Let's Go See

IN spite of the fact that every day on which the temperature doesn’t hit 70 several wiseacres remind you that after the hurricane a hundred years ago there was a period of months euphemistically called the Summer That Was Not a Summer, things seem to be warming up nicely. Pavements are soft underfoot. . . .

THERE’S always a breeze on the water. You can ride around for three hours on a Manhattan Yacht Cruise. Makes you realize the city really is an island. . . . These leave West, 42nd Street three times daily. As do also the Hudson River Day Line boats, which go way up to Spuyten Duyvil, down around the Statue of Liberty, and end up — of all places! —at the Fair. . . . Takes four hours. . . .

DOWN at Liberty Pier you can got a boat, to the Jersey coast. Right out to Sandy Hook and back; or get off at Atlantic Highlands and take a train to Point Pleasant. . , . Perfect surf swimming on those long white beaches. Best of all at the Phipps Estate down below Mantoloking. . . . It’s a little trouble to get in there. You have to buy a season’s fishing license, and there are five miles of rough dirt road. But it’s worth it. No houses; holly trees as big as oaks; virtually no people. The place might be Papeete.

. . . Ascending some in the boat scale — the new Mauretania sails July 29. . . . The public can go aboard her while she’s at Pier 90. ‘Queen of the seas’ business. Worth an hour’s time. . . . You could eat reasonably near by, at Janet of France, on West 52nd Street. . . .

OF course the great take-off spectacle is the Clipper. Every Wednesday from Fort Washington for Horta, Lisbon, Marseilles. . . . Curious. This Portugal over which the giant hums so haughtily was a great clipper country herself, when it meant sails and months, not wings and hours. The Portuguese captains were the first to bring Chinese art to Europe. . . . Up on 57th Street, Isabella Barclay has an eighteenthcentury painted boiserie room from Portugal which was sophisticaledly beautiful when the Indians were camping on Wall Street. . . .

BUT older by three centuries are the Tarot cards, part of the summer exhibit at the Pierpont Morgan Library. Lombard artists painted into their intricate designs their fervent belief that the answers lay in the deck. . . . Well, no competent fortuneteller goes hungry, even now.

BEGINNING August 4, the American Fine Arts Galleries will house the fiftieth anniversary exhibit of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. . . . Lots of water has run under the bridge since a little braided hairwork and a nice hand with the worsteds were all a Female Academy young lady should decently do. . . . Incidentally, Mr. Dali has turned to prose, in the shape of a pale green manifesto of his ideas which came in our mail the other day. We didn’t understand it very well. . . . Seems everything is to be green. . . .

WALKING down Madison from 57th is a window-shopper’s paradise. . . . Anything from ten cents’ worth of perfume to a wicker bird cage from Rena Rosenthal or one of those huge lawn chairs from Abercrombie and Fitch which are a glorification of the one Great-uncle Matthew sent, home from Madras. . . . Pitt Petri’s summer china in the form of cauliflowers and lettuce and tomatoes looks like Longchamps’ windows. . . . Much the same promise of luxury is held out in W. and J. Sloane’s Rath Shop. They have things worked out so you can carry on your entire existence in the tub if you want to. . . . One broker we know times his morning bath by playing the Marche Funebre. Personally we find Gracie Fields’s Trek Song more bracing. . . . It’s a Rex record. Maybe at the Gramophone Shop’s new air-conditioned place at 290 Park—or at their old stand on 48th. . . .

GRANTED you’d like to take something home to the folks, bear in mind that the lost-andfound departments from Flushing to Abilene, Kansas, are piled high with unclassifiable objects in the form of the Trylon and/or Perisphere. They may be quaint in 1990; right now they are straight horror. . . . But at Tourneau, 125 Madison, you can spend your dollar for one of the best, gadgets we have seen: key ring with a tag which is exact color and number replica of your car’s license plate. . . .

UNLESS you know more than most, better resist the ‘antique’ jewelry shops, too. ... If you want a fair chance at that sort of thing the Provident Loan Society — largest, oldest, and most reliable pawnbrokers in the city — have auctions every month. One day dealers; one day the public. . . . Call their executive offices for the dates. . , .

THE Chatham’s outdoor terrace is as good as the food. . . . The St. Regis roof is very swell, and you can, if you like, play something called Patty-Cake with a lot of pretty girls from Hollywood. . . . But you’ll look awfully silly doing it.

ONE brand-new musical show is going strong. Streets of Paris; sort of the same roughhouse manner as Hellzapoppin, and very, very funny. , . . Portuguese comes in again here, being the only language Carmen Miranda speaks. This is her first New York appearance, and, from all signs, by no means her last. . . .

THE Fifth Avenue Playhouse is having its annual International Film shows. Gives you a chance to see good ones like Modern Times again. . . . Find out if they will show The City, which has left the Fair now. . . . Near by is the Brevoort’s sidewalk café. . . . The Brevoort’s basement and the back room at the Plaza are reassuringly, courteously eternal. . . .

NOT so some of the big restaurants at the Fair. Since chic New York has taken to dining and watching the lights, the places around the Lagoon are so fantastically successful that the head waiters are paranoiacs of arrogance. . . . Takes a humble spirit and a long purse to weather it.

BUT the Smithfield ham sandwiches and iced tea are fine. One of their stands is near the Railroads Building. . . . And, for all its great big strong engines, Railroads on Parade is, as a show, a good deal like an Old Home Week pageant some place. . . . (We’ve all worked so hard over it, really! Don’t you think Martha’s Willy is a sketch?)

As the weeks roll along, the most satisfactory outside murals arc Ezra Winter’s on the; States Building, Griffith Coale’s on the’ Railroads Building, Pierre Bourdelle’s on Food North and tile Heinz Building. . . . The mechanized interior mural by Billings in the Ford Building is curiously fascinating — a sort of robot Mesmer. . . . Ford’s little wooden men evolving basic products are fun. . . . But the lady at the information booth does not strike that folksy Dearborn note. More on the exiled Marchioness side, and weary, too. . . .

IT’S actually cold in the Chrysler Forest, and they let you sit down far enough from the Talking Car so you don’t have to listen. . . . On several of the super-future highways in General Motors super-futurama, a few of the tiny super-future cars are stalled. Bang in the middle of the 1960 traffic! . . . Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, I always say. . . .

THE most irresistibly funny sight in the whole place is the rear view of Roma, sitting, it appears, on five or six upturned peach baskets. . . . Still, like many other ladies, she looks very well at night, from the front. . . .

So does the whole Flushing Festival from the late plane to Boston. . . . Next best way to avoid the north-bound traffic is to put your car on the night boat.

LOTS of things going on in the New England hills. Though you needn’t have a serious purpose to drive through the valleys, over the divides, around the village greens. . . . The six concerts of the Berkshire Symphonic Festival take place from August 3 to 13. All 5700 seats in the amazing Shed are to be reserved this year. By mail, in advance. . . . Koussevitzky is, of course, conducting, and the announced program is magnificently varied. . . . The great trees at Tanglewood escaped the hurricane. . . . Nearest large inns are the Med Lion at Stockbridge and the Curtis Motel at Lenox. You’ll find rooms have been engaged months ahead. . . -

RAISES the whole question of overnight stops on motor trips. . . . Village post, offices always know who takes hoarders. Lots of off-the-beaten-track farmhouses with Tourists signs are better than small-town drummer’s hotels.

Up in Swanzey Center, New Hampshire, July 27-29, they are putting on an elaborate revival of Denman Thompson’s Old Homestead. Perfect setting for it. . . .

NEW Hampshire’s small bite of seacoast is beautiful. . . . Ham’s, in Portsmouth, have incomparable sea food. . . . Little Boar’s Head Inn hangs on the cliffside. ... In North Hampton, Mrs. Roland Baker raises her splendid Old English sheep dogs; architecturally hers are the most attractive small kennels we have ever seen, . . .

AT Pembroke is a W P A research herb garden. They will tell you all they know. . . . For that matter, the W PA American Stale Guides are so good that they’re about as necessary to a motor trip as Express checks. . . .

THANKS to the skiers, New Hampshire’s inns have expanded and improved. Also the hospitals.

. . . Seems Thoreau was the first on record to hurt himself in Tuckerman’s Ravine, but he only sprained his ankle. . . . Ski snow lasts well into July this year. . . . Peckett’s Inn, on Sugar Hill, and the old Hanover Inn at Hanover are especially nice. . . .

SINCE Rudyard Kipling, in the 90s, moved to Dummerston, outside Brattleboro, and there wrote, among others, the Jungle Hooks, a lot of writers have lived in Vermont. . . . (Incidentally, Kipling’s house, Naulakha, can he rented. . . . He didn’t, as you remember, got on very well with the Green Mountain boys. . . .) Characters ranging from Frost’s Hired Man to the Earthworm Tractor are being produced in these hills. . . .

THE Breadloaf School of English is now in session. Lasts until August 12; on August lb the Breadloaf Writers Conference begins its two weeks. . . . Middlebury town, perhaps to offset, all this, is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Morgan family who bred the horses. . . . The small wooden-bowl factory at Granville is a delight. Smells so nice, too. ... I he Regency toyhouse in Orford, built by Judge Wilcox for his office, is enough to make a commuter weep. . . . Add oddities: the Brigham Young monument at Whittington, and the Bowman edifice at Cuttingsville—egocentricity gone mad in a Rogers group. . . .

THE Dorset Players open July 21. . . . Town and Inn are wholly charming. Something like the White Cupboard at Woodstock. . . ,

ENDLESSLY beautiful, Vermont is. . . . The interior valley north from Bethel and on through Smuggler’s Notch is our favorite. . . . Peacham is unforgettable. . . . Miss Choate will take guests in her house there, besides having excellent food. . . . Of course to walk or ride a horse through the mountains is to see a new world. The New England Council in Boston will give you details of trails. . . . The good little Stone Fence Inn on Putney Road will tell you the place in Brattleboro to hire reliable horses. . . .

THE Williamstown Institute of Human Relations conference is from August 27 through September I. Reservations ahead will get you rooms in the college dormitories. Stimulating and distinguished people always there. . . . Address the National Conference of Christians and Jews, 300 Fourth Avenue, New York. . . .

AROUND about then the state and county fairs will begin. . . . Tractors and patchwork quilts. . . . Fat stock and cotton candy. . . . New York shop windows turning their thoughts to campuses, and the Hill trees showing faintly red. . . .