He actually walked on tiptoe to come nearer to take a look.
He actually walked on tiptoe to come nearer to take a look.
He actually walked on tiptoe to come nearer to take a look.
He left the room, and returned shortly with a parcel wrapped up in white tissue paper, which he gently unfolded. He showed us a little piece of white satin with some pink flowers painted in the center, and trimmed around with cream lace; also two pieces of embroidery of a really fine quality. He handled these works of art, as he called them, poor fellow, with an almost reverent tenderness, and Lois and I loudly expressed our admiration of them.
“I’m keeping them,” said Tim, “for the little girl back home. She’ll be coming to me before long, and I’ll have her little nest as elegant as the finest of them,” he said shyly. “My Katy has eyes like this little girl here, and it’s real smart you are to do such grand work, Miss Marion.”
“Say, Mr. O’Leary,” I said, “I’m going to make you something to add to your collection for your little girl.”
I kept my word, and in a few days I had painted on a piece of blue satin that Lois found among her things a bunch of roses which poor Tim declared he could almost smell. That same evening he brought me two enormous whiskey bottles. They were about five feet high—sample bottles. They were, of course, empty. Tim made the astonishing request of me that I should paint on them, and he offered to pay me.
So I painted a little seascape on one and a wreath of lilies of the valley and forget-me-nots on the other. Of course, I would not take pay from Tim for them. The following day Tim came rushing in to tell me he had placed them on his bar, and all of his friends and customers had thought them great, and one man had offered him five dollars apiece for them. He said that nothing would induce him to part from them, but he was sending over to me all the big sample whiskey bottles he could get, and also beer and wine and champagne bottles, and he said if I would paint on these he would sell them for me. Well, the astonishing part is that he did sell them. I must have decorated at least twenty of those awful bottles, and Tim got me about forty dollars for my work. So I was able to pay Miss Darling, and I went over to the boarding-house where I still owed that bill and I paid it. To my surprise the landlady tried to force two dollars back upon me:
“We all know how sick you’ve been,” she said, “and I said to my man: ‘We’ll never see the color of that board money,’ and he ses: ‘You’ll get it yet,’ and you see he’s always right. So here, you can take two of it back, and may you have the good luck your pretty face should bring you.”
Lois sailed on one of the small merchant liners,and it left the pier at five in the morning, so we had to get up very early to see her off. We had sat up very late the night before, and Dr. Squires had spent the evening with us and promised to be at the pier to see her off. The morning was foggy and chilly. I clung tightly to Lois before I let her go, and the doctor said:
“Here, give another fellow a chance.”
He, too, kissed Lois, and there were tears in both their eyes.
IT is inconceivably hard for a girl without a definite trade or profession, and possessed of no particular talent, to earn her own living. With Tim O’Leary’s help I had made a little money that tided me over for a time, but I realized that it was merely a temporary relief. The artists would not be returning for a couple of months, and I was in a quandary what I should do. A letter from Lil Markey, the girl who had posed for Count von Hatzfeldt in Montreal, made me consider the advisability of joining her in New York.
This is Lil’s letter:
“Dear Marion:Here I am in little old New York. Been here two months now. I’m trying to get a job on the stage, and I’ve almost landed one. You ought to come on here. There’s lots better opportunities, especially for a model. I have all the work I can do just now posing for the Standard, a theatrical paper.Now, there’s a fellow here who is going to get a bunch of girls and put us in living pictures. All one needs is the looks. Say, why don’t you come on and join me here? I’ve a little flat with a couple of other girls, and we need another to squeeze in and help pay the expenses. I’d prefer you to anyone I’ve seen here. Say, some of them are tough though!I was awfully sorry to hear about the old Count dying. Ada told me how cut up you were about it, too. I’ve a date now—my meal-ticket!With love,Lil.”
“Dear Marion:
Here I am in little old New York. Been here two months now. I’m trying to get a job on the stage, and I’ve almost landed one. You ought to come on here. There’s lots better opportunities, especially for a model. I have all the work I can do just now posing for the Standard, a theatrical paper.
Now, there’s a fellow here who is going to get a bunch of girls and put us in living pictures. All one needs is the looks. Say, why don’t you come on and join me here? I’ve a little flat with a couple of other girls, and we need another to squeeze in and help pay the expenses. I’d prefer you to anyone I’ve seen here. Say, some of them are tough though!
I was awfully sorry to hear about the old Count dying. Ada told me how cut up you were about it, too. I’ve a date now—my meal-ticket!
With love,Lil.”
Lil’s letter had started my thoughts on an old trail. The desire to act came creeping back on me. It was like an old thirst that suddenly awoke and tugged at one’s consciousness to be satisfied. In Boston I had not thought to see theatrical managers. Reggie had long ago successfully squelched my ambitions in that line. Now Lil’s letter and her reference to Mr. Davis quickened a new hope within me.
Perhaps, as Lil wrote, conditions were better in New York. Certainly there should be more work for a model, and perhaps I might in time really get on the stage. I had enough money for my fare and a little over, and New York appealed to me. Still, I had not definitely decided to go until after I had read the letter that came from Reggie:
“Dearest Old Girl:” (he wrote.)“I am so glad you are keeping well, and have quite recovered from your recent indisposition. I have been up to my eyes and ears in important work. I’m going to run for the next elections for the ninth ward. What do you think of that for a young and rising Barrister? I’ll bet you are proud of your Reggie, now aren’t you, darling? As for me, now that the rush has let up a bit, I am simply famishing for the sight of my little Marion. Andnowfor thebestnews of all. I’m leaving for Boston to-morrow evening, and I’ll be with you within a day! There won’t be any more cross, stiff little letters coming to me from Boston, from a strange Marion that’s not a bit like the loving little girl I know. The States is no place for a girl like you, darling, and I’m going there to fetch you home. Be at North station at 8.15.YourReggie.”
“Dearest Old Girl:” (he wrote.)
“I am so glad you are keeping well, and have quite recovered from your recent indisposition. I have been up to my eyes and ears in important work. I’m going to run for the next elections for the ninth ward. What do you think of that for a young and rising Barrister? I’ll bet you are proud of your Reggie, now aren’t you, darling? As for me, now that the rush has let up a bit, I am simply famishing for the sight of my little Marion. Andnowfor thebestnews of all. I’m leaving for Boston to-morrow evening, and I’ll be with you within a day! There won’t be any more cross, stiff little letters coming to me from Boston, from a strange Marion that’s not a bit like the loving little girl I know. The States is no place for a girl like you, darling, and I’m going there to fetch you home. Be at North station at 8.15.
YourReggie.”
As I read Reggie’s letter, strange thoughts swept turbulently over me.
What was he coming for? Why should he take me back? Had the time come at last when he felt able to marry me? He had put off our marriage so long upon one excuse or another that I could not help feeling sceptical over the possibility that now the time had actually come; for his mention of his coming political fight made me wonder whether he would not be the firstto think that this was a bad time for him to marry. He would need the support of the Marbridge family more than ever, and I knew that much of that support had come because ofMissMarbridge’s personal interest in Reggie. Ada had written me that it was generally rumored in Montreal that they were engaged.
No! I felt sure Reggie was coming simply to gratify his selfish desire to see me. In his way, I knew he loved me, so far as it was possible for a man like Reggie to love, and it seemed to me that never again could I supinely be the victim of his vanity and pride. He should not come to me and pour out his confidences and his boastings; nor lavish on me caresses that could not be sincere. His influence over me had waned; and yet as I thought of his coming now, I felt a vague sense of helplessness and even terror. Might not the old influence prevail after all?
I walked up and down my miserable little room, wringing my hands and desperately trying to decide what I should do. I thought of his coming with a feeling of both longing to see him and of revulsion. I reread his letter and it seemed to me, in spite of his tender phrases, that the man’s self-centered character stood out clearly in every line. All of Reggie’s letters to me had laid stress upon the success of his progress both in politics and the law, and although he assumed that Iwould be pleased and proud, I had in reality felt fiercely resentful. I could not help comparing his circumstances and mine. I had literally been starving in Boston. I had done that thing which in the eyes at least of my own kind of people, if known to them, would have put me “beyond the pale.” I had stood in a room, naked, before half a score of men! My face burned at the thought, and I suffered again the anguish I had felt when I ascended, like a slave, that model’s throne.
Feverishly I packed my clothes. I would go to New York! Reggie should not again find me here to hurt me further.
My train would not leave till night and I had a few friends to whom I wished to bid good-bye. When I was leaving the house I met Tim O’Leary, and he invited me to have lunch with him. I smiled to myself as I sat opposite that bartender thinking what Reggie would say if he could see me and I suddenly said to Tim:
“Tim, do you know, you are more of a real gentleman than the grandson of a Duke I know.”
Tim’s broad, red face shone.
When I said good-bye to Rose St. Denis she took me in her arms like a mother.
“Enfant,” she said, “you are so t’in from ze seekness, I have for you ze pity in my ’eart. I will not see your face never again, but I will makeme a prayer to le bon Dieu to pitifully tek care of ‘ma petite sœur.’”
“Oh, Rose,” I said, crying, “I’ll never, never forgetyou. I think the thought ofyouwill always keep megood!”
I was fortunate in finding Dr. Squires in, though it was not his office hour. He seemed glad to see me and when I said:
“Doctor, I am off for New York,” he answered:
“What’s the matter with Boston, then?”
I explained that I thought that I could do better in New York and he agreed that my chances there were more promising. Then I said:
“Doctor, I want to thank you for all your kindness to me, and will you please tell me how much your bill is?”
He had not only come to see me two or three times a day during my illness, but he had also supplied all the medicines. He looked at me very seriously when I asked for his bill, and then he said in a deep thrilling voice:
“You do not owe me a cent. It isIwho am indebted toyou.”
I knew what he meant, and, oh, it did thrill me to think that my illness had brought those two beautiful people together, Lois and her doctor.
When I was going out, I said:
“Doctor, I am going on the stage. Perhaps I’ll succeed. Wish me good-luck.”
“I wish you the best of luck in the world,” he said cordially, “and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear of your success. You look like Dusé, Bernhardt, Julia Marlowe, and at times like a composite of all the great actresses.” He did not laugh when he said that, and he wrung my hand warmly as if he actually meant it.
Once when I was a little girl, my father had punished me for something bad that I had done, and I determined to run away from home and be a gypsy. I followed an organ-grinder down the street and told him that I wanted to go with him. But he turned around and drove me back, shouting angry words at me. I crept home and hid in the barn till Charles found me there and dragged me into the house by the ear.
In running away from Reggie I had somewhat the same feeling. My heart was bursting with my love for him and at the same time with my vindictive purpose to punish him. I felt my knees trembling under me as I climbed aboard the train. Nevertheless, Reggie’s influence over me seemed to vanish the farther away we got from Boston as it had when I left Montreal.
As we came into New York, I peered out of the window. The city appeared uninviting and the buildings ugly as the train passed along;nevertheless I felt already its encroaching fascination. I experienced the feelings of a child who holds a package of unknown contents in his hand, wondering and fearing to open it lest he be disappointed.
Lil lived on One hundred and ninth Street and she had sent me directions how to get there. When I came out on Forty-second Street with my valise in my hand, I did not know which way to go—which was east, west, south or north.
A man on the train, who had given me a magazine and opened the window for me, offered to carry my valise. He asked me where I was going and I told him that I wanted to find the Sixth Avenue elevated. Carrying my bag, he took me to the elevated station at Sixth Avenue and Forty-second Street. I thanked him and he said:
“It’s nothing. If I had a sister arriving in a strange town alone, I’d hope some one would do as much for her.”
LIL had a tiny little flat near Columbus Avenue. She was delighted to see me and introduced me to the two other girls. They were both quite pretty with bright golden hair and wonderful complexions. Lil whispered to me that their hair was bleached and she said that they got their complexions from the corner drug store. I suppose in the daytime I could have seen that for myself, but I had arrived at night and I was dead tired. The girls were all very friendly and later in the evening a number of men friends called. I was too tired and sleepy to sit up with them and I went to bed. The flat was so small that I could hear them talking and they seemed to sit up all night. In spite of the noise of their chatter and laughter I went to sleep.
I stayed with Lil in that flat for a month and we all shared expenses. I got work right away with some advertising photographers who paid me five dollars for a sitting—but that would take a good part of the day. Lil and the other girls posed for the “Standard,” a kind of theatricalmagazine, that ran pictures of chorus girls, etc. I remember one picture which showed the girls tumbling out of a toboggan, and another where they all were supposed to have fallen out of a street-car. I could have done this work, too, but it seemed tawdry and dirty work to me and so long as I could get the photographic work I much preferred it.
In September we were all engaged to be living pictures by a man who was putting them on in vaudeville houses. The subjects represented were strictly proper ones, such as “Youth,” “Psyche,” “The Angelus,” “Rock of Ages,” etc. We received fifteen dollars a week. As we lived cheaply and men were always taking us out to dinner, our expenses were really small, and although Lil urged me to get some new clothes, I paid off my debt to Lu Frazer.
I suppose I ought to have been contented, but the work seemed stupid to me. I tired of the everlasting talk of chorus girls. They all seemed to have but one interest, and that was the stage. Mind you notacting, but thestageand all the cheap shop talk that goes with it. What is more, I was weary of Lil and her girl friends and their men friends. They sat up at the little flat so late that it was almost impossible to sleep; and there was too much drink and crazy laughter. It worked upon my nerves and I began to longfor the atmosphere of the studios once more. I thought that posing for the artists was, after all, preferable to this cheap “acting.” So when an offer came to me of twenty-five dollars a week as a show girl in a popular “musical show,” I refused it, although Lil and the other girls exclaimed enviously over my “luck.” They seemed to think that I was out of my senses and shrieked at me:
“What on earthdoyou want then?” And I replied wearily:
“I don’t know myself. I guess I just want to be let alone.”
How those girls did exclaim at that! Apparently, to them, I thought myself better than they were; but indeed this was not the case. I just realized that our interests were different. What seemed exciting and fine to them, seemed to me just stupid, and the miserable lot of little Willie boys who were always hovering about us with their everlasting cigarettes and silly short coats and foolish hats disgusted me. The artists for whom I had worked in Boston weremen.
Thus I decided to leave Lil. Anyway there was some talk of their all going out with a road show and they expected to give up the flat soon.
IHAD had a furious letter from Reggie the day after I arrived in New York, and we had been quarreling by letter ever since. He accused me of deliberately leaving Boston when I knew that he was coming and he said: “It was a low-down trick and I shall never forgive you.” In his anger he also wrote that perhaps the reason for my leaving was that I knew that he would find out the kind of life I had been living there. He wrote:
“I met a few of your ‘friends’—a low-down bartender and a store clerk (Poor Billy Boyd’s room-mate, I suppose) and let me compliment you on your choice of associates. Your tastes certainly have not changed.”
I did not answer that first letter; but he wrote me another, apologizing, and at the same time insinuating things. To that second letter I did reply, hotly. And so it went on between us.
After leaving Lil’s, I found a little room on Fifteenth Street near Eighth Avenue. It was cheap and fairly comfortable and I soon got settled there. Then I started out to look up someartists whose addresses had been sent to me by the Boston men. Right away I secured several engagements. I found, moreover, that my room was only a couple of blocks from what the artists called “Paresis Row” on Fourteenth Street. Here many artists occupied the upper floors, which had been turned into studios in these buildings, once the pretentious homes of the mighty rich people. On the lower floors various businesses were carried on.
I was sent to a man who had a studio in Paresis Row. He was a friend of Mr. Sands and although he did not use models he said he would try and help me get work. He explained to me his own kind of painting as “old-master potboilers.” Sometimes, he said, he got a rush of orders for “old-masters” and then a number of fellows would get busy working on them. He declared humorously that he ran an “old-master” factory.
As I looked at his work, I felt sure I could do that kind of painting, and I said:
“Mr. Menna, would you let me try it, too?” And I told him about the work I had done for the Count and about my father, and he exclaimed:
“Fine! You’re just the girl I’m looking for.”
So I went to work for Mr. Menna, part of the day. I would paint in most of the start, and he would finish the pictures up; “clean them up and draw them together,” as he would say. We wereable this way to turn out many “old-masters.” We worked for the dealers and frame-makers, who, in order to sell a frame, put these hastily made oil paintings in and sent them out as “genuine imported paintings.”
Mr. Menna and I became fast friends. He treated me just like another “fellow” and divided the profits with a generous hand. Besides helping him to paint, I acted as his agent. I would go down town and see the dealers, take orders, and sometimes sell to them the ones we made on speculation.
I found out many things in the “picture business” that I had never dreamed possible, but that is another story.
At times, too, I posed for Mr. Menna. He would take spells when he became disgusted with his “potboilers,” and would say he intended to do some “real stuff.” These spells never lasted long, for he would run short of money, and would start with renewed energy on the “painting business” as he disgustedly called it. He discovered that I was very good at copying, but he discouraged my doing it. He said:
“There’s mighty little money in copying, unless you pass it off as the original, and although the dealers do it, and I paint for them, I’m dashed if I’ll actually sell them myself as original. It’s not honest.”
“But, Mr. Menna,” I argued, “isn’t it also dishonest for us to do the copying and let the dealers pass it off and sell it as original?”
“Maybe it is,” he admitted, “but we don’t see them selling them to the ‘suckers’ who buy them, and damn it all, we certainly don’t get the price, so what the hell—”
Mr. Menna had raised his voice, and immediately we heard:
“What the hell—what the hell—what the hell!Do we care—do we care—do we care!”
“What the hell—what the hell—what the hell!Do we care—do we care—do we care!”
“What the hell—what the hell—what the hell!Do we care—do we care—do we care!”
The noise came from the studio across the hall.
“It’s that bunch of fellows at Fisher’s,” said Menna, grinning. “They get together and all chip in to pay for a model. Say, how would you like to pose for them? Most of them are illustrators, and they’d want you in street clothes and things like that. You can make an extra dollar or two. Go up and see Bonnat. He generally engages the model for the other fellows. You’ve met Fisher here. He’s that little red-haired chap. Talk to him about it, too. Now I’m off for lunch and a glass of beer. Come along if you like, Ascough.”
I went along with Menna. We ate in a little restaurant at the back of a saloon, corner of Eighth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. The lunchcosts twenty-five cents each. Menna did not eat much, but he drank four glasses of beer, and he got cross with me when I at first refused to drink. So to please him I had a glass. He said:
“Now, you’re a good sport, and the beer will make you fat.”
“It’s not my ambition to be fat,” I laughed back.
“Get out,” he answered. “Did you hear that German fellow who was in the studio the other day, when Miss Fleming (Miss Fleming was Mr. Menna’s girl) asked him how he liked the American ladies? He said with a sad shake of his head: ‘They are too t’in. The German wimmens have the proportions,’ and he curved his hands in front of his chest as he said: ‘It is one treat to look at her.’”
Menna laughed heartily.
“You’re a German yourself,” I said.
“Not on your life. I’m not,” denied Menna vigorously. “I’m an American. Even my folks were born here. I studied in München. That’s the place!” He shook his head and sighed.
We got up to go, and Menna told me to hustle down town and see a dealer.
JACOBS, the dealer, was busy showing some customers the paintings. The place was softly lighted, and the paintings were shown off to the best advantage by the arrangement of the lights. There were a number of Oriental rugs about, helping to make the place look luxurious, and adding somehow to the value of the paintings. Jacobs nodded to me, and I sat down to wait.
As soon as the customers were gone, he called me over and pointing to a couple of paintings in elaborate gold frames, he said:
“Those people who were in are furnishing their new home on Riverside Drive, and I expect to sell them quite a few paintings. They got stuck on those two, and I made them a price on them. Now those two are already sold, and the party who bought them wants them delivered next week. You have just come in time, Miss Ascough, as I must have these copied right away. Can you get me an artist to do it?”
I looked at the paintings. They were about sixteen by twenty-eight inches, and the subject ofone à la Breton fields of wheat and harvesters, and the other was of a priest or cardinal in his red robes, sitting reading in a richly furnished library. Menna, I knew, could not possibly do the work this week, for he was working on an order for another dealer, and I had come to Jacobs to collect for old work. I thought, however, that I could easily do it myself. So I said to Jacobs:
“I know a woman artist who’ll do it for you.”
“A woman! No, sir! I would not have a woman do any work for me,” said the dealer. “I have had all I want to do with women artists. They do much inferior work to the men, take twice as long, and get swelled heads about it. They whine if they don’t make a fortune out of their daubs. No—nothing doing with the women. Now I like Menna’s work. Take them to him. Don’t let any one see them, and I’ll very likely be able to have them copied again, as I think they’ll prove good sellers.”
“All right,” I said, but I made up my mind to do them myself, and I went out with those precious “imported” paintings under my arm.
Mr. Menna was showing some of his “potboilers” to a man when I returned. They were paintings of little ragged boys. The man did not care for them. As he was going out he said:
“I’ll come again some day when you have other pictures. Those little boy pictures are nice, andI like them, but they are notparlorpictures, and my customers want parlor pictures.”
Menna was puffing angrily on a big cigar. I laughed as the man went out, but Menna could not see the humor of it. He got angrier and angrier. He threw down his palette and brush and let out a big original curse. Wish I could print it here.
“I hope you feel better now, Mr. Menna,” I ventured.
“That’s the kind of thing one is up against,” he roared, “and that fool, Bonnat, was in here a while ago and told me he had refused to make some alteration in the portrait he is painting of the wife of that rich Dr. Craig, because the ass said he would not prostitute his art, and a lot of stuff like that. It makes me sick. He also lost a good chance he had to make illustrations for a magazine—best-paying magazine in New York. He had his own damned ideas about the illustrations, and as they were paying for the job they told him how they wanted them smoothed out. Bonnat belongs to the new school of painting, and he actually refused to please them—missed a chance almost any artist would be glad to get. He’s a chump.”
I was getting excited. In a dim way I was beginning to see something else in art than “the picture business.” It reminded me of how poorWallace, Ellen’s husband, used to talk of literature. I secretly admired this Bonnat for his stand and his courage.
“Is Mr. Bonnat a Frenchman?” I asked.
“No-o.” Menna seemed uncertain of his nationality, but he said after a moment: “He went to college in America. Got his Ph.D. at Harvard, and was offered a professorship out West somewhere, but after studying all those years and wasting time, he turns around and takes up art. Says all he learned about those ’ologies will enable him to paint better. Did you ever hear such rot?”
“I think I know what he means,” I said eagerly.
“Oh, you do, Miss Wise-one? Well, what does he, then?” Menna was laughing at me, but I didn’t mind. I felt as if I really did understand Bonnat’s point of view, and I said:
“I think he means that he will understand human life better. I’ve heard artists in Boston discussing something about that, and I cannot explain it to myself. I onlyfeelthat he is right.”
“Oh, rats!” answered Menna. “It’s all very well if one can afford to do it. I can’t, and Bonnat can’t. He went without food for a whole week, except some bread and milk, and he’s a big, hearty animal, and he went without his winter overcoat all last winter, because he gave it to that little consumptive Jew, Shubert. The jokeof it was that Bonnat weighs nearly two hundred pounds, and little Shubert about seventy or ninety, if he weighs that, and he reaches only to Bonnat’s shoulder. It was a howling joke to see him going about in that big overcoat of Bonnat’s.”
Suddenly there flashed over me a memory of Reggie’s handsome fur-lined coat, with its rich collar of mink, and I remembered how mine had not been thick enough to keep the cruel cold out, and Reggie never even noticed how I shivered with the cold in those days. My heart went out to that big Bonnat who had given his coat to cover up a poor neighbor from the cold.
“The name is French,” I said to Menna. “Are you sure he’s not French?”
“His folks were originally, I believe, French Huguenots, and he’s partly German. You’re interested in him, aren’t you? Better not waste your time on a nut,” and Menna finally dismissed Bonnat with a laugh.
When I showed him the paintings he said that I could copy them as well as he could, and made me sit right down and go to work.
Somehow, as I copied those paintings, the pleasure was spoiled for me. There kept running into my head thoughts abouthonesty in painting, and again I recalled my brother-in-law’s remarks on literature, and I knew that it must be the same with all art. I could not get my mindoff that man who would not for money be untrue to himself. I felt something stirring within me that I had never stopped to think of before. And I began to despise myself for the work I was doing, and I think I would have despised Menna, too; but suddenly I thought of my father, and I wanted to cry. I realized that there were times when we literally had to do the very things we hated. Ideals were luxuries that few of us could afford to have. Menna had said we had to live, and that was true enough. Most of us were destined to wade through, not above, the miry quicksands of life. Art then was only for the few and the rare and the fortunate.
Menna himself had had great promise as a youth. Moreover, his parents were wealthy, and they had sent him to study in Munich. But when his father died, there was found scarcely enough money left to support his mother and sisters, and Menna was sent for to do his share. He was only twenty-eight, and he tried to support himself with his brush. He was a good-natured, careless fellow, whose path had hitherto been smoothed for him, and so he chose the easiest way in art. He drifted into the potboiler painting, and alas! there he stayed, as is generally the case.
IFINISHED my copies in four days, and they were scarcely dry when I carried them down to Jacobs. He examined them as if he were buying some material by the yard. I felt very nervous as he looked at them. Then he grunted, went over to his desk and wrote me a check for thirty dollars and fifteen cents. Menna told me he sold them for a couple of hundred if not more. He handed me the check with the remark:
“They will do. It takes amanto do a piece of work right.”
For a time Menna had very little work for me. There were slack times when he had not enough for himself, and he would get very discouraged. Sometimes he would gather up all the paintings he had made and say:
“Go and slaughter them to those damned frame-makers, Ascough, and sell them for what you can get—anything.”
I would remonstrate with him, and point outthat if he would wait and not be in such a hurry for his money we could get better prices.
“Hang it all,” he would shout, “what’s the use?”
So long as he had a few dollars to sit at some table with friends and order beer, he would sacrifice, or as he called it “slaughter,” anything and everything.
As work was now very scarce, I decided to see Fisher about the posing. So I went across the hall and knocked at his door.
“Hello, Miss Ascough,” he called out cheerily, as I came in. “Come on in and sit down. You seem pretty busy in Menna’s studio. What are you doing for him?”
“Oh, I help him paint,” I said, “and sell his work for him, and sometimes I pose. That’s what I want to ask you about now. Wouldn’t you like me to pose for you and your friends? I hear you all sketch together once a week.”
“We’ll be glad to have you,” he declared cordially, his eye scanning me admiringly. “Why didn’t you speak before?”
“Well, I’ve been pretty busy with Mr. Menna, but work’s slack now. So, if you like, I can give you some time.”
“Good. See Bonnat about it. He generally engages the model, and we’re to work in his room next time. Have you met him?”
“No.”
“Well, I guess you haveheardhim,” laughed Fisher. “He certainly makes enough noise. When he first moved in here, we used to be wakened up early in the morning by him stamping up the stairs from the bathroom, carrying his bucket of water. There’s no water on his floor, and the way he stamped and cussed as he went up those two flights of stairs was enough to awaken the dead, and all the stairs would be splashed with water. We thought that cross old Mary, the caretaker, would go for him (as shecan), but she never said a word to him. Just went to work and wiped up the water every morning. That comes of being a good-looker.”
“Is he so handsome, then?”
Fisher himself was a homely, red-haired little fellow.
“You bet he is,” he said, “as handsome as they make ’em, so don’t get stuck on him, as we want to keep Bonnat here. What’s more, he paints like he looks—great! wonderful! He’ll make his mark yet. Go along and see him now. ‘Raus mit you!”
So, leaving Fisher’s studio, I climbed the stairs to the top floor, and, turning to the left, I saw a door with a card nailed on it, bearing the name of Paul Bonnat. I stood and looked at the door for some time, and then I knocked. The doorwas opened with a jerk, and standing in the doorway was a young giant, whose head seemed to reach the top of the door. His hair was all sticking up. It was fair, and the eyes that looked at me questioningly were blue. He had a wide, clever mouth, and a chin that was like a cleft rock. As I stared up at him, his face smiled all over, so that I was forced to smile in return, and I thought to myself:
“Why, he looks like a young viking.” Somehow he made me think of my father, in coloring and the northern type of face, but this man had a more distinct personality that seemed almost to strike one. Papa was gentle and a dreamer. Bonnat was vitally alive.
“Mr. Fisher told me you wanted a model.”
He nodded and his big glance, still smiling, looked me over.
“Come in, come in.”
He was about twenty-six or seven, and in spite of the two hundred pounds Menna told me he weighed, he was not the least bit fat.
I was now in the room, and I glanced about me. Never have I seen such an untidy room in my life. It was not dirty, but simply littered up with things.
“Sit down,” he said, sweeping off some drawings and papers on to the floor from a chair that was loaded. There was also a glass ofwater on the chair, and he tipped that off, too, and the water ran on the floor.
“Oh,” I gasped, “do you always throw everything on the floor like that?”
“Not everything,” he answered, grinning. Then he handed me a box of cigarettes. I took one, and he began to look for a match. On the couch, the table and on all the chairs were piled papers, paints, brushes, clothes, boots and all manner of articles. It looked as if he never put anything where it belonged. Even his clothes were not hung up. On the walls were sketches, paintings, a pair of fencing swords, and the floor could scarcely be seen, as it also was covered with articles, and there were boxes of cigarette stumps and several empty glasses and bottles. As he hunted for the matches, he tumbled one thing after another on the floor.
I was possessed with a desire to tidy up that room. My hands were literally itching to go to work upon it. He seemed so helpless among all his belongings.
“Got it at last!” he laughed, as he discovered the box of matches on the window sill, and, striking one, he offered me a light. I never cared for smoking, but as I was always expected to smoke I usually accepted to save the bother of refusing and being urged.
“It’s the devil to be in such a small hole,” hesaid. “I seem to spend all my time looking for things. Well, now, let’s see. You’re going to pose for us, are you? Is next Sunday all right, or do you have to go to confess something?” He asked the question teasingly, as if he enjoyed poking fun at me.
“No, I never go to church,” I admitted.
A shocked look came into his face, and he opened his mouth wide.
“What? You are a heathen!”
He threw back his head and burst into the loudest and most infectious laughter I have ever heard.
“Then it’s all settled,” he said. “Now I have to go to lunch. Want to come along and have a bum lunch with me?”
I nodded, and he said: “Good!” hunted around for his hat, stuck it jauntily on his head, and, taking me by the arm, we went down the stairs.
When we were sitting in the little restaurant near Sixth Avenue, he asked me a lot of questions about myself, and before I knew it I had told him all about my father and mother and brothers and sisters and the work I had done in Montreal. Then I told him of the hard times I had in Boston. He seemed intensely interested, and when I got through he rattled off a lot of hard-luck stories about the artists, and told mesomething about the exigencies and makeshifts that all of them had had. He’d tell one story of hard luck after another, not as if it were something to feel badly about, but as if it were the common lot of every one. I think he did that so I wouldn’t think I myself had been especially singled out by fate.
He told me how only a few months before Fisher and he and “a couple of other guys” were all “broke,” and none of them had enough cash to buy a separate meal-ticket which entitled him to six meals for one dollar and a quarter, instead of twenty-five cents each meal. So they had all chipped in together and bought one ticket between them on the third of July. Well, when they went to dinner on the fourth of July to the Little Waldorf on Eighth Avenue, they were confronted by this sign:
“The landlord has gone away for a holiday, and will return next week.”
Bonnat seemed to think that an immense joke. He said every one in Paresis Row had had some such experience.
He wanted to know where I lived and I told him Fifteenth Street, and then he asked suddenly:
“Alone?” When I answered “yes” he smiled beamingly at me. Then he took me home, and lifting his hat in going, said:
“You’re engaged then. Sunday. Good-bye.” I could see him striding down the street, his head up, and his broad shoulders thrown back. He whistled as he went along.
SUNDAY morning was bleak and cold. It had been raining for the last three days, and as I crossed the corner of Eighth Avenue and Fourteenth Street the puddles were so deep that I splashed the mud all over my raincoat. It was cold and chilly when I reached Paul Bonnat’s studio.
There were, besides Fisher and Paul Bonnat, two other men, one named Enfield, who was an illustrator, and a Mr. Christain, who worked as a lithographer on week days and painted in his spare time on Sundays.
When I got in Fisher seized me by the arm, and with a mock of proud gesture he showed me Bonnat’s renovated room:
“Look, Miss Ascough. Can you beat this for a studio de luxe—and all in your honor! Gee! Look at that beautiful pile of rubbish he has swept under the table there, where he thought you wouldn’t see it. He’s trying to impress you with the beauty of his home.”
“Shut up!” shouted Bonnat. “I’m the only one of the bunch who patronizes the bath here at any rate.”
“Ugh!” shuddered Fisher. “That bath is filthy, and there’s never a drop of hot water, so one would be dirtier after taking a bath there.”
“Nonsense!” answered Bonnat. “All you have to do is to take down a pitcher or a bucket. Then rub soap all over your body, and stand up in the tub and pour the pitchers of cold water over and over yourself. It’s fine!”
“Whoor-roo!” shivered Enfield. “No cold water for me!”
Enfield was a thin-faced, sensitive-looking fellow, with eyes that lighted up unexpectedly, and who seemed to shrink up in his clothes, as if he were always cold. Menna had told me he was very talented, and could make big money at illustrations, but he drank all the time, not in a noisy way, but in a sad, quiet, secret way. He lived in a room somewhere on the East side in the tenement-house district. It was almost empty, except for an old stove, and Enfield would collect all the newspapers he could lay his hands on, and he slept on a pile of these, with another pile on top of him, and in bitter cold weather when he could not afford other fuel he burned his papers. He would roll them into tight logs and they would smoulder just like wood for hours,and give out a good heat even. His room was simply piled with old newspapers, said Menna. This man had come from extremely refined and wealthy people, but he chose to live in this dreadful way, so as to indulge his vice for liquor, and, it was suspected, drugs. At times he would brace up and do a decent piece of work, and then he would turn up, dressed immaculately, and the boys would be treated to the best of everything; but inside of a week he would spend every cent and pawn his clothes. I liked Enfield, though sometimes his cadaverous face frightened me. His hands always looked so thin and cold that I had a kind of maternal desire to take them in mine and warm them. There was something pathetically helpless about all these artists. They seemed all boys to me—even the older ones. I suppose it was that childish helplessness about them that appealed most to me.
They all chatted away, and gibed each other and joked as they worked, and they would tell stories, and then all stop work to laugh uproariously. Fisher told one about Enfield. He said that one evening the boys had a little spread in their rooms, beer and sausage and cheese, and for a joke they had put the remains of the sausage and cheese in the pocket of Enfield’s coat. Enfield caught up the story here and finished it thus: