Sunday morning was bleak and cold. It had been raining for the last
three days, and as I crossed the corner of Eighth Avenue and Fourteenth
Street the puddles were so deep that I splashed the mud all over my
raincoat. It was cold and chilly when I reached Paul Bonnat’s studio.
There were, besides Fisher and Paul Bonnat, two other men, one named
Enfield, who was an illustrator, and a Mr. Christain, who worked as a
lithographer on week days and painted in his spare time on Sundays.
When I got in Fisher seized me by the arm, and with a mock of proud
gesture he showed me Bonnat’s renovated room:
“Look, Miss Ascough. Can you beat this for a studio de luxe--and all in
your honor! Gee! Look at that beautiful pile of rubbish he has swept
under the table there, where he thought you wouldn’t see it. He’s trying
to impress you with the beauty of his home.”
“Shut up!” shouted Bonnat. “I’m the only one of the bunch who patronizes
the bath here at any rate.”
“Ugh!” shuddered Fisher. “That bath is filthy, and there’s never a drop
of hot water, so one would be dirtier after taking a bath there.”
“Nonsense!” answered Bonnat. “All you have to do is to take down a
pitcher or a bucket. Then rub soap all over your body, and stand up in
the tub and pour the pitchers of cold water over and over yourself. It’s
fine!”
“Whoor-roo!” shivered Enfield. “No cold water for me!”
Enfield was a thin-faced, sensitive-looking fellow, with eyes that
lighted up unexpectedly, and who seemed to shrink up in his clothes, as
if he were always cold. Menna had told me he was very talented, and
could make big money at illustrations, but he drank all the time, not in
a noisy way, but in a sad, quiet, secret way. He lived in a room
somewhere on the East side in the tenement-house district. It was almost
empty, except for an old stove, and Enfield would collect all the
newspapers he could lay his hands on, and he slept on a pile of these,
with another pile on top of him, and in bitter cold weather when he
could not afford other fuel he burned his papers. He would roll them
into tight logs and they would smoulder just like wood for hours, and
give out a good heat even. His room was simply piled with old
newspapers, said Menna. This man had come from extremely refined and
wealthy people, but he chose to live in this dreadful way, so as to
indulge his vice for liquor, and, it was suspected, drugs. At times he
would brace up and do a decent piece of work, and then he would turn up,
dressed immaculately, and the boys would be treated to the best of
everything; but inside of a week he would spend every cent and pawn his
clothes. I liked Enfield, though sometimes his cadaverous face
frightened me. His hands always looked so thin and cold that I had a
kind of maternal desire to take them in mine and warm them. There was
something pathetically helpless about all these artists. They seemed all
boys to me--even the older ones. I suppose it was that childish
helplessness about them that appealed most to me.
They all chatted away, and gibed each other and joked as they worked,
and they would tell stories, and then all stop work to laugh
uproariously. Fisher told one about Enfield. He said that one evening
the boys had a little spread in their rooms, beer and sausage and
cheese, and for a joke they had put the remains of the sausage and
cheese in the pocket of Enfield’s coat. Enfield caught up the story here
and finished it thus:
[Illustration: They all chatted away and jibed each other and joked as
they worked, and would tell stories.]
“Some time later, I was starving.” He said that as if it were quite the
usual thing to starve a bit. “I hadn’t eaten for two days, and all of a
sudden I put my hand in that pocket, and found a sausage and some
cheese. It surely saved my life.”
All of their stories were a curious mixture of tragedy and exquisite
humor, and while I laughed one minute my eyes would fill up the next. I
suppose, after all, that’s just how life is really compounded--of
tragedy and comedy. It’s good to be able to feel both of these elements
in our lives. A writer once referred to some of his characters as:
“_dead_ people”--dead in the sense of simply being unable to grasp at
any significance in life save the dull living from day to day. It seems
to me one does not regret passing through scorching fires. It’s the only
way one can get the big vision of life. I used to feel bitter, when I
contemplated the easy life of other girls, and compared it with my own
hard battle. Now I know that, had I to go through it all again, I would
not exchange my hard experiences for the luxury that is the lot of
others. I can even understand what it is to pity and not envy the rich.
They _miss so much_. Money cannot buy that knowledge of humanity that
comes only to him who has lived among the real people in the world--the
poor!
All of which is what Bonnat would call “beside the
question”--digression, that has “nothing to do with the thing, tra la!”
“Do you see that piece of drapery, Miss Ascough?” said Mr. Christain.
“Well, Bonnat bought that yesterday at a little Jew shop on Third Avenue
where they have several prices for everything. He asked: ‘What’s the
price,’ and the Jew gave him the top-notch: ‘ninety-eight cent one
yard,’ said he. ‘Ninety-eight cents!’ shouted that big chump there,
‘that’s dirt cheap! I’ll take it!’ He could have got it for fifteen, and
when the Jew was wrapping it up, I could see by his face that he was
sorry he hadn’t charged ninety-nine. Can you beat him for an easy mark?”
“Strikes me,” growled Bonnat, “we’re not particularly easy on Miss
Ascough. She’s been posing over her time.”
“True enough,” said Fisher.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” demanded Bonnat, beaming down upon me.
“Shall we have her next week, or get a nice little soft blonde in?”