The next thing was to see what could be done with the other art dealers
and the paintings that were left. There were quite a number of them. If
he could get any reasonable price at all he ought to be able to live
quite awhile--long enough anyhow to get on his feet again. When they
came to his quiet room and were unpacked by him in a rather shamefaced
and disturbed manner and distributed about, they seemed wonderful
things. Why, if the critics had raved over them and M. Charles had
thought they were so fine, could they not be sold? Art dealers would
surely buy them! Still, now that he was on the ground again and could
see the distinctive art shops from the sidewalks his courage failed him.
They were not running after pictures. Exceptional as he might be, there
were artists in plenty--good ones. He could not run to other well known
art dealers very well for his work had become identified with the house
of Kellner and Son. Some of the small dealers might buy them but they
would not buy them all--probably one or two at the most, and that at a
sacrifice. What a pass to come to!--he, Eugene Witla, who three years
before had been in the heyday of his approaching prosperity, wondering
as he stood in the room of a gloomy side-street house how he was going
to raise money to live through the summer, and how he was going to sell
the paintings which had seemed the substance of his fortune but two
years before. He decided that he would ask several of the middle class
dealers whether they would not come and look at what he had to show. To
a number of the smaller dealers in Fourth, Sixth, Eighth Avenues and
elsewhere he would offer to sell several outright when necessity
pinched. Still he had to raise money soon. Angela could not be left at
Blackwood indefinitely.
He went to Jacob Bergman, Henry LaRue, Pottle Freres and asked if they
would be interested to see what he had. Henry Bergman, who was his own
manager, recalled his name at once. He had seen the exhibition but was
not eager. He asked curiously how the pictures of the first and second
exhibitions had sold, how many there were of them, what prices they
brought. Eugene told him.
"You might bring one or two here and leave them on sale. You know how
that is. Someone might take a fancy to them. You never can tell."
He explained that his commission was twenty-five per cent, and that he
would report when a sale was made. He was not interested to come and see
them. Eugene could select any two pictures he pleased. It was the same
with Henry LaRue and Pottle Freres, though the latter had never heard of
him. They asked him to show them one of his pictures. Eugene's pride was
touched the least bit by this lack of knowledge on their part, though
seeing how things were going with him he felt as though he might expect
as much and more.
Other art dealers he did not care to trust with his paintings on sale,
and he was now ashamed to start carrying them about to the magazines,
where at least one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty per
picture might be expected for them, if they were sold at all. He did not
want the magazine art world to think that he had come to this. His best
friend was Hudson Dula, and he might no longer be Art Director of
_Truth_. As a matter of fact Dula was no longer there. Then there were
Jan Jansen and several others, but they were no doubt thinking of him
now as a successful painter. It seemed as though his natural pride were
building insurmountable barriers for him. How was he to live if he could
not do this and could not paint? He decided on trying the small art
dealers with a single picture, offering to sell it outright. They might
not recognize him and so might buy it direct. He could accept, in such
cases, without much shock to his pride, anything which they might offer,
if it were not too little.
He tried this one bright morning in May, and though it was not without
result it spoiled the beautiful day for him. He took one picture, a New
York scene, and carried it to a third rate art dealer whose place he had
seen in upper Sixth Avenue, and without saying anything about himself
asked if he would like to buy it. The proprietor, a small, dark
individual of Semitic extraction, looked at him curiously and at his
picture. He could tell from a single look that Eugene was in trouble,
that he needed money and that he was anxious to sell his picture. He
thought of course that he would take anything for it and he was not sure
that he wanted the picture at that. It was not very popular in theme, a
view of a famous Sixth Avenue restaurant showing behind the track of the
L road, with a driving rain pouring in between the interstices of light.
Years after this picture was picked up by a collector from Kansas City
at an old furniture sale and hung among his gems, but this morning its
merits were not very much in evidence.
"I see that you occasionally exhibit a painting in your window for sale.
Do you buy originals?"
"Now and again," said the man indifferently--"not often. What have you?"
"I have an oil here that I painted not so long ago. I occasionally do
these things. I thought maybe you would like to buy it."
The proprietor stood by indifferently while Eugene untied the string,
took off the paper and stood the picture up for inspection. It was
striking enough in its way but it did not appeal to him as being
popular. "I don't think it's anything that I could sell here," he
remarked, shrugging his shoulders. "It's good, but we don't have much
call for pictures of any kind. If it were a straight landscape or a
marine or a figure of some kind--. Figures sell best. But this--I doubt
if I could get rid of it. You might leave it on sale if you want to.
Somebody might like it. I don't think I'd care to buy it."
"I don't care to leave it on sale," replied Eugene irritably. Leave one
of his pictures in a cheap side-street art store--and that on sale! He
would not. He wanted to say something cutting in reply but he curbed his
welling wrath to ask,
"How much do you think it would be worth if you did want it?"
"Oh," replied the proprietor, pursing his lips reflectively, "not more
than ten dollars. We can't ask much for anything we have on view here.
The Fifth Avenue stores take all the good trade."
Eugene winced. Ten dollars! Why, what a ridiculous sum! What was the use
of coming to a place like this anyhow? He could do better dealing with
the art directors or the better stores. But where were they? Whom could
he deal with? Where were there any stores much better than this outside
the large ones which he had already canvassed. He had better keep his
pictures and go to work now at something else. He only had thirty-five
of them all told and at this rate he would have just three hundred and
fifty dollars when they were all gone. What good would that do him? His
mood and this preliminary experience convinced him that they could not
be sold for any much greater sum. Fifteen dollars or less would probably
be offered and he would be no better off at the end. His pictures would
be gone and he would have nothing. He ought to get something to do and
save his pictures. But what?
To a man in Eugene's position--he was now thirty-one years of age, with
no training outside what he had acquired in developing his artistic
judgment and ability--this proposition of finding something else which
he could do was very difficult. His mental sickness was, of course, the
first great bar. It made him appear nervous and discouraged and so more
or less objectionable to anyone who was looking for vigorous healthy
manhood in the shape of an employee. In the next place, his look and
manner had become decidedly that of the artist--refined, retiring,
subtle. He also had an air at times of finicky standoffishness,
particularly in the presence of those who appeared to him commonplace or
who by their look or manner appeared to be attempting to set themselves
over him. In the last place, he could think of nothing that he really
wanted to do--the idea that his art ability would come back to him or
that it ought to serve him in this crisis, haunting him all the time.
Once he had thought he might like to be an art director; he was
convinced that he would be a good one. And another time he had thought
he would like to write, but that was long ago. He had never written
anything since the Chicago newspaper specials, and several efforts at
concentrating his mind for this quickly proved to him that writing was
not for him now. It was hard for him to formulate an intelligent
consecutive-idea'd letter to Angela. He harked back to his old Chicago
days and remembering that he had been a collector and a driver of a
laundry wagon, he decided that he might do something of that sort.
Getting a position as a street-car conductor or a drygoods clerk
appealed to him as possibilities. The necessity of doing something
within regular hours and in a routine way appealed to him as having
curative properties. How should he get such a thing?
If it had not been for the bedeviled state of his mind this would not
have been such a difficult matter, for he was physically active enough
to hold any ordinary position. He might have appealed frankly and simply
to M. Charles or Isaac Wertheim and through influence obtained something
which would have tided him over, but he was too sensitive to begin with
and his present weakness made him all the more fearful and retiring. He
had but one desire when he thought of doing anything outside his
creative gift, and that was to slink away from the gaze of men. How
could he, with his appearance, his reputation, his tastes and
refinement, hobnob with conductors, drygoods clerks, railroad hands or
drivers? It wasn't possible--he hadn't the strength. Besides all that
was a thing of the past, or he thought it was. He had put it behind him
in his art student days. Now to have to get out and look for a job! How
could he? He walked the streets for days and days, coming back to his
room to see if by any chance he could paint yet, writing long, rambling,
emotional letters to Angela. It was pitiful. In fits of gloom he would
take out an occasional picture and sell it, parting with it for ten or
fifteen dollars after he had carried it sometimes for miles. His one
refuge was in walking, for somehow he could not walk and feel very, very
bad. The beauty of nature, the activity of people entertained and
diverted his mind. He would come back to his room some evenings feeling
as though a great change had come over him, as though he were going to
do better now; but this did not last long. A little while and he would
be back in his old mood again. He spent three months this way, drifting,
before he realized that he must do something--that fall and winter would
be coming on again in a little while and he would have nothing at all.
In his desperation he first attempted to get an art directorship, but
two or three interviews with publishers of magazines proved to him
pretty quickly that positions of this character were not handed out to
the inexperienced. It required an apprenticeship, just as anything else
did, and those who had positions in this field elsewhere had the first
call. His name or appearance did not appear to strike any of these
gentlemen as either familiar or important in any way. They had heard of
him as an illustrator and a painter, but his present appearance
indicated that this was a refuge in ill health which he was seeking, not
a vigorous, constructive position, and so they would have none of him.
He next tried at three of the principal publishing houses, but they did
not require anyone in that capacity. Truth to tell he knew very little
of the details and responsibilities of the position, though he thought
he did. After that there was nothing save drygoods stores, street-car
registration offices, the employment offices of the great railroads and
factories. He looked at sugar refineries, tobacco factories, express
offices, railroad freight offices, wondering whether in any of these it
would be possible for him to obtain a position which would give him a
salary of ten dollars a week. If he could get that, and any of the
pictures now on show with Jacob Bergman, Henry LaRue and Pottle Freres
should be sold, he could get along. He might even live on this with
Angela if he could sell an occasional picture for ten or fifteen
dollars. But he was paying seven dollars a week for nothing save food
and room, and scarcely managing to cling to the one hundred dollars
which had remained of his original traveling fund after he had paid all
his opening expenses here in New York. He was afraid to part with all
his pictures in this way for fear he would be sorry for it after a
while.
Work is hard to get under the most favorable conditions of health and
youth and ambition, and the difficulties of obtaining it under
unfavorable ones need not be insisted on. Imagine if you can the crowds
of men, forty, fifty, one hundred strong, that wait at the door of every
drygoods employment office, every street-car registration bureau, on the
special days set aside for considering applications, at every factory,
shop or office where an advertisement calling for a certain type of man
or woman was inserted in the newspapers. On a few occasions that Eugene
tried or attempted to try, he found himself preceded by peculiar groups
of individuals who eyed him curiously as he approached, wondering, as he
thought, whether a man of his type could be coming to apply for a job.
They seemed radically different from himself to his mind, men with
little education and a grim consciousness of the difficulties of life;
young men, vapid looking men, shabby, stale, discouraged types--men who,
like himself, looked as though they had seen something very much better,
and men who looked as though they had seen things a great deal worse.
The evidence which frightened him was the presence of a group of bright,
healthy, eager looking boys of nineteen, twenty, twenty-one and
twenty-two who, like himself when he first went to Chicago years before,
were everywhere he went. When he drew near he invariably found it
impossible to indicate in any way that he was looking for anything. He
couldn't. His courage failed him; he felt that he looked too superior;
self-consciousness and shame overcame him.
He learned now that men rose as early as four o'clock in the morning to
buy a newspaper and ran quickly to the address mentioned in order to get
the place at the head of the line, thus getting the first consideration
as an applicant. He learned that some other men, such as waiters, cooks,
hotel employees and so on, frequently stayed up all night in order to
buy a paper at two in the morning, winter or summer, rain or snow, heat
or cold, and hurry to the promising addresses they might find. He
learned that the crowds of applicants were apt to become surly or
sarcastic or contentious as their individual chances were jeopardized by
ever-increasing numbers. And all this was going on all the time, in
winter or summer, heat or cold, rain or snow. Pretending interest as a
spectator, he would sometimes stand and watch, hearing the ribald jests,
the slurs cast upon life, fortune, individuals in particular and in
general by those who were wearily or hopelessly waiting. It was a
horrible picture to him in his present condition. It was like the
grinding of the millstones, upper and nether. These were the chaff. He
was a part of the chaff at present, or in danger of becoming so. Life
was winnowing him out. He might go down, down, and there might never be
an opportunity for him to rise any more.
Few, if any of us, understand thoroughly the nature of the unconscious
stratification which takes place in life, the layers and types and
classes into which it assorts itself and the barriers which these offer
to a free migration of individuals from one class to another. We take on
so naturally the material habiliments of our temperaments, necessities
and opportunities. Priests, doctors, lawyers, merchants, appear to be
born with their particular mental attitude and likewise the clerk, the
ditch-digger, the janitor. They have their codes, their guilds and their
class feelings. And while they may be spiritually closely related, they
are physically far apart. Eugene, after hunting for a place for a month,
knew a great deal more about this stratification than he had ever
dreamed of knowing. He found that he was naturally barred by temperament
from some things, from others by strength and weight, or rather the lack
of them; from others, by inexperience; from others, by age; and so on.
And those who were different from him in any or all of these respects
were inclined to look at him askance. "You are not as we are," their
eyes seemed to say; "why do you come here?"
One day he approached a gang of men who were waiting outside a car barn
and sought to find out where the registration office was. He did not lay
off his natural manner of superiority--could not, but asked a man near
him if he knew. It had taken all his courage to do this.
"He wouldn't be after lookin' fer a place as a conductor now, would he?"
he heard someone say within his hearing. For some reason this remark
took all his courage away. He went up the wooden stairs to the little
office where the application blanks were handed out, but did not even
have the courage to apply for one. He pretended to be looking for
someone and went out again. Later, before a drygoods superintendent's
office, he heard a youth remark, "Look what wants to be a clerk." It
froze him.
It is a question how long this aimless, nervous wandering would have
continued if it had not been for the accidental recollection of an
experience which a fellow artist once related to him of a writer who had
found himself nervously depressed and who, by application to the
president of a railroad, had secured as a courtesy to the profession
which he represented so ably a position as an apprentice in a surveying
corps, being given transportation to a distant section of the country
and employed at a laborer's wages until he was well. Eugene now thought
of this as quite an idea for himself. Why it had not occurred to him
before he did not know. He could apply as an artist--his appearance
would bear him out, and being able to speak from the vantage point of
personal ability temporarily embarrassed by ill health, his chances of
getting something would be so much better. It would not be the same as a
position which he had secured for himself without fear or favor, but it
would be a position, different from farming with Angela's father because
it would command a salary.