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Arlene Weiss sent the following light hearted reminiscence from Chicago - we enjoyed it and hope you will too.

THE LAST FABIAN

By Arlene Weiss

I had a friend, Ernestine, who always dreaded Mondays, because it was the start of the work week. But I always looked forward to Mondays. That was because after work every Monday a group of us all got together and went bowling on Fourteenth Street. I was not a good bowler. I was a terrible bowler. But the people were so great. The organizers of the group, Mr. and Mrs. Walterhouse, were both editors at a small publishing company on lower Fifth Avenue called Barnes and Noble. They had an enormous amount of interesting friends and after the bowling, we would all walk down to St. Marks Place in the Village, where the Walterhouses had a large apartment. That's when the fun and laughter would really begin. You never knew who might show up there - a visiting mathematician from Paris, a writer working on a biography of Garcia Lorca, a lady lawyer (something not too common in those days), or a commercial artist working on the Coca-Cola account.

And, of course, there was always Harry Craven. Pardon me, Readers Digest, but Harry Craven was truly one of the most unforgettable characters I've ever met. At that time, Harry was a small, spry man in his late 70's who was veddy veddy British. Upon meeting you for the first time, Harry would immediately announce that he was one of the original members of the Fabians. What's a Fabian? Why didn't you know? The Fabians were the original British Socialists. Harry then straightaway told you that one of his fellow members was George Bernard Shaw. And Lytton Strachey, who was famous for writing a book called The Eminent Victorians. Harry loved stories - and one he told over and over and OVER again was when they asked Lytton Strachey what was the most important thing in life, he screamed in his shrill falsetto voice, "Passion, my dear, Passion!"

Founded by Sydney and Beatrice Webb, the Fabian Socialist Society in Great Britain preached the theory of the "gradualness of inevitability" or "the inevitability of gradualness". One of those, anyway. I never could remember which. To listen to Harry, he was an important, vital part of the group. But eventually I found out differently. I looked up Harry Craven in a book I once came across on British socialism. His name was listed in the index, all right, but with just one reference. I turned to the page, and there it was, listed with about fifty other "important" members. So a big deal in the Fabian society he was not.

But Harry did reign supreme at his flat on East Tenth Street. He always got a kick out of describing his building as having a "rakish" air. Like at the Walterhouse's on a Monday night, you never knew whom you would meet there. There were always several unusual and colorful "blokes" sitting around, gossiping and listening to Harry tell the same anecdotes and stories, principally about upper-crust British society. In fact, to this day, whenever I hear a variation of one of Harry's jokes, I always hear the way Harry told it .

It was evident to all of Harry's many friends that he had never been a particularly good family man. Of course, he never said that he was. There was a lovely cameo picture of a young lady, which he kept on his desk, which I assumed, was his wife. No indeed, I realized much later that it was a picture of the stage and screen actress, Celeste Holm. Harry had two sons, neither of which he talked much about. One son was associated with the Ethical Culture Society in New York and the other was in England, having married a British actress. Neither son seemed to have played much of a role in Harry's flamboyant life. But when you sat in Harry's dingy living room, listening to his stories and watching him puff on his long cigarette holder, you forgot all about Harry's neglected wife and children. And one other fascinating thing about Harry - he was, according to one old friend, the only man he ever knew who managed to get through life without ever holding a job. Or even having any particular source of income. Well, that's not exactly true. Harry did have roomers. They never stayed long, of course, but Harry always knew plenty about them. One tried suicide when her lover married another woman (that was the lady lawyer). Another had a recurrent dream of being stranded on Staten Island on the day they dropped the bomb. Harry even had the effrontery to brag that Vladamir Nabokov once was one of his roomers.

Of course, in those days all girls who lived in New York had to make at least one trip to Europe. Since I knew I would be going to London, I asked Harry for the address of his son, which he gave me. I looked him up. He had a motorcycle repair shop and was fixing a motorcycle when I walked in - with regards from his father in the States. He immediately invited me to join him for lunch. We ate at one of those cute English places, with a menu that consisted mainly of deep-dish pies. We carried on a lively conversation, and then, at the end of the meal, he matter-of-factly said, "Well, how is the old man?"

My part in Harry's life was to accompany him to Save the Village meetings, to restaurants and parties. But as time went on and I got married and moved uptown, it became obvious that his life on Tenth Street was becoming more and more difficult. Whenever I was in the neighborhood and came to visit him, I noticed the place becoming shabbier and shabbier. His living room was now also his bedroom, and when the end finally came, as Mrs. Walterhouse put in to me on the phone, "With Harry, it was time."

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This page last updated on 1/2/99