A Little Arthur Collins and etc.

Well, upon the kind request of one of my viewers, I will be happy to do a post about Arthur Collins, also because I don't speak of him very often. In doing this requested post, I will include the things that the kind comment had mentioned here. To start, here is the usual great old picture I use in these posts that I dig around for on the internet and in my record books:

Classic Collins and Harlan. 
Byron Harlan has always been dear to my heart, as he was a very modest and kind "country yap" as he would have been called(among other things), compared to the supposedly crass and vain Collins. I have beard all sorts of stories about Arthur collins, which vary from stories of revenge to yarns of deadly injuries. One that I don't think I have shared on this blog is one that involves the great old "Uncle Josh" himself, Cal Stewart.

So as the story goes, many of the Edison staff were doing a promotional concert for a local charity somewhere in Orange New Jersey. The show started finely and it went well until Stewart came up to do his act, where he would have to jump out a window and onto a mattress that was placed right where it needed to be. As the show went on, Stewart came out and did his spiel. Just before he jumped through the window, Collins thought it would be funny to kick the mattress aside. When Stewart went through, the audience was jolted by hearing the big thump! From Stewart hitting the wood of the backstage. Nobody was laughing, except for Collins. Harlan and the others probably were getting up hatred for him after he did that, which was probably prior to 1910. That was only the tail end of the things slightly wrong about Collins' sense of humor.
Harvey Hindermyer(seen below)

Was the one who said that Harlan was a kind and sweet gentleman, but then in regards to Collins, he said that was a very rude man where every other word he spoke was profanity. It's a very contradicting description Hindermyer gave, but in some ways, it would make sense. One would just have to think of their backgrounds to really be able to picture what Hindermyer said. That is a pretty accurate description of them in many ways however. 
One would not think of hearing such language coming out of Collins' mouth when they read his letters to either Harlan or the boys at Edison in the 20's. His diction in the letters is very Victorian and seems very polite. He did have very traditionally Victorian ways, even if his casual speech was not always the easiest to handle. His signature was even Spencerian! Look!

That looks an awful lot like another one of Collins' fellow Masons(and recording artists obviously!):

Hmmm... Len Spencer! 
Not surprising, Spencerian writing was taught nationwide in the 1860's 1870's 1880's and onward. It's so odd to think that Len Spencer must have had some sort of superiority over all the others he worked with at the record companies. Not just because of his money and societal status, but because most of the people he worked with(if they were born and raised on the east coast) were taught to write in the hand of his father's and his own. 
Anyhow, to close off, I would like to share this really fun picture of them from around 1919 at an unknown location:

I wish I knew where they were! 

I hope you enjoyed this!