New York (Evening) Graphic (continued)

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

        While Barry has got you folks all looking for the New York Graphic,
let me send you off after The Morning Telegraph of 1905-1910.  The
New York Public Library has the Telegraph up to 1905, and from 1910
and after.  During the missing years it was home to Helen Green, a
sketch writer who contributed a story on almost a daily basis.  These
stories have entirely disappeared, except for 60 or so that she
collected in a self-published book called "The Actor's Boarding
House."  Many of the stories are about low-life in New York -- "how
does a woman know these things?", a reviewer asked -- and are filled
with slang -- "correct slang, too", according to another reviewer.
The Actor's Boarding House has been combed for RHHDAS.  Other stories
are set in the west -- she claimed to have been in the Yukon and
Idaho gold rushes.  There is a very interesting hemingwayesque
story about a big-game hunter and his code, written when Hemingway
was in junior high school.  She also wrote stories about
horse-racing -- she also claimed to have been a successful jockey
and horse trainer, from the age of 14 -- but none are included in
her book.  Her sketches ran in series.  A horse-racing series was
called "Travels with a Badge Horse".  She published two other books
of stories, but they did not include any of her work for the MT.

        The MT was strictly a New York paper, devoted to news of
the city, of vaudeville, and of horse-racing.  Haywood Broun was an
editor, and wrote on his experience there, not mentioning Green.
Peter Finley Dunne was briefly the editor, just before Green's
association with it.  The Horse Racing Museum at Saratoga doesn't
have it.  It was bought up by the Daily Racing Form and killed, in
the 60s, I think.  The Racing Form's library had a file back to the
mid-30's.  Perhaps some old-time racing family has a file in the loft
of a stable.

        I did a good deal of research on Green about 10 years ago -- she
seems to me to be an interesting writer, yet, for obvious reasons,
entirely forgotten.  From the point of view of philology, if the MT
is found, it should be a fine repository of slang, and not only in
Green's sketches.

        If any of you should ever find it necessary to cover your tracks, I
can heartily recommend Helen Green's technique: move often, change
your name often, and lie about your past.

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