SOURCE: “Ridgely Torrence,” in Music in My Time, Greenwood Press, 1938, pp. 140-45.

In the following excerpt, Mason describes the antic side of Torrence's disposition.

At our evening gatherings in the Judson the chief entertainer was always Ridgely Torrence. Ridgely was tall, thin, and very blonde. Singularly penetrating eyes gave to the long lean face under his high forehead an effect of spirituality, almost asceticism. Anyone prepared for that side of him by the mystical beauty of his poems might well have been puzzled when, in his more social mood, those very eyes that had just awed you with their seeming penetration into your inmost secrets would unexpectedly relent in friendliest smiles, or twinkle at some sudden conceit. Sometimes an almost imperceptible signal would show you, when the ironic aspect of his subject struck him, that their seriousness had changed to mock-seriousness. He selected his words with the deliberation...