Wolcott Gibbs Tonight: Part 2 of "One with Nineveh," in which Gibbs has his 25-years-later reencounter with Lucius Beebe

Lucius Beebe in his reinvented role as a Virginia City, Nevada, newspaper publisher and Western cultural historian

"Mr. Beebe . . . was precisely as vast and stylish as he had ever been, and the years, if anything, had added something senatorial to his aspect. . . . I shuddered to remember that it was sometimes our drunken custom, late at night, in the lost and dissolute past, to address this monument disrespectfully as Lou or Beeb. 'It's nice to see you again, Lucius,' I said, and entered never-never land."

-- Gibbs, in tonight's installment of "One with Nineveh"

by Ken

In last night's first installment of Gibbs's 1956 combination profile-memoir "One with Nineveh," the author introduced us to the phenomenon that was Lucius Beebe, whom I described as "a bon vivant and habitué and chronicler of what he dubbed Café Society," though by the time of Gibbs's first meeting with the great man in a quarter-century, Beebe and his longtime business and life partner Charles Clegg had gone West, resettling in Virginia City, Nevada, and reinventing themselves as something very different -- newspaper publishers and railroad (or perhaps Western cultural) historians -- and yet somehow very much the same: "[J]ust as he did so long ago in New York, Mr. Beebe is intent on imposing an older and more jovial system of manners on a community not always quite sure what is expected of it, and even occasionally hostile."

In this concluding installment, Gibbs -- accompanied by his wife and 16-year-old daughter, who you'll recall was meeting her first millionaire (and remember that in 1956 a millionaire was still, well, a millionaire) -- disembarks on the New Jersey shore and "enter[s] never-never land," where auld acquaintance is renewed.


TO READ THE CONCLUDING INSTALLMENT
OF "ONE WITH NINEVEH," CLICK HERE


TOMORROW in WOLCOTT GIBBS TONIGHT: "Glorious Calvin (A Critical Appreciation)" -- described in the New Yorker archive as "a critical appreciation of Calvin Coolidge as a movie comedian," which first appeared shortly before the inauguration of the new president, Herbert Hoover (according to Gibbs: "a comedian whose work in supporting rôles has displayed a certain similarity")


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY TONIGHT,
WILL CUPPY TONIGHT, and now WOLCOTT GIBBS TONIGHT):
Check out the series to date

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