, a serious one. They omitted the name of a great American writer, the author of one work, at least, that deserves a place not only in American but also in world literature. I refer to Edgar Lee Masters and to his book of free-verse poems, Spoon River Anthology.

Masters left Chicago after the First World War and came to New York. For almost 20 years he occupied a suite at the Chelsea. H. L. Mencken used to visit him there. Mencken admired Masters and the two men had rapport about the Puritans, Prohibitionists, Baptists and the Bible Belt. Both admired Theodore Dreiser and had many a long conversation about his work. Edgar Lee Masters once wrote to Dreiser, expressing his high regard for Dreiser's work. In Spoon River Anthology, there is a poem, Theodore the Poet, that is a moving eulogy of Dreiser: "your vision watched for men and women/Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities,/ Looking for the souls of them to come out." One day a letter arrived from Dreiser expressing his admiration for Masters' work. Masters was overjoyed and their friendship was sealed.

I recall visiting him one morning. Masters had a sitting room and a bedroom. I was waiting in the sitting room while he talked on the phone in his bedroom. Masters had left the door between the rooms open. I was not eavesdropping; there was no way not to hear him. Masters was agitated. There was pain--and some bewilderment--in his voice. It became evident to me that Masters was talking to his agent. He was being told that there had been a poor response to an offer of Masters' poetry readings and/or lectures and that those few people who had expressed interest would not meet his usual fees. Masters was being told that he would have to accept lower prices. In a hurt voice, he protested. He tried to explain that this couldn't be; this couldn't happen to him. But Masters was being told that he was not wanted any longer. For purely business reasons, the poet Edgar Lee Masters, who had already written Spoon River Anthology, was being told by inferiors that they no longer wanted him, that the name Masters was no longer a drawing card for people interested in letters. Because of the shallow changes of mode. Edgar Lee Masters was being told that he had (in so many words) had it. It was not just pain that I felt sitting there; it was resentment.

One day, I believe it was early in 1945, I read that Masters had been found near starvation. I later learned that the story was exaggerated. But he was poor and he did suffer from nutritional deficiencies. He was hospitalized. His wife, from whom he had been separated, came and took him away. Reportedly, she took care of him until he died.

Edgar Lee Masters was a bitter man, but he had earned his bitterness. He was neglected not only in life but also in death. The mayor's committee did not elect to honor him on the plaque.

"Well, no, Mr. Farrell, to be honest, I didn't know until after I got here and read the plaque out front that the Hotel Chelsea was a watering hole for writers. I do want to be a writer. But I'm here because I saw Andy Warhol's 'Chelsea Girls.' And that freaky Loud boy--you know the one I mean--he left that California swimming pool and came East to live with a drag queen. I thought that the Chelsea might be the place for me. Not that I plan to freak out like that, but I wanted those options. Well, cheap this place isn't. In a few weeks, I had to go job hunting. My first day was hell. Working in an office by day; living in the bowels of the Chelsea by night. It's self-induced schizophrenia. I've got a friend who insists that people like us constantly require a change of scene. Did someone say your name was on the plaque out front? Forty-six books! You've got to be kidding."

He paused to light a cigarette. I watched how his hand shook as he held the match. Earlier, a young fellow in the lobby had frankly told me that "hard stuff" was easily available if I were interested. I wondered about the young man in front of me. He was no more than a boy--a nice boy. I was tempted to lecture him about the dangers, etc., but I thought of some of the names appearing on the plaque out front. Dylan Thomas. Thomas Wolfe. I thought of other Hotel Chelsea residents--Hart Crane, Eugene O'Neill. With so many writers, the bottle had spelled bad health. Even death. Could it be that each generation picks its own poison?

"Hello? Miss Viva? My name is James Farrell. I'm a writer and I used to live here in the Hotel Chelsea. I'm working on an article about it and would like to talk to you if I may. I'll be staying here in the hotel for a week or so. Would you be able to see me?"

"I might be able to work something out. How much do you pay for an interview?"

"Pay? Well, I hadn't thought in terms of--"

"Sorry; I don't give free interviews."

And with that, Miss Viva hung up. I smiled to myself. If only artists could be as protective of their time as superstars. I thought of the writers, painters and musicians I had known. I thought of the interviews--hundreds and hundreds of interviews requested by students writing theses on you or on people you've known, on movements in which you've been involved--the time that these strangers feel they've a right to. In the preceding week, I had spent three hours with a young man from Massachusetts who was writing on Irish writers, two hours with a young woman from the University of South Carolina writing about artists in the Thirties and five hours with some young Trotskyites who want to do a documentary film on Leon Trotsky and had been told that I had known him. Time taken away from my own work. There is something to be said for Miss Viva's policy, I thought.

• • •

"Hello, Jim. You received a note in the mail this morning from Andy Warhol's office. They got the letter about your doing an article on the Hotel Chelsea and explaining your problem with your eyes. They'll be happy to make arrangements for you to have a private screening of the Warhol film 'Chelsea Girls.' We're to call them when you want to see it."

"I'll wait until I'm home."

Home for me is on 79th Street and Second Avenue. By the time I moved back into my own apartment--the end of the week--I was more impressed with the generosity of Andy Warhol's note. My week at the Chelsea made it clear that Mr. Warhol has followers who are really almost cultists. There were many very bright, very young men I met during the week who cited Warhol repeatedly as The Voice. As bright and as articulate as some of these young men were, I cannot write of them, because I cannot under stand them. I believe that it is a matter of values. They were nice to me, downright kind. There is no restaurant connected to the Chelsea--except for one that specializes in Spanish food. Occasionally, when one of the fellows was going out to a nearby delicatessen, he'd call to see if he could bring me something. And they would check to see if I had had dinner. They would telephone to ask if they could bring in a friend to meet me. During the week, I met some bizarre young men, dressed and made up in bizarre fashion, who asked the same questions about the Thirties and Forties, talked about the same great French writers and Russian writers, as their less bizarre contemporaries.

• • •

John Sloan lived at the Hotel Chelsea. I liked Sloan personally and I admire his work. His so-called garbage-can-school paintings, his New York street scenes, seem to be crystallized moments of the city. Sloan took a familiar world and so arranged it, so painted it, that he created a new world, still familiar. He did much of his work at the Chelsea. He had a large studio on the top floor with a big skylight. I have read since John's death that another painter had actually asked to be considered on the "waiting list" for John's studio while he still lived.

I was sitting in the lobby one night. A young man approached me. He's from Pennsylvania; he wants to be a writer. We talked of James Joyce for a while. He was finding it difficult to earn a living in New York and write. I told him that this was a problem all writers faced. Some--Theodore Dreiser, Wallace Stevens and others--had been able to hold down jobs and write. For me, it had been impossible. After attempts at selling space for classified directories and working behind a cigarette counter, I had decided to risk it all--I made an "all or nothing" decision. I explained that "fame" didn't pay the rent. That when I was notified that Adlai Stevenson had nominated me for the Nobel Prize, I was fighting an eviction for nonpayment of rent. That when President Kennedy invited me to the White House for dinner, I had to borrow money for the fare. When I came back to New York, there was a check for $1100 from an Italian publisher. And then I did something I rarely do. I gave the young man advice as a writer. I told him that I felt that each writer had to find out things for himself--everything, in fact. But that I felt a writer should write. But if there's a block, fatigue or anything that makes it impossible for him to go on with his work, he should at least write in his journal, that a journal could be a working tool for a writer.

"I do, I do!" he exclaimed. "I'll bring it by for you to see."

Two days later, he dropped it by my room. I glanced at it.

Monday

Reading Gide's "Journal" and then looking at my inane ramblings. Depressing juxtaposition. Although nothing would please me more than to see something like Defoe's "Journal of the Plague Year" turned into a Marvel Comics Classic. Come to think of it, "The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book" says more for Alice than "The Autobiography" ever did. Saw "Flaming Creatures," starring Maria Montex, transvestite without words. She doesn't need to say anything. Overwhelming presence as she sashays in and out of such dark fantasies. P's comment later: "Flame on."

Thursday

This room is rather ridiculous--an economy model--trashy. But it grows on you. My bed on wheels, flip-top desk, junkie lamp. When L was here, she said it was perfect for hitting up under. And the bathroom down the hall used by me and a changing cast of characters. This week it's a crone on crutches. Found a Jehovah's Witnesses magazine by the bowl.

Tuesday

Some dark imagery collected today. Saw a guy in the elevator, apparently spaced out, carrying a whip, blackjack, God knows, mumbling, "Gotta get me a piece of ass."

Found a black-leather jacket in the bathroom.

Reading a book about Artaud. Found out he died painfully--rectal cancer. Puts things in a new perspective.

Someone told me today that Burroughs wrote "Naked Lunch" here at the Chelsea.

• • •

I moved into the Hotel Chelsea in June of 1951. I did not move into the Chelsea because of its atmosphere or cultural environment. I moved in because it was the first hotel I noticed when I went for a walk one day to find another place to live.

After my family had split up, I had--in order to save money--moved into a basement apartment near Eighth Avenue and 19th Street. I hadn't been there very long when I realized that I would need other accommodations. I did not want to get involved with the details of home-making--towels and sheets and defrosting refrigerators. There should be a moderately priced hotel around--one where I could work. I was walking one day, just after I had arrived at this decision--and passed the Chelsea.

I stepped inside and asked about a room. I was shown a two-room studio with a kitchen setup. I signed a one-year lease. The rent was around $200 a month. I moved in immediately. Then I brought in my files--letters and manuscripts--and my library, which was considerable. There was not enough bookshelf space, so most of the books were stored in the cellar.

My first few months at the Chelsea had been lonely ones for me but productive. I spent much time by myself. I had no secretary at the time and handled my own correspondence. Jake Baker and Suzanne LaFollette had apartments in the hotel, but I did not telephone them to let them know that I was staying there. I was doing a lot of traveling and spending time in Washington and Cambridge and Detroit and Chicago. When I was back in my own rooms at the Chelsea, I tried to concentrate on my work. The Chelsea was for me, in those days, simply a hotel where I had a two-room studio at a rent I could afford.

The hotel did have, at that time, some kind of deal going, a contractual arrangement whereby the hotel provided rooms for refugees, boatloads of them at a time. The refugees would land in New York and be carted to the Chelsea. They never stayed long; I presume that arrangements had been made for them to settle in different areas of the country. As I remember, most of them were Hungarians. They would crowd into the lobby, some of them dressed in the dark heavy clothes of peasants.

One night, I spotted a man who looked confused, so much so that he looked as if he were bordering on panic. He had registered and been assigned to a room, but he wanted to give his passport to the night clerk, who kept shaking his head and returning it. The man tried to shove it back. Finally, a fellow immigrant walked up to the desk and volunteered to translate. The man said that he was submitting his passport to the desk clerk so that the hotel could take it to the police station to have it checked. Through the translator, the clerk told him that there were no laws that required a foreigner registering at an American hotel to turn in his passport. The Hungarian still had doubts. He could not understand any system other than the one he had known; but finally he walked away.

Later, I learned that he had wandered out onto West 23rd Street and had walked until he found a police station. There, he tried to hand his passport to the desk sergeant. There was a lot of confusion, but the police finally got him to leave, still carrying his passport.

• • •

I used to eat by myself a lot. I would go down the street to the Oasis. Sometimes I would take a book along. At other times, I would sit and try to catch some of the conversations in the booths near me. One evening, while I was having dinner, I heard a loud, energetic voice. A man was saying:

"I've been a red-hot bachelor for sixty years."

He was with three others.

"But now I'm getting married."

There were congratulations at the booth. The red-hot bachelor went on to tell them that he was marrying a widow.

"She owns a fine home, a big one."

As I recall, he knew how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, the heating system and several other romantic facts about his betrothed. She also had a big car. The red-hot bachelor listed some other assets of his intended. I wished I had taken a book.

The man who owned the Oasis, Willie Garfinkle, had been a seaman. He managed to get his restaurant through the Roosevelt New Deal. Then he became a Republican. I went over for breakfast and for lunch fairly often. So did some of the other Hotel Chelsea guests. Once in a while, someone from the hotel would smile a "Good morning" as he walked on to his own booth. There was something civilized and private about the people living there; they would not intrude. However, while sitting in the lobby, watching people walk in and out, there would be friendly conversations between residents who did not know each other. The three owners of the Chelsea were generally referred to as the three pirates.

At the time, and I'm still talking of the early Fifties, the hotel was on its way down. Or so it seemed to us who lived there.

Strangely enough, many of the people to whom I talked when I was there for the week in 1973 expressed the same concern about the hotel--it was on its way down, too many drug-happy kids around; the Chelsea was changing, it couldn't survive, etc. It well may be that part of the Chelsea aura is the feeling that it can't last.

Some people point to the neighborhood. They say that it has deteriorated. It does not seem so to me. Neighborhoods do not decay or disintegrate in an even and regular pattern. There seems to be no rhythm to the way an area goes down. To me, the Chelsea area seems much the same. The Hotel Chelsea has survived.

• • •

"But, James, look at some of the characters who live here. I swear they're certifiable."

My secretary had come down to the hotel to deliver some important mail to me. We had gone out to dinner and then returned to the hotel, where we sat in the lobby, watching people come in and go out. I looked at the people around me. No question about it. Some of them looked odd. Suddenly I remembered--I'll call him Lawrence.

Lawrence was almost middle-aged. He had lived in the Chelsea for a long time. He was always in a state of turmoil. One reason for this was that he had money problems. Another reason was his temperament. Lawrence was a cultivated man and one who had sensibility in literary matters. The little writing he was able to do revealed some style and showed taste. But writing was an agony for him. He talked well and wittily. Sometimes when I'd hear him speak, I'd think that he would make an excellent critic. If he had been able to put down on paper what he said, he would have.

One night, without any prelude, he told me that he would never again try suicide. The last time he had been taken to Bellevue and put into the psychiatric clinic had been too hideous. He couldn't survive another stay there. He described the experience--the brutal treatment and gross neglect. As he talked about it, he became more indignant. He concluded by saying that under the circumstances, he had no choice but to give up suicide attempts. He could not risk another Bellevue visit.

Lawrence had been drafted during World War Two. After going through a physical examination, he had been interviewed by an Army psychiatrist. In the course of the interview, Lawrence told the medic that some of his friends said that he was crazy.

The psychiatrist nodded and wrote on the form before him: "Says his friends think he's crazy."

Lawrence was enraged. He told the psychiatrist that he had been misquoted. He had not said that his friends think he's crazy; he had said that some of his friends think he's crazy. Then he went on to declare that should the record stand as it was written, 100 years hence, should someone read it, he would think that all of Lawrence's friends had thought that he was crazy and that he might be crazy, which was an untruth. He repeated that there was a difference between the statement that the doctor had written and the statement that he had made. He was classified 4-F and returned to his home in the Hotel Chelsea.

Lawrence was always in danger of eviction; he regularly fell behind in the payment of his rent. But somehow or other, he always managed to raise the money at the last moment. He borrowed it or took translation jobs or literary assignments. To finish these assignments meant agony for him. Finally, he would start telephoning his friends and telling them how miserable he was because he could not write. He would carry on for an hour or more about how he had to write in order to save himself from being put out onto the street.

I might add that in addition to his rent, Lawrence's telephone bill was another major problem for him. He would talk for hours. It was impossible to have a telephone conversation with him; he never gave anyone else a chance to talk. He would go on about how he was misunderstood, his financial circumstances--always about himself.

From time to time, Lawrence was beaten up. He never went into details about these assaults. He would appear with bruises and black eyes and say that he had been beaten severely.

I remember lending him my copy of Le Sabbat, by Maurice Sachs. I had known Sachs and he had some of the same tastes and proclivities as Lawrence. But Sachs did not have any writing blocks and was able to leave behind him, to be published posthumously, an extraordinary account of his life. While Lawrence was reading Le Sabbat, he was badly beaten at the subway station at 23rd Street and Seventh Avenue. He told me that my copy of Le Sabbat was a casualty of that experience, that the book was in such poor condition after his beating that he had not bothered to retrieve it.

I managed to replace the book. Lawrence borrowed my second copy to see how it ended. I don't remember what happened to that copy.

Then Lawrence disappeared. He left the Chelsea with no forwarding address. For years I did not know what had become of him. It was during my week at the Chelsea in 1973 that I learned that he had been in touch with people in the hotel after a silence of years, that he was living in the Southeast. I talked to several people in the hotel about him. Lawrence is remembered, and remembered somewhat pleasantly by them. Yet, when I lived there, he was considered the most bizarre resident. It could be that Lawrence was born too soon.

"It was a pleasure having you with us again. You belong in the Chelsea. Don't forget, if you change your mind and decide to move back, we could work out some arrangement. Think about it, Mr. Farrell."

I was glad to be leaving the Hotel Chelsea. I walked out front to get a cab. I turned to take one more look. On the outside, the hotel had not changed very much. Inside? Who can tell. I looked at the plaque. My eyes read the list--And Thomas Wolfe.

You can't go to the Chelsea again, either.