Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.
--HAMLET
I
There was a humble restaurant on Charles Street where cabmen and
chauffeurs could be induced to tell the story of their lives over a
combination-supper of lamb chop and two fried eggs costing (that was
in 1912), with coffee and rolls, twenty-five cents. Across the table
one evening in the spring of that year sat a young man about
twenty-four years old. Anyone would have taken a second look at him;
also a third, a fourth, and as many more as good manners would permit.
What was there about him that attracted attention? It was hard to say.
The dark eyes with a somber light burning in them? The rugged features
and swarthy complexion with a ruddy glow of health in each jowl? The
hands; very large and finely muscled? (I have never seen a more
beautiful pair of hands on a human being.) It was all of these things
and none of them. Rather it was the look of one with immense forces in
reserve, bound on an errand.
Impossible to guess anything from his clothes: dark suit, shirt of
gray flannel, and black knitted tie. Chauffeur? Hardly. Well then,
what? Who?
(This is no isolated personal impression. Wherever he went people felt
the same intense curiosity about him. Sometimes they stared at him so
that he asked me if his face was smudged.)
Was this stranger conversible? He was. Presently he was speaking of
the colonial doorways on Chestnut Street with a discrimination which
suggested the architect. No. It appeared that he was studying under
Mr. Tarbell at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. Next, that he
came from Pittsburgh. Here was a bond in common. As two young Middle
Westerners we resented the social cold storage which New England
imposes as a probationary period of acquaintance. We condoled. We
fraternized. We were as neighbors meeting in a foreign land. At last
somebody with whom it was safe to scrape acquaintance in the good
old-fashioned Middle Western way without incurring suspicion of
designs on one another's souls, bodies, or estates.
He climbed Beacon Hill with me to the house where I lived, carrying a
paper bag which, he explained modestly, contained his breakfast: two
bananas and a shredded wheat biscuit.
The evening was mild. Windows stood open to the breeze which rumpled
the leaves of an old linden where it spread its boughs in the
brick-walled court.
He promptly took off his coat, displaying in the rays of a
green-shaded student lamp a pair of forearms worthy of the hands which
went with them. Summer and winter he wore his sleeves rolled above his
elbows. His wrists resented cuffs as wild creatures resent cages. He
stretched out his long legs on a cot which did duty by the fireplace
as a sofa; pushed his hair off his forehead with both hands, fingers
interlocked, a trick he had; and gave symptoms of feeling at home.
Was he talkative? Not much! Never did clam yield shell to knife edge
more gingerly. He would and he would not. Shy, reserved, proud,
devoured with ambition, savagely determined, a prey to some
misgivings, genuinely modest, and anxious to talk it over with the
right person, but by no means sure who the right person was.
On sped the ambrosial hours of the spring evening. Bit by bit he
revealed himself. This was his third year in the Museum School. He
admired the technique of Mr. Tarbell and Mr. Benson; he prized their
instruction. But he distrusted their smoothness. He missed vigor. All
round him he saw students neglecting their own creative bents to
produce "little Bensons" and "little Tarbells." Already he had
resolved to quit Boston as soon as his student days were over.
"I don't say I shall ever be able to paint as well as they can; but I
must be myself,--not an imitation Tarbell."
There had been two years in Cornell before he came to Boston. He had
rowed in his class eight on Lake Cayuga. Hence that physical
self-respect which betokens the young man accustomed unconcernedly to
strip in a college boathouse or gymnasium. But to eyes grown
impatient with the college athlete's all too customary intellectual
torpor and social complacency it was a holiday to find this well-made
body, tall, broad in the shoulder, narrow at hips, lean and muscular,
housing also the brain of the thinker and the spirit of the pioneer.
For the astonishing thing was to find a young man of this type
studying to be a portrait painter instead of a bond salesman. It
didn't sound Yankee. I said so. That shot rang the bell. He began to
open up.
He was, it appeared, of German extraction. His grandfather, who had
wished to become an artist, had come to America in a period when
artists were about as much in request among us as concert pianists on
a cattle ranch. He had earned his living as an architectural sculptor.
The talent plunged, like a river, underground for a generation; then
reappeared. What happened when this little fellow's fingers began to
itch for the pencil was easy to guess. The father and grandfather put
their heads together and resolved that he should have his chance.
It began to unravel. Now one understood the earnestness which seemed
at first precocious--the seemingly cool indifference to the call of
the world, the flesh and the devil which usually troubles youngsters
of twenty-four. Here was something more than ambition. Loyalty,
affection, gratitude, and family pride. This boy had more than talent.
He had character.
* * * * *
With this we are in the heart of the conflict between the artist and
the trader: between the will to create and the will to possess. It is
the central conflict of any age; especially of this, and especially in
America. The young man comes to the forks of the road where he must
decide whether he shall acquire or create; whether he shall be a
business man or a prophet. He finds himself in a society which offers
princely rewards to the commercial career and little but pains and
penalties to those who would create. This youngster was just learning
his way around in the problem. He recited, with comical irony, the
squalid platitudes which are chewed out at a youth bold enough to
follow his creative bent:
"'Is there any _money_ in it?' 'Oh, of course, if you get to be a
great painter. But how do you know you've got it in you to be a great
painter? Think you have? Got a pretty good opinion of yourself,
haven't you?' 'What if you fail? Suppose you wake up some morning and
find yourself a middle-aged man and a fizzle? Guess you'll wish then
that you'd stuck to plain everyday business and dropped all this
highfalutin about art.' 'Yes. I suppose it's an easy life: sitting
around and painting pictures. Pretty soft, eh? Give me a man's job!'
'Don't you think it's a little rash, my boy, to risk so much, when if
you'd settle down to a good business you'd be sure of a decent living?
And what about marriage? If you marry you'll have to paint pot
boilers, and then what becomes of your art? You might as well be a
business man and be done with it. And if you don't, is it worth going
without a wife and children in order to paint pictures, and so come
at last to a lonely old age?'"
He knew all the old ones by heart. Later we used to recite them
together in concert like school children in the geography class.
If you took the roof off any Chamber of Commerce you would find half a
dozen retired business men whose guilty secret it is that they dabble
on the quiet with paint tubes, or modeling clay, or scenarios, or a
violin--the poor, damned souls of artists. They have made their
"pile." House and lot, wife and children, motor car and country
club--all these they have; and yet, gnawing at their hearts is the
secret knowledge that they have missed the big thing. They were born
to beget children of the spirit; they were born to create in art, in
music, in literature, in social experiment; and the ignoble standards
of the society in which they live have bludgeoned and ridiculed them
into prostituting their highest powers in the market-place.
In such relationship did this young man stand to the life of his
country and his time. With unflinching eye he listened to its taunt:
"Artist, create at your peril! You may starve, for all me, until you
win a reputation that is a commercial asset. After which, having
despised you, I will do my best to corrupt you by rewards and
flatteries gratifying to my intellectual snobbery."
Such were the terms. This youth, uncertain of his own powers, accepted
them with quiet courage and imperturbable good humor. Such was the
secret of that look of settled purpose so intriguing on a face so
young, and such the secret of the fire which smouldered behind those
dark eyes. He was prepared for a siege. He was ready to go to the mat.
It had taken three generations--son, sire, and grand-sire--to make
this stand against the all-devouring maw of American commercialism:
three generations to conquer and produce an artist. And mindful of
his end I ask myself whether they did conquer. We shall see.
* * * * *
Midnight clanked from the city clocks.
"Gosh!" said he, "is it as late as that?" He stood up and knocked the
ashes out of his pipe against the red bricks of the hearth. "By the
way, I don't know your name."