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The courtiers who stroll through Caliph Caen's Baghdad are the gay, sophisticated souls he thinks all San Franciscans should be—even when they're not. Since San Francisco boasts few genuine celebrities and fewer pressagents, Caen has made his own cast of characters familiar to every San Franciscan, e.g., an aging newsboy who is President Chester Alan Arthur's grandson;* Sir Robert Hadow, the ne plus U British consul; socialites named Icky Outhwaite, "Poom" de Ralguine (whom Caen calls the "handkisser extraordinaire"). Caen credits his characters with so many Caencocted witticisms that they often wind up believing they are, in fact, rapier-sharp raconteurs.
Turning San Franciscans' infatuation with their rip-roaring past to good advantage, Caen on newsless days bats out a wistful, whimsical column called "That Was San Francisco." One recent T.W.S.F. item recalled that Anita Howard Vanderbilt once arrived at Izzy Gomez' famed Bohemian bar wearing a bracelet containing a topaz the size of a pigeon's egg. "Lady," said a barfly on the next stool, "shouldn't you have that thing lanced?"
Words with Caviar. Sad-eyed, curly-haired Herbert Eugene Caen, 41, was born in Sacramento, went to work on the hometown Union as a sportswriter after getting out of high school. At 20, he was hired as a columnist by San Francisco Chronicle Editor Paul Smith (TIME, Dec. 24). After World War II (he wound up an Army captain), Caen returned to his Chronicle column despite tempting offers from the opposition Examiner. "I hope I'm never so poor that I have to work for Hearst," he once said. In 1950, nonetheless, Caen was lured over to Hearst's Examiner at nearly twice his Chronicle salary (1957 income: more than $40,000). Said he: "Now I'm eating my words—with caviar."
Divorced by his first wife (who threatened to name San Francisco as corespondent), Herb Caen in 1952 married a handsome blonde ex-model named Sally Gilbert, whose brighter sayings are dutifully reported in the column. With her daughter by a previous marriage, the Caens live in an eight-room Russian Hill apartment. No cable-car clinger, Caen drives a grey-and black Cadillac convertible on his rounds of nightclubs and restaurants, where, over Dubonnets-on-the-rocks, he gathers much of his material. An avid reader (favorite novelist: Evelyn Waugh), Caen in his off hours also plays tennis, and, like all good San Franciscans, rambles with his family through Golden Gate Park.