THE BUSINESS MAN AND THE PAINTER.—PICTURES AND POT BOILERS.—CIMABUE AND
GIOTTO.—THE SALMON-COLORED OMNIBUS.
THE business men were half way to their business when the shadow of the
sooty church still fell upon one or two of the congregation who dispersed
more slowly; a few aged poor who lingered from infirmity as well as
leisure; and a man neither very old nor very poor, whose strong limbs did
not bear him away at a much quicker pace. His enjoyment of the peculiar
pleasures of an early walk was deliberate as well as full, and bustle
formed no necessary part of his trade. He was a painter.
The business gentleman hurrying out of the Boys’ Home stumbled against
the painter, whom he knew, but whom just now he would not have been sorry
to avoid. The very next salmon-colored omnibus that passed the end of
the street would only just enable him to be punctual if he could catch
it, and the painter, in his opinion, had “no sense of the value of time.”
The painter, on the other hand, held as strong a conviction that his
friend’s sense of the monetary value of time was so exaggerated as to
hinder his sense of many higher things in this beautiful world. But they
were fast friends nevertheless, and with equal charity pitied each other
respectively for a slovenly and a slavish way of life.
“My dear friend!” cried the artist, seizing the other by the elbow, “you
are just coming from where I was thinking of going.”
“By all means, my dear fellow,” said Jan’s friend, shaking hands to
release his elbow, “the master will be delighted, and—my time is not my
own, you know.”
“I know well,” said the artist, with a little humorous malice. “It
belongs to others. That is your benevolence. So”—
“Come, come!” laughed the other. “I’m not a man of leisure like you. I
must catch the next salmon-colored omnibus.”
“I’ll walk with you to it, and talk as we go. You can’t propose to run
at your time of life, and with your position in the city! Now tell me,
my good friend, the boys in your Home are the offscouring of the streets,
aren’t they?”
“They are mostly destitute lads, but they have never been convicted of
crime any more than yourself. It is the fundamental distinction between
our Home and other industrial schools. Our effort is to save boys whom
destitution has _all but_ made criminal. It is not a reformatory.”
“I beg your pardon, I know. But I was speaking of their bodily condition
only. I want a model, and should be glad to get it without the nuisance
of sketching in the slums. Such a ragged, pinched, eager, and yet stupid
child as might sit homeless between the black walls of Newgate and the
churchyard of St. Sepulchre,—a waif of the richest and most benevolent
society in Christendom, for whom the alternative of the churchyard would
be the better.”
“Not the only one, I trust,” said the business gentleman, almost
passionately. “I trust in GOD, not the only alternative. If I have a
hope, it is that of greater and more effective efforts than hitherto to
rescue the children of London from crime.”
In the warmth of this outburst, he had permitted a salmon-colored omnibus
to escape him, but, being much too good a man of business to waste time
in regrets, he placed himself at a convenient point for catching the
next, and went on speaking.
“I am glad to hear you have another picture in hand.”
“Not a _picture_—a _pot boiler_,” said the artist, testily. “Low
art—domestic sentiment—cheap pathos. My _picture_ no one would look at,
even if it were finished, and if I could bring myself to part with it.”
“Mind, you give me the first refusal.”
“Of my _picture_?”
“Yes, that is, I mean your street boy. It is just in my line. I delight
in your things. But don’t make it too pathetic, or my wife won’t be able
to bear it in the drawing room. Your things always make her cry.”
“That’s the pot boiler,” said the artist; “I really wish you’d look at my
picture, unfinished as it is. I should like you to have it. Anybody’ll
take the pot boiler. I want a model for the picture too, and, oddly
enough, a boy; but one you can’t provide me with.”
“No? The subject you say is”—said the man of business, dreamily, as he
strove at the same time to make out if a distant omnibus were yellow or
salmon-colored.
“Cimabue finding the boy Giotto drawing on the sand. Ah! my friend, can
one realize that meeting? Can one picture the generous glow with which
the mature and courtly artist recognized unconscious genius struggling
under the form of a shepherd lad,—yearning out of his great Italian eyes
over that glowing landscape whose beauties could not be written in the
sand? Will the golden age of the arts ever return? We are hardly moving
towards it, I fear. For I have found a model for my Cimabue,—an artist
too, and a true one; but no boy Giotto! Still I should like you to see
it. I flatter myself the coloring”—
“Salmon,” said the man of business, briskly. “I thought it was yellow.
My dear fellow—_Hi_!—take as many boys as you like—_To the City_!”
The conductor of the salmon-colored omnibus touched his bell, and the
painter was left alone.