The candles had almost burned to the bottom when the little company
decided it was time to break up. It was a half holiday, the stone-cutters
had stopped work sooner than usual, and the other rooms were dark and
deserted. The artists used the stumps of the candles to light the company
about. In passing through the first studio, Lobkowitz partially uncovered
pieces meant for the Chicago Exposition, colossal plaster casts and
models in clay representing commerce, manufacture, agriculture and the
like. They threw enormous shadows on the walls and ceiling.
"You can't get results in art from large figures," said Ritter, though
the statues were full of animation, and there was something prepossessing
in them.
"Everything for the anniversary of 1492, everything for the Chicago
Exposition," said Willy. "A Viking ship is coming over from Norway. The
last descendant of Christopher Columbus, a knock-kneed Spaniard, is
to be passed around for show, a tremendous humbug, always an acceptable
dish to the Americans. Ritter owes this big order to his monkey-like
quickness. The building commission applied to various sculptors, and
Ritter sent them sketches for all the statues before the other artists
had even wet their clay."
"I was working in my little studio in Brooklyn," said Ritter, "and for
forty-eight hours in succession I didn't take my hands out of clay. These
figures don't bother me in the least. After the Exposition they won't
exist except in photographs."
"That's the way the Americans are. Please, Ritter, do give us a
Washington memorial. Perhaps you have a Washington memorial ready-made in
your waistcoat pocket."
"No, but by eight thirty-five this evening I will have one for you."
"He can do it, too," said Willy, patting his idol. "That is why he fits
so well into the United States of America."
The men now entered Ritter's real workshop. Here there were pieces very
different in spirit. While the large figures for the Chicago Exposition
showed traces of commercialism, here everything was thoroughly artistic.
A companion piece in clay to the bas-relief in the club-house, a group of
singing girls not yet completed, was standing on a heavy scaffolding. It
showed the same noble qualities that Frederick had observed in the relief
of the singing boys. Had these works been displayed in Germany, they
would undoubtedly have been epoch-making. A bust of an old woman had some
of the traits of Donatello. Everything in the room testified to the
facility with which the youthful master created. There was a long
decorative frieze in clay, putti with goats, dancing fauns, mænads,
Silenus on his donkey, a procession of bacchantic figures celebrating
the vintage and reproducing all the bacchic joyousness, the drunkenness,
of men and women vintagers, as they cut and trod the grapes and drank the
wine. Another uncompleted work in clay was the figure of a middle-aged
Neptune at a fountain, looking with a jolly smile at a huge fish in his
hands. There was a completed plaster cast of St. George, frankly inspired
by its glorious model, the St. George of Donatello in the National Museum
in Florence. In all these works, Ritter had struck a happy medium between
the Greeks and Donatello and created a style fully expressing his own
personality, yet showing permissible dependence upon his predecessors.
The pieces in this room were without exception meant for the country
residence of an American Croesus, who had taken a tremendous fancy to
the young sculptor and his work and jealously tried to keep his creations
from straying into another's possession. He looked upon himself as a
Medici of the nineteenth century. His marble palace in extensive grounds
on Long Island had already swallowed up millions of dollars, though meant
as a residence merely for himself, his wife, and his only daughter. No
one but Ritter was to do the statuary and sculptural decorations for his
house and garden, and he was to have free play. What commissions are
given in America! Were talents as easy to create in "our country" as
dollars, there would be a second Renaissance even greater than the great
Italian Renaissance.
Frederick was fairly intoxicated by the young man's singular good
fortune. What he particularly admired was the union of success and merit.
When he compared the abundance of these works, tossed off apparently as
in play, and the young man's cheerful evenness of temper with his own
torn, distracted existence, a feeling came upon him that he had never
before had, the feeling that he was an outcast, a feeling of
discouragement and helpless defeat. While the light of the candles glided
over the creations of the man who had infused form and soul into the
formless clay, a voice within him kept saying:
"You have frittered away your existence, you have wasted your days, you
will never retrieve your loss."
And the voice of envy, of bitter reproach against a nameless being asked
why he had not been permitted to find a similar path and follow it in
time.
Ritter's life had received a wrench in Europe. Some brutal mishap while
he was serving in the army had made him revolt and later desert. Now,
after seven years in America, he was compelled to admit that the wrench
had been indispensable for transplanting the sapling to the soil best
suited to its growth. In the new surroundings, Ritter's nature developed
simply, harmoniously and symmetrically, like a tree with plenty of space
and sunlight. Fate atoned for the lack of military subordination in the
young prince from genius-land by granting him a surplus of
superordination.
Suddenly Ritter said to Frederick:
"I understand Toussaint, the Berlin sculptor, was on board the _Roland_."
Peter Schmidt had warned the artists in an aside not to touch upon the
disaster, telling them his friend was very nervous and a reference to the
accident might have a bad effect upon him. But his warning had been
forgotten.
"Poor Toussaint," Frederick said, "hoped to find mountains of gold here,
though, you may say, he was nothing but a fancy-cake genius."
"And yet I assure you," said Lobkowitz, "there was something grand about
him as a man. In spite of his success, he was always poor. He suffered
from having a wife who was too fond of society and from having to
associate with the persons who bestowed favours upon him and were so much
richer than himself. That dandyism of his was not natural. Had he reached
America, he would probably have ignored his wife and become an entirely
different man. All he wanted to do was to create, to work. What he loved
best was to be perched on a scaffolding, with shirt sleeves tucked up,
among first-rate workmen. Once he said to me, 'If you should happen to
see a mason resembling me in New York, sitting on the pavement eating his
lunch and drinking a can of beer, don't hesitate to believe I am that
mason, and don't pity me. Congratulate me.'"
"Another one," thought Frederick, "who kept the best part of himself
hidden beneath the conventional foppishness of his time; another one who,
like me, may always have been trying in vain to reach a definite decision
between being and seeming."