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Leon Trotzky, the Russian foreign minister who is trying his best to perpetuate the Harry Thaw of Potsdam, is well remembered among the night birds at Jack’s restaurant. He used to appear there with Benjamin De Casseres, the poet. De Cessares found Trotzky in “The Gilded Snake,” in West Eighth Street. He introduced him to Frank O’Malley, Tad Dorgan and other Bohemians. Trotzky was like an elephant in a toy store and bucked around proclamating himself. He wore one pin, a Waterbury, and had twelve cents. He is known to have borrowed 8 cents from Jack Francis, a Broadway press agent, to buy a haircut one night in one of the dingy 8 cent hair-cutting places. He drank rum, cursed Wall Street and smoked innumerable foul-smelling Russian cigarettes. This is the man who is now trying to be president of the planet. – Washington Herald, Jan 18, 1918
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I'm struck by the comment, "He is known to have borrowed 8 cents[...]to buy a haircut one night in one of the dingy 8 cent hair-cutting places." It conjures up an image of one of those disreputable seaside tattoo parlors in old movies, only the proprietor shears his clients instead of decorating them.
ReplyDeleteInteresting comment reminding us what grifters the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution were. Lenin similarly bummed around Switzerland.
ReplyDeleteColton Waugh deserves more recognition as a really good cartoonist.