An Exterior Disarrangement

My next two posts will revisit two peripherally connected news stories, one comic and one tragic. The first is recorded in The Fourth Estate, a trade periodical devoted to the newspaper business, on February 19, 1921.

EDITOR TO LEAVE GREENWICH VILLAGE.

NEW YORK MAGISTRATE DID NOT QUITE APPROVE OF THE MATERIAL INSERTED IN THE VAGABOND AND SO HE DECIDED TO EXILE ITS EDITOR.

Luther Emmanuel Widen of 148 West Fourth street, New York, editor of the Vagabond and a well known figure in the faddistic [sic] circles of Greenwich Village, was before Magistrate Joseph E. Corrigan in the Jefferson Market Court Wednesday and the magistrate said at first he guessed he would have to send the editor to Bellevue Hospital for observation. After reading an issue of Widen's paper, Magistrate Corrigan expressed the opinion that "no sane man would put out work like this."

In behalf of Widen was Dr. Lindley Kasdy, who said the editor was suffering from exterior but not interior disarrangement.

He also said Widen had been in Bellevue before, but that it did him no good. The magazine was said by the doctor to be published without malice to any one. It is filled with bits of village news and gossip, in which initials are used instead of names. The two gems that brought forth Magistrate Corrigan's comment regarding the editor's sanity were: "Mrs. — has married a man from West Virginia, but she still has her friends," and an article about a woman who "still looked pretty without her paint."

"I am going to send you to Bellevue for examination," said the magistrate. "This is an unusual magazine."

"Why should I go to Bellevue when I can go elsewhere?" asked Widen.

"Where will you go?"

"Astoria," said Widen.

"Well," said the magistrate, "if you will promise to leave Greenwich Village and not publish the Vagabond, and do all that in forty-eight hours, you won't be sent to Bellevue."

"I'll go right now," said Widen. He bowed deeply, and looked sadly from the window. "Never, never, shall I return. Farewell, Greenwich Village."

Better known as Lew Ney and often styled (at least by himself) "the Mayor of Greenwich Village," Luther Emanuel Widen (his middle name is spelled incorrectly in the article) was well-known in New York's bohemian circles in the 1920s and '30s as a writer, publisher, journalist, prankster, and publicity-hound. The straight-faced looniness of the article, which is unsigned, makes me half suspect that he had a hand in writing it himself. The New-York Tribune also ran a story on the incident, much of which corresponds closely to the above, though it adds a few other details, including the fact that The Vagabond had all of forty-eight subscribers (which would explain why I've been able to find no other record of it). It also clarifies — if that's the word — the circumstances that brought Widen before a city magistrate:

He was arrested because of the suspicions which his psychological methods aroused in a detective who was trying to find out who had been stealing gowns and jewelry from Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney's studio at 147 West Fourth Street. Luther's "office" is next door, and in a neighborly way he tried to help the detective, and, in fact, told him the name of the thief, which he discovered psychologically.

The Tribune also reported that Widen said that he might, on second thought, go to "sunny California" instead of Astoria. In any case he remained in Greenwich Village and probably never had any thought of leaving.

Shakers, Bohemians, and a Cat in a Cage

Family in tow, Lew Ney (Luther Emanuel Widen), writer, printer, and tireless self-promoter, takes an excursion into the hinterlands and visits, among other local worthies, the Shaker community of New Lebanon, NY. From the Chatham (NY) Courier, Jan 9. 1930 (PDF).

Lebanon Springs is played (sic) host to three distinguished writers this week, with the coming of Charles Willis Thompson, formerly connected with the New York Times; his son-in-law, Lew Ney, self-styled mayor of Greenwich Village, whose real name is Luther Emanuel Widen, and his wife, a daughter, Ruth, of Mr. Thompson.

They are visiting Mr. and Mrs. C. P. Browning, and Mr. Thompson is recuperating from a recent nervous breakdown. Mr. Ney is rewriting his book, "Mad Man."

Mrs. Widen is spending the week end arranging the manuscript for a first book of poems by Eva S. Browning, probably to be called "Cyclone and Other Poems," to be published by the Parnassus Press on March 1.

The New York visitors are spending several days communing with the Shakers. They have been entertained by Sarah Collins of the chair shop and have met numerous of the 30 or so surviving members of what was not so many years ago the most flourishing religious community in the world.

Mr. Thompson's book on the presidents and near-presidents he had known (these last including Bryan and Hanna) was published by the Macmillans. He is a regular contributor to the Commonwealth, the American Mercury and other current publications of literary quality. He still is an unofficial member of the Times' staff, writing reviews of books particularly those dealing with political events and personalities. He was a great friend and admirer of [Theodore] Roosevelt accompanying him in the great campaigns. With Wilson in his book he deals rather caustically.

One of the best known of Mrs. Ruth Widen's published works in entitled "In Praise of Pain" which has enjoyed extensive vogue and still is popular. Mr. Widen has just published a six-verse poem entitled "Sister Corinne," written by Sister Grace Ada Brown in memory of Sister Corinne Bishop who passed to her spirit home December 3, 1929.

Mr. Widen, in planning to come to the Berkshire country, had equipped himself in accordance with his impressions of what would be needed in the way of apparel to resist the rigors of a highland winter and was astonished upon arriving to find a spring flavor in the air. His knee-high boots, heavy coats and wraps would have been supplanted by more seasonable garments had he only known. He had with him his typewriter, a couple of grips containing his stationery, Christmas cards and so on and a caged cat.

I was at first surprised at the Courier's blunt allusion to Charles Willis Thompson's "nervous breakdown," but perhaps in that set it was regarded as a badge of honor. A copy of Sister Grace Ada Brown's brief tribute, printed by Lew Ney, is in the Shaker Collection of the New York State Library. Eva Browning's Cyclone and Other Poems was issued in 1930 in an edition of 320 copies. As far as I can tell Ney never published a book called Mad Man; perhaps, since he apparently pronounced his nickname Looney, it was intended to have been autobiographical.

A Map of Bohemia

Luther Emanuel Widen alias Lew Ney likely rates barely a footnote in American literary history, but there was a time during the 1920s and '30s when he had a certain notoriety in Bohemian circles, and a New York Times article, back in the day, even referred to him, perhaps generously, as "the Mayor of Greenwich Village." His most durable contribution to letters was probably as a letterpress printer responsible for such curiosities as Christopher Morley's Rubaiyat of Account Overdue, which was dedicated to Frances Steloff of the Gotham Book Mart, but he also garnered attention for such tepid publicity stunts as baptising a baby in the company of the entertainer Texas Guinan and paying for the marriage license for his wedding to Ruth Willis Thompson with 200 copper pennies donated by 100 friends. (Instead of receiving wedding gifts, Thompson, a poet, gave her guests copies of her latest book.) As a correspondent for Variety, Ney reportedly once concocted an item about an upcoming raid on an unnamed adulterous couple's Washington Square love nest, leading to widespread panic and hasty decamping on the part of any number of local philanderers who assumed that they were the parties in question.

I haven't been able to find a single online trace of the existence of this leaflet periodical, The Greenwich Village Saturday Night, which was written, illustrated, and distributed by Ney, and consequently I'm posting it in its entirety. It does say Volume II, No. 3, so presumably there were other issues, but on the other hand it also says "perhaps there will be a series of Saturday Nights similar to this issue in size and tone," so the numbering may have been a fiction.






For this issue, at least, Ney evidently had only one advertiser, the Smock Shop (smocks were big in Greenwich Village, apparently), but the effusiveness of his praise for the Little Quakeress restaurant suggests he might have been slipped a few coppers by that establishment as well. As a money-making scheme The Greenwich Village Saturday Night probably didn't go very far, but Ney's annotated map has a certain charm as a record of the Village's bygone amenities.

Update (2013): Julie Melby, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University's Firestone Library, has posted some examples of Wyden's printing work on the Graphic Arts Collection blog. The Princeton University Library holds one other number of The Greenwich Village Saturday Night in addition to the one shown here.