I had had a furious letter from Reggie the day after I arrived in New
York, and we had been quarreling by letter ever since. He accused me of
deliberately leaving Boston when I knew that he was coming and he said:
“It was a low-down trick and I shall never forgive you.” In his anger he
also wrote that perhaps the reason for my leaving was that I knew that
he would find out the kind of life I had been living there. He wrote:
“I met a few of your ‘friends’--a low-down bartender and a store clerk
(Poor Billy Boyd’s room-mate, I suppose) and let me compliment you on
your choice of associates. Your tastes certainly have not changed.”
I did not answer that first letter; but he wrote me another,
apologizing, and at the same time insinuating things. To that second
letter I did reply, hotly. And so it went on between us.
After leaving Lil’s, I found a little room on Fifteenth Street near
Eighth Avenue. It was cheap and fairly comfortable and I soon got
settled there. Then I started out to look up some artists whose
addresses had been sent to me by the Boston men. Right away I secured
several engagements. I found, moreover, that my room was only a couple
of blocks from what the artists called “Paresis Row” on Fourteenth
Street. Here many artists occupied the upper floors, which had been
turned into studios in these buildings, once the pretentious homes of
the mighty rich people. On the lower floors various businesses were
carried on.
I was sent to a man who had a studio in Paresis Row. He was a friend of
Mr. Sands and although he did not use models he said he would try and
help me get work. He explained to me his own kind of painting as
“old-master potboilers.” Sometimes, he said, he got a rush of orders for
“old-masters” and then a number of fellows would get busy working on
them. He declared humorously that he ran an “old-master” factory.
As I looked at his work, I felt sure I could do that kind of painting,
and I said:
“Mr. Menna, would you let me try it, too?” And I told him about the work
I had done for the Count and about my father, and he exclaimed:
“Fine! You’re just the girl I’m looking for.”
So I went to work for Mr. Menna, part of the day. I would paint in most
of the start, and he would finish the pictures up; “clean them up and
draw them together,” as he would say. We were able this way to turn out
many “old-masters.” We worked for the dealers and frame-makers, who, in
order to sell a frame, put these hastily made oil paintings in and sent
them out as “genuine imported paintings.”
Mr. Menna and I became fast friends. He treated me just like another
“fellow” and divided the profits with a generous hand. Besides helping
him to paint, I acted as his agent. I would go down town and see the
dealers, take orders, and sometimes sell to them the ones we made on
speculation.
I found out many things in the “picture business” that I had never
dreamed possible, but that is another story.
At times, too, I posed for Mr. Menna. He would take spells when he
became disgusted with his “potboilers,” and would say he intended to do
some “real stuff.” These spells never lasted long, for he would run
short of money, and would start with renewed energy on the “painting
business” as he disgustedly called it. He discovered that I was very
good at copying, but he discouraged my doing it. He said:
“There’s mighty little money in copying, unless you pass it off as the
original, and although the dealers do it, and I paint for them, I’m
dashed if I’ll actually sell them myself as original. It’s not honest.”
“But, Mr. Menna,” I argued, “isn’t it also dishonest for us to do the
copying and let the dealers pass it off and sell it as original?”
“Maybe it is,” he admitted, “but we don’t see them selling them to the
‘suckers’ who buy them, and damn it all, we certainly don’t get the
price, so what the hell--”
Mr. Menna had raised his voice, and immediately we heard:
“What the hell--what the hell--what the hell!
Do we care--do we care--do we care!”
The noise came from the studio across the hall.
“It’s that bunch of fellows at Fisher’s,” said Menna, grinning. “They
get together and all chip in to pay for a model. Say, how would you like
to pose for them? Most of them are illustrators, and they’d want you in
street clothes and things like that. You can make an extra dollar or
two. Go up and see Bonnat. He generally engages the model for the other
fellows. You’ve met Fisher here. He’s that little red-haired chap. Talk
to him about it, too. Now I’m off for lunch and a glass of beer. Come
along if you like, Ascough.”
I went along with Menna. We ate in a little restaurant at the back of a
saloon, corner of Eighth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. The lunch costs
twenty-five cents each. Menna did not eat much, but he drank four
glasses of beer, and he got cross with me when I at first refused to
drink. So to please him I had a glass. He said:
“Now, you’re a good sport, and the beer will make you fat.”
“It’s not my ambition to be fat,” I laughed back.
“Get out,” he answered. “Did you hear that German fellow who was in the
studio the other day, when Miss Fleming (Miss Fleming was Mr. Menna’s
girl) asked him how he liked the American ladies? He said with a sad
shake of his head: ‘They are too t’in. The German wimmens have the
proportions,’ and he curved his hands in front of his chest as he said:
‘It is one treat to look at her.’”
Menna laughed heartily.
“You’re a German yourself,” I said.
“Not on your life. I’m not,” denied Menna vigorously. “I’m an American.
Even my folks were born here. I studied in München. That’s the place!”
He shook his head and sighed.
We got up to go, and Menna told me to hustle down town and see a
dealer.