Duncan Hines (14 page)

On the morning of 11 October they drove through Cincinnati to Columbus, Ohio, to eat lunch in what he and all his “dinner detectives” believed was one of the finest restaurants in America, the Maramor
²³²
. Hines told his readers, “Don't feel that you have to have on your best bib and tucker. The weary motorist is equally welcome as the formal party guest.” It was here, Hines wrote, that the nation's best fried chicken was served. He was also impressed with the Maramor's adjacent gift shop, where “you can get some of the best candy and cookies I have ever tasted.”
²³³
He had nothing but the highest praise for the Maramor's owners, Mary and Malcolm McGuckin, and he entreated his readers to pay the
restaurant a visit, even if it was out of their way; many Americans did, to the McGuckins' delight. From Columbus, Ohio, the Hines drove across the Ohio state line into Indiana that afternoon and headed north to Fort Wayne, where they spent the night. The next morning (12 October), they left Fort Wayne and arrived in Chicago early that afternoon.

The Hines did not take any more lengthy trips together for the rest of the year, but they took a few day-trips. On 23 October they dined one last time that year at My Country Cousin, taking advantage of the location's rustic atmosphere before cold weather made the outing too uncomfortable to enjoy. The next day (24 October) the couple traveled to Heaven City School, Wisconsin, located about 60 miles north of the Chicago city limits. Six days later (30 October) they visited the White Fence Farm in Lemont, Illinois, one last time before it closed for the year.

The last two dates from Hines's travel log for this year show that he and Florence went to Burlington, Wisconsin, on 6 November and to LaGrange, Illinois, the next day. The purpose of the latter trip was to eat at the Green Shutters restaurant on LaGrange Road, a well-known tea room that featured a wide, screened-in porch for those days when dining outdoors was preferable. When they arrived there, however, they had to eat inside; the cool, brusque nature of Chicago's early November winds precluded their dining on the restaurant porch.

At first glance, the Hines' traveling might seem inordinately expensive, but even by 1937 standards, their expenditures for both food and lodging were relatively modest, most likely because that year they did not often venture too far from home. Their lodging expenses for the year came to $23.90; their most expensive room, the one in Gallatin, Missouri, cost them $2.75. Their meals for the year cost $102.50, each of them averaging between $2.00 and $2.50. Their recreational travel totaled 8,808 miles that year, considerably less mileage than their usual quota of 40,000 to 50,000 per year. Hines wanted to spend as much time with Florence as possible before she was nothing more than a memory and he did not travel much during 1937.

Richard Groves, son of Leslie Groves, remembered Florence Hines as a very charming person, outgoing, exuberant, and the world's greatest cook. Groves, attending secondary school away from home, frequently spent the day with Duncan and Florence when he was traveling through Chicago between semesters. He spent a week with them in the summer of 1935, and saw them again in the spring of 1936. Later that summer he and his mother came to Chicago where they were the Hines' guests, but when he returned to their doorstep in December of that year for a pre-Christmas visit, Hines spent time with Groves but Florence did not. Florence, Hines told the young man, was too ill to see him.
²³⁴

Despite Florence's illness, the frequency of Hines' travels in early January 1938 began to increase. On 8 January, the couple traveled to Evanston and Winnetka, Illinois, to eat lunch. They did not dine out for the rest of the month. Hines traveled to Winnetka, Illinois, on 15 January to visit the Hearthstone House for business reasons, but he did not eat there. The only time Hines and Florence dined out in February came on 6 February, when they ate at the Normandy restaurant in Oak Park, Illinois. Most of Hines's time during the second month of the year was spent in preparation for the 1938 edition of
Adventures in Good Eating
.

By January 1938 Hines's book orders finally exceeded the production abilities of Wright's firm. Shortly after, Hines soon amicably parted company with Wright, both as client and employee. For a new printing facility Hines chose one of the biggest in the business, R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company.
²³⁵
A measure of how well Hines's publishing venture had blossomed in a little less than two years is revealed in a contract with the Donnelley company. Hines told them to print 11,500 copies of
Adventures in Good Eating
. The expense left him with $3,068.10 less than he had the day before, but after Hines sold the entire print run, his gross sales came to $17,250.
²³⁶
From this it is easy to see he was earning a comfortable, if not an extravagant, living. By the time this edition of
Adventures in Good Eating was
published in mid-1938, word-of-mouth advertising had increased the book's sales to such an extent that his enterprise was making money on its own—and he had
scarcely advertised it.
Adventures in Good Eating
was a self-contained engine of self-promotion. From this point forward Hines never again worried about losing money as a publisher.

As winter gave way to spring and the weather began to clear, Florence indicated that she felt strong enough for yet another long trip. Therefore, on 15 March 1938, the couple left their Chicago apartment and headed down the road in search of new restaurant adventures as well as old haunts. On 16 March, the Hines arrived in Lebanon, Missouri for a meal. On 17 March, they drove to Little Rock, Arkansas, and to the corner of Capitol Avenue and Fifth Street, where they dined on spoon bread and escalloped chicken at the Freiderica Hotel with its owners, the Pecks. On 18 March, they set out for New Orleans to dine together one last time at Antoine's Restaurant where they consumed perhaps that restaurant's most famous dish, Oysters Rockefeller. From there, they called on as many culinary haunts as their schedule allowed. They stayed at New Orleans' St. Charles Hotel through 19 March
²³⁷
and left town on March 20 for Memphis. Crossing the Tennessee border late that afternoon, they dined that evening on English muttonchops in that city's Little Tea Shop on Monroe Street. On 21 March they left town for St. Louis, Missouri, dining early that evening at the Oltz House, 8 miles past the city limits, where they were feted with “roast duck with wine and orange sauce and guinea under glass with a slice of Virginia ham.”
²³⁸
They returned to Chicago the next day on 22 March, satiated with good cuisine and many memories. For the first three months of 1938, their traveling expenses totaled $28.60 for lodging and $44.69 for meals.

April of that year left Hines consumed with business, as he arranged to get new editions of his book into as many outlets as possible. The official release date for the latest edition of
Adventures in Good Eating
was 1 April, but because of last minute pre-publication problems, distribution did not begin until 10 April. The Donnelley Company agreed to handle all the shipping for him, and this aspect of the business underscored why he felt it necessary to leave Wright. The smaller company was simply unable to handle the enormous distribution effort Hines's book required.

Of the books printed for the next edition, Hines kept 766 copies for himself. On 10 April he received them in several boxes, via Chicago's Picket Truck Line, which he kept scattered in secluded corners of his Cornell Avenue home over the next several months until he eventually sold them to his many correspondents across the nation. Hines sent these books to interested individuals who had heard about his efforts as well as those listed establishments that desired to sell the book on their premises. At Hines's instruction the Donnelley company sent Warren Gibbs 700 copies. Whenever a new printing came off the press, Donnelley also sent several hundred copies to the Marshall Field department store in Chicago and to the Dearborn Inn in Dearborn, Michigan. Aside from these two high volume locations, most distributors received the usual number of copies, which ranged from 5 to 100.
²³⁹

The books having been disbursed and their distribution now comfortably in Donnelley's hands, Hines and Florence decided in late May to take another trip across the country; this time they pointed their automobile toward the Northeast. On 21 May 1938, they stayed at Philadelphia's Walnut Park Plaza;
²⁴⁰
that evening they supped on red snapper chowder at Bookbinder's Restaurant, while they watched their steaks being broiled over the restaurant's open fireplace. From there they traveled to New York, a city that Hines, during his lifetime, was to visit in excess of 150 times for culinary adventures; Hines liked New York because it offered over 30,000 restaurants to choose from.

Hines and Florence stayed at the Hotel St. Regis for three days.
²⁴¹
Although the Waldorf-Astoria was Hines' favorite hotel in the 1940s, in the 1930s he favored the Hotel St. Regis. In his guidebook Hines wrote of the St. Regis that “for fine living in New York this hotel ranks high among the very best. It is beautifully equipped and beautifully run (not overcrowded with large conventions).” There were several restaurants within the interior of the St. Regis, and Hines was most impressed with all of them, particularly their special policy regarding wines, one guaranteed to leave few empty hotel beds. He wrote that “their wine list is undoubtedly outstanding in America. Far too many places charge
too much for wines. The St. Regis makes a sincere effort to popularize wine drinking by pricing really fine wines at extraordinarily low prices.” Of the hotel's restaurants, Hines was quite charitable toward them all, writing that “The Iridium Room…is fashionable, has a fine orchestra. The Oak Room…is a charming, quiet dining room…. The Maisonette Russe provides… Russian atmosphere, [along with] excellent Russian and French cooking. On the roof, for summer, is one of the most charming eating places in New York, with a lovely show.”
²⁴²

Hines said of New York restaurants that there were so many good ones that he could write a book devoted to them alone. One of these haunts was Keen's English Chop House on West 36th Street. Walking into it was like walking into a British ale house of a century earlier. The establishment was “paneled in dark wood. In winter, stout logs blaze[d] merrily in a cheery open fireplace. The chairs and tables [were] made of oak.” But the restaurant did not live in the past. On one visit, Hines discovered it was offering its patrons something quite novel: 3-D viewers by which diners could view and then select a variety of mouth-watering entrees.
²⁴³
After three days of gorging themselves with the best food they could find, Hines and Florence returned to Chicago, stuffed and happy.

Upon their return home, Hines's mail revealed some good news. The Donnelley company reported that the print run of the latest edition of
Adventures in Good Eating
was nearly exhausted and public demand for the books was still running high. They were filling orders for them every day. Sales were so brisk that Hines, frightful of being caught short, ordered Donnelley to print another edition. On 1 July Donnelley presented Hines with the bill for his request: $2,107.18 for 11,595 copies.
²⁴⁴
Considering what his expenses were and what he was making from each book, Hines considered himself extremely lucky to have a printer who could operate this quickly.

While Hines's book was a profitable venture, he saw he could increase his income by printing another annual volume on his other area of expertise: good places to sleep. In the summer of 1938, just as Florence's health began to worsen, he published the
first edition of
Lodging for a Night
, which was a guide to 3,000 superior hotels and motels found in the continental United States. It was Hines's intention for both books to complement the other.
²⁴⁵

In the 6 August 1938, issue of
Publisher's Weekly
, the book publishing industry's trade magazine, there appeared a two-page story about Hines's success in self-publishing. The story noted that since the April publication of the latest edition of
Adventures in Good Eating
, 11,500 copies “literally sold itself…with only word-of-mouth recommendations to push it along.” The article also said Hines had recently been granting a considerable number of newspaper interviews and had appeared on both Ruth Wakefield's and Mary Margaret McBride's radio shows to tell the public about the book and why they should buy it.

The article also reported that earlier in the year, when Hines had visited Philadelphia in May, a reporter for the Philadelphia Evening Ledger interviewed him and the resulting piece was printed shortly thereafter. The public response to the article was so popular that the newspaper published 20,000 enlarged copies of it and mailed it to interested individuals. But the one fact about Duncan Hines that caught everyone's attention and impressed them was his refusal to accept advertising. One restaurant offered Hines $10,000 for an advertisement; Hines refused, “preferring to keep his book uninfluenced by any commercial considerations.” This principled statement came while the country was still mired in the Depression and impressed the public even more. The
Publisher's Weekly
article concluded by informing readers of Hines's new book,
Lodging for a Night.
²⁴⁶

In the latter part of the summer of 1938 Florence Hines ceased traveling with her husband. Surviving hotel receipts list Hines as a hotel guest but without his wife to accompany him. Apparently, she was in severe discomfort with cancer spreading throughout her body. There is no doubt Hines would have preferred to stay by her bedside, but, Christian Scientist to the end, Florence likely asked him not to worry about her and told him to continue working on his guidebooks. So he did. But, with a couple of exceptions, his
travel records show he did not stray too far from home, and he did not leave the house regularly.