think it dull, and took me for a walk up to Montmartre, talking all the
way of what a great and beautiful mother Paris was to those who worked
there. His home was in Maine, and he let me know, without reflecting on
his native town, that he had been choked and cramped there, and that
his life had been the life of a Siberian exile. Here he found people
who could understand; here, the very statues and buildings gave him
advice and encouragement; here were people who took him and his work
seriously, and who helped him on to fresh endeavors, and who made work
a delight.
"I have one picture in the Salon," he said, flushing with proper pride
and pleasure, "and one has just gone to the World's Fair, and another
has received an honorable mention at Munich. That's pretty good for
my first year, is it not? And I'm only twenty-five years old now," he
added, with his eyes smiling into the future at the great things he
was to do. Nobody could resist the contagion of his enthusiasm and
earnestness of purpose.
He was painting the portrait of some rich man's daughter at the time,
and her family took a patronizing interest in him, and said it was a
pity that he did not go out more into society and get commissions.
They asked me to tell him to be more careful about his dress, and to
suggest to him not to wear a high hat with a sack-coat. I told them to
leave him alone, and not to worry about his clothes, or to suggest his
running after people who had pretty daughters and money enough to have
them painted. These people would run after him soon enough, if he went
on as he had begun.
[Illustration: "'I HAVE ONE PICTURE IN THE SALON'"]
When I saw him on the boulevards the next summer he had to
reintroduce himself; he was very smartly dressed, in a cheap way, and
he was sipping silly little sweet juices in front of a café. He was
flushed and nervous and tired looking, and rattled off a list of the
fashionable people who were then in Paris as correctly as a _Galignani_
reporter could have done it.
"How's art?" I asked.
"Oh, very well," he replied. "I had a picture in the Salon last year,
and another was commended at Munich, and I had another one at the Fair.
That's pretty good for my first two years abroad, isn't it?"
The next year I saw him several times with various young women in the
court-yard of the Grand Hôtel, than which there is probably no place in
all Paris less Parisian. They seemed to be models in street dress, and
were as easy to distinguish as a naval officer in citizen's clothes. He
stopped me once again before I left Paris, and invited me to his studio
to breakfast. I asked him what he had to show me there.
"I have three pictures," he said, "that I did the first six months I
was here; they--"
"Yes, I know," I interrupted. "One was at last year's Salon, and one at
the World's Fair, and the other took a prize at Munich. Is that all?"
He flushed a little, and laughed, and said, "Yes, that is all."
"Do you get much inspiration here?" I asked, pointing to the colored
fountain and the piles of luggage and the ugly glass roof.
"I don't understand you," he said.
He put the card he had held out to me back in his case, and bowed
grandly, and walked back to the girl he had left at one of the tables,
and on my way out from the offices I saw him frowning into a glass
before him. The girl was pulling him by the sleeve, but he apparently
was not listening.
The American artist who has taken Paris properly has only kind
words to speak of her. He is grateful for what she gave him, but
he is not unmindful of his mother-country at home. He may complain
when he returns of the mud in our streets, and the height of our
seventeen-story buildings, and the ugliness of our elevated roads--and
who does not? But if his own art is lasting and there is in his heart
much constancy, his work will grow and continue in spite of these
things, and will not droop from the lack of atmosphere about him. New
York and every great city owns a number of these men who have studied
in the French capital, and who speak of it as fondly as a man speaks
of his college and of the years he spent there. They help to leaven the
lump and to instruct others who have not had the chance that was given
them to see and to learn of all these beautiful things. These are the
men who made the Columbian Fair what it was, who taught their teacher
and the whole world a lesson in what was possible in architecture and
in statuary, in decoration and design. That was a much better and a
much finer thing for them to have done than to have dragged on in Paris
waiting for a ribbon or a medal. They are the best examples we have
of the Americans who made use of Paris, instead of permitting Paris
to make use of them. And because they did the one thing and avoided
the other, they are now helping and enlightening their own people and
a whole nation, and not selfishly waiting in a foreign capital for a
place on a jury for themselves.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
1. Obvious punctuation and typographical errors repaired.
2. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=.