The stranger, I have said, was some years older than myself: a man of a
good stature, a very lively face, cordial, agitated manners, and a gray
eye as active as a fowl's.
“May I have a word with you?” said I.
“My dear sir,” he replied, “I don't know what it can be about, but you
may have a hundred if you like.”
“You have just left the side of a young lady,” I continued, “towards
whom I was led (very unintentionally) into the appearance of an offence.
To speak to herself would be only to renew her embarrassment, and I
seize the occasion of making my apology, and declaring my respect, to
one of my own sex who is her friend, and perhaps,” I added, with a bow,
“her natural protector.”
“You are a countryman of mine; I know it!” he cried: “I am sure of it
by your delicacy to a lady. You do her no more than justice. I was
introduced to her the other night at tea, in the apartment of some
people, friends of mine; and meeting her again this morning, I could not
do less than carry her easel for her. My dear sir, what is your name?”
I was disappointed to find he had so little bond with my young lady;
and but that it was I who had sought the acquaintance, might have been
tempted to retreat. At the same time, something in the stranger's eye
engaged me.
“My name,” said I, “is Loudon Dodd; I am a student of sculpture here
from Muskegon.”
“Of sculpture?” he cried, as though that would have been his last
conjecture. “Mine is James Pinkerton; I am delighted to have the
pleasure of your acquaintance.”
“Pinkerton!” it was now my turn to exclaim. “Are you Broken-Stool
Pinkerton?”
He admitted his identity with a laugh of boyish delight; and indeed any
young man in the quarter might have been proud to own a sobriquet thus
gallantly acquired.
In order to explain the name, I must here digress into a chapter of
the history of manners in the nineteenth century, very well worth
commemoration for its own sake. In some of the studios at that date,
the hazing of new pupils was both barbarous and obscene. Two incidents,
following one on the heels of the other tended to produce an advance in
civilization by the means (as so commonly happens) of a passing appeal
to savage standards. The first was the arrival of a little gentleman
from Armenia. He had a fez upon his head and (what nobody counted on) a
dagger in his pocket. The hazing was set about in the customary style,
and, perhaps in virtue of the victim's head-gear, even more boisterously
than usual. He bore it at first with an inviting patience; but upon one
of the students proceeding to an unpardonable freedom, plucked out
his knife and suddenly plunged it in the belly of the jester. This
gentleman, I am pleased to say, passed months upon a bed of sickness,
before he was in a position to resume his studies. The second incident
was that which had earned Pinkerton his reputation. In a crowded studio,
while some very filthy brutalities were being practised on a trembling
debutant, a tall, pale fellow sprang from his stool and (without the
smallest preface or explanation) sang out, “All English and Americans to
clear the shop!” Our race is brutal, but not filthy; and the summons
was nobly responded to. Every Anglo-Saxon student seized his stool; in
a moment the studio was full of bloody coxcombs, the French fleeing in
disorder for the door, the victim liberated and amazed. In this feat of
arms, both English-speaking nations covered themselves with glory;
but I am proud to claim the author of the whole for an American, and
a patriotic American at that, being the same gentleman who had
subsequently to be held down in the bottom of a box during a performance
of _L'Oncle Sam_, sobbing at intervals, “My country! O my country!”
While yet another (my new acquaintance, Pinkerton) was supposed to have
made the most conspicuous figure in the actual battle. At one blow, he
had broken his own stool, and sent the largest of his opponents back
foremost through what we used to call a “conscientious nude.” It appears
that, in the continuation of his flight, this fallen warrior issued on
the boulevard still framed in the burst canvas.
It will be understood how much talk the incident aroused in the
students' quarter, and that I was highly gratified to make the
acquaintance of my famous countryman. It chanced I was to see more of
the quixotic side of his character before the morning was done; for as
we continued to stroll together, I found myself near the studio of a
young Frenchman whose work I had promised to examine, and in the fashion
of the quarter carried up Pinkerton along with me. Some of my comrades
of this date were pretty obnoxious fellows. I could almost always admire
and respect the grown-up practitioners of art in Paris; but many of
those who were still in a state of pupilage were sorry specimens, so
much so that I used often to wonder where the painters came from, and
where the brutes of students went to. A similar mystery hangs over the
intermediate stages of the medical profession, and must have perplexed
the least observant. The ruffian, at least, whom I now carried Pinkerton
to visit, was one of the most crapulous in the quarter. He turned
out for our delectation a huge “crust” (as we used to call it) of St.
Stephen, wallowing in red upon his belly in an exhausted receiver, and
a crowd of Hebrews in blue, green, and yellow, pelting him--apparently
with buns; and while we gazed upon this contrivance, regaled us with
a piece of his own recent biography, of which his mind was still very
full, and which he seemed to fancy, represented him in a heroic posture.
I was one of those cosmopolitan Americans, who accept the world (whether
at home or abroad) as they find it, and whose favourite part is that
of the spectator; yet even I was listening with ill-suppressed disgust,
when I was aware of a violent plucking at my sleeve.
“Is he saying he kicked her down stairs?” asked Pinkerton, white as St.
Stephen.
“Yes,” said I: “his discarded mistress; and then he pelted her with
stones. I suppose that's what gave him the idea for his picture. He has
just been alleging the pathetic excuse that she was old enough to be his
mother.”
Something like a sob broke from Pinkerton. “Tell him,” he gasped--“I
can't speak this language, though I understand a little; I never had any
proper education--tell him I'm going to punch his head.”
“For God's sake, do nothing of the sort!” I cried. “They don't
understand that sort of thing here.” And I tried to bundle him out.
“Tell him first what we think of him,” he objected. “Let me tell him
what he looks in the eyes of a pure-minded American”
“Leave that to me,” said I, thrusting Pinkerton clear through the door.
“Qu'est-ce qu'il a?”[1] inquired the student.
[1] “What's the matter with him?”
“Monsieur se sent mal au coeur d'avoir trop regarde votre croute,”[2]
said I, and made my escape, scarce with dignity, at Pinkerton's heels.
[2] “The gentleman is sick at his stomach from having looked too long at
your daub.”
“What did you say to him?” he asked.
“The only thing that he could feel,” was my reply.
After this scene, the freedom with which I had ejected my new
acquaintance, and the precipitation with which I had followed him, the
least I could do was to propose luncheon. I have forgot the name of the
place to which I led him, nothing loath; it was on the far side of the
Luxembourg at least, with a garden behind, where we were speedily set
face to face at table, and began to dig into each other's history
and character, like terriers after rabbits, according to the approved
fashion of youth.
Pinkerton's parents were from the old country; there too, I incidentally
gathered, he had himself been born, though it was a circumstance he
seemed prone to forget. Whether he had run away, or his father had
turned him out, I never fathomed; but about the age of twelve, he was
thrown upon his own resources. A travelling tin-type photographer picked
him up, like a haw out of a hedgerow, on a wayside in New Jersey; took
a fancy to the urchin; carried him on with him in his wandering life;
taught him all he knew himself--to take tin-types (as well as I can make
out) and doubt the Scriptures; and died at last in Ohio at the corner
of a road. “He was a grand specimen,” cried Pinkerton; “I wish you could
have seen him, Mr. Dodd. He had an appearance of magnanimity that used
to remind me of the patriarchs.” On the death of this random protector,
the boy inherited the plant and continued the business. “It was a life
I could have chosen, Mr. Dodd!” he cried. “I have been in all the finest
scenes of that magnificent continent that we were born to be the heirs
of. I wish you could see my collection of tin-types; I wish I had them
here. They were taken for my own pleasure and to be a memento; and they
show Nature in her grandest as well as her gentlest moments.” As he
tramped the Western States and Territories, taking tin-types, the boy
was continually getting hold of books, good, bad, and indifferent,
popular and abstruse, from the novels of Sylvanus Cobb to Euclid's
Elements, both of which I found (to my almost equal wonder) he had
managed to peruse: he was taking stock by the way, of the people, the
products, and the country, with an eye unusually observant and a
memory unusually retentive; and he was collecting for himself a body of
magnanimous and semi-intellectual nonsense, which he supposed to be the
natural thoughts and to contain the whole duty of the born American.
To be pure-minded, to be patriotic, to get culture and money with both
hands and with the same irrational fervour--these appeared to be the
chief articles of his creed. In later days (not of course upon this
first occasion) I would sometimes ask him why; and he had his answer
pat. “To build up the type!” he would cry. “We're all committed to that;
we're all under bond to fulfil the American Type! Loudon, the hope of
the world is there. If we fail, like these old feudal monarchies, what
is left?”
The trade of a tin-typer proved too narrow for the lad's ambition; it
was insusceptible of expansion, he explained, it was not truly modern;
and by a sudden conversion of front, he became a railroad-scalper. The
principles of this trade I never clearly understood; but its essence
appears to be to cheat the railroads out of their due fare. “I threw my
whole soul into it; I grudged myself food and sleep while I was at it;
the most practised hands admitted I had caught on to the idea in a month
and revolutionised the practice inside of a year,” he said. “And there's
interest in it, too. It's amusing to pick out some one going by, make up
your mind about his character and tastes, dash out of the office and hit
him flying with an offer of the very place he wants to go to. I don't
think there was a scalper on the continent made fewer blunders. But I
took it only as a stage. I was saving every dollar; I was looking
ahead. I knew what I wanted--wealth, education, a refined home, and a
conscientious, cultured lady for a wife; for, Mr. Dodd”--this with
a formidable outcry--“every man is bound to marry above him: if the
woman's not the man's superior, I brand it as mere sensuality. There was
my idea, at least. That was what I was saving for; and enough, too! But
it isn't every man, I know that--it's far from every man--could do what
I did: close up the livest agency in Saint Jo, where he was coining
dollars by the pot, set out alone, without a friend or a word of French,
and settle down here to spend his capital learning art.”
“Was it an old taste?” I asked him, “or a sudden fancy?”
“Neither, Mr. Dodd,” he admitted. “Of course I had learned in my
tin-typing excursions to glory and exult in the works of God. But it
wasn't that. I just said to myself, What is most wanted in my age and
country? More culture and more art, I said; and I chose the best place,
saved my money, and came here to get them.”
The whole attitude of this young man warmed and shamed me. He had more
fire in his little toe than I had in my whole carcase; he was stuffed to
bursting with the manly virtues; thrift and courage glowed in him; and
even if his artistic vocation seemed (to one of my exclusive tenets) not
quite clear, who could predict what might be accomplished by a creature
so full-blooded and so inspired with animal and intellectual energy? So,
when he proposed that I should come and see his work (one of the regular
stages of a Latin Quarter friendship), I followed him with interest and
hope.
He lodged parsimoniously at the top of a tall house near the
Observatory, in a bare room, principally furnished with his own trunks
and papered with his own despicable studies. No man has less taste for
disagreeable duties than myself; perhaps there is only one subject on
which I cannot flatter a man without a blush; but upon that, upon all
that touches art, my sincerity is Roman. Once and twice I made the
circuit of his walls in silence, spying in every corner for some spark
of merit; he, meanwhile, following close at my heels, reading the
verdict in my face with furtive glances, presenting some fresh study for
my inspection with undisguised anxiety, and (after it had been silently
weighed in the balances and found wanting) whisking it away with an open
gesture of despair. By the time the second round was completed, we were
both extremely depressed.
“O!” he groaned, breaking the long silence, “it's quite unnecessary you
should speak!”
“Do you want me to be frank with you? I think you are wasting time,”
said I.
“You don't see any promise?” he inquired, beguiled by some return of
hope, and turning upon me the embarrassing brightness of his eye. “Not
in this still-life here, of the melon? One fellow thought it good.”
It was the least I could do to give the melon a more particular
examination; which, when I had done, I could but shake my head. “I am
truly sorry, Pinkerton,” said I, “but I can't advise you to persevere.”
He seemed to recover his fortitude at the moment, rebounding from
disappointment like a man of india-rubber. “Well,” said he stoutly, “I
don't know that I'm surprised. But I'll go on with the course; and throw
my whole soul into it, too. You mustn't think the time is lost. It's all
culture; it will help me to extend my relations when I get back home;
it may fit me for a position on one of the illustrateds; and then I can
always turn dealer,” he said, uttering the monstrous proposition,
which was enough to shake the Latin Quarter to the dust, with entire
simplicity. “It's all experience, besides;” he continued, “and it seems
to me there's a tendency to underrate experience, both as net profit and
investment. Never mind. That's done with. But it took courage for you
to say what you did, and I'll never forget it. Here's my hand, Mr. Dodd.
I'm not your equal in culture or talent--”
“You know nothing about that,” I interrupted. “I have seen your work,
but you haven't seen mine.
“No more I have,” he cried; “and let's go see it at once! But I know you
are away up. I can feel it here.”
To say truth, I was almost ashamed to introduce him to my studio--my
work, whether absolutely good or bad, being so vastly superior to his.
But his spirits were now quite restored; and he amazed me, on the way,
with his light-hearted talk and new projects. So that I began at last
to understand how matters lay: that this was not an artist who had been
deprived of the practice of his single art; but only a business man
of very extended interests, informed (perhaps something of the most
suddenly) that one investment out of twenty had gone wrong.
As a matter of fact besides (although I never suspected it) he was
already seeking consolation with another of the muses, and pleasing
himself with the notion that he would repay me for my sincerity, cement
our friendship, and (at one and the same blow) restore my estimation of
his talents. Several times already, when I had been speaking of myself,
he had pulled out a writing-pad and scribbled a brief note; and now,
when we entered the studio, I saw it in his hand again, and the
pencil go to his mouth, as he cast a comprehensive glance round the
uncomfortable building.
“Are you going to make a sketch of it?” I could not help asking, as I
unveiled the Genius of Muskegon.
“Ah, that's my secret,” said he. “Never you mind. A mouse can help a
lion.”
He walked round my statue and had the design explained to him. I had
represented Muskegon as a young, almost a stripling, mother, with
something of an Indian type; the babe upon her knees was winged, to
indicate our soaring future; and her seat was a medley of sculptured
fragments, Greek, Roman, and Gothic, to remind us of the older worlds
from which we trace our generation.
“Now, does this satisfy you, Mr. Dodd?” he inquired, as soon as I had
explained to him the main features of the design.
“Well,” I said, “the fellows seem to think it's not a bad bonne femme
for a beginner. I don't think it's entirely bad myself. Here is the best
point; it builds up best from here. No, it seems to me it has a kind of
merit,” I admitted; “but I mean to do better.”
“Ah, that's the word!” cried Pinkerton. “There's the word I love!” and
he scribbled in his pad.
“What in creation ails you?” I inquired. “It's the most commonplace
expression in the English language.”
“Better and better!” chuckled Pinkerton. “The unconsciousness of genius.
Lord, but this is coming in beautiful!” and he scribbled again.
“If you're going to be fulsome,” said I, “I'll close the place of
entertainment.” And I threatened to replace the veil upon the Genius.
“No, no,” said he. “Don't be in a hurry. Give me a point or two. Show me
what's particularly good.”
“I would rather you found that out for yourself,” said I.
“The trouble is,” said he, “that I've never turned my attention to
sculpture, beyond, of course, admiring it, as everybody must who has a
soul. So do just be a good fellow, and explain to me what you like in
it, and what you tried for, and where the merit comes in. It'll be all
education for me.”
“Well, in sculpture, you see, the first thing you have to consider
is the masses. It's, after all, a kind of architecture,” I began, and
delivered a lecture on that branch of art, with illustrations from
my own masterpiece there present, all of which, if you don't mind,
or whether you mind or not, I mean to conscientiously omit. Pinkerton
listened with a fiery interest, questioned me with a certain
uncultivated shrewdness, and continued to scratch down notes, and tear
fresh sheets from his pad. I found it inspiring to have my words thus
taken down like a professor's lecture; and having had no previous
experience of the press, I was unaware that they were all being taken
down wrong. For the same reason (incredible as it must appear in
an American) I never entertained the least suspicion that they were
destined to be dished up with a sauce of penny-a-lining gossip; and
myself, my person, and my works of art butchered to make a holiday
for the readers of a Sunday paper. Night had fallen over the Genius of
Muskegon before the issue of my theoretic eloquence was stayed, nor did
I separate from my new friend without an appointment for the morrow.
I was indeed greatly taken with this first view of my countryman,
and continued, on further acquaintance, to be interested, amused, and
attracted by him in about equal proportions. I must not say he had a
fault, not only because my mouth is sealed by gratitude, but because
those he had sprang merely from his education, and you could see he had
cultivated and improved them like virtues. For all that, I can never
deny he was a troublous friend to me, and the trouble began early.
It may have been a fortnight later that I divined the secret of the
writing-pad. My wretch (it leaked out) wrote letters for a paper in the
West, and had filled a part of one of them with descriptions of myself.
I pointed out to him that he had no right to do so without asking my
permission.
“Why, this is just what I hoped!” he exclaimed. “I thought you didn't
seem to catch on; only it seemed too good to be true.”
“But, my good fellow, you were bound to warn me,” I objected.
“I know it's generally considered etiquette,” he admitted; “but between
friends, and when it was only with a view of serving you, I thought it
wouldn't matter. I wanted it (if possible) to come on you as a surprise;
I wanted you just to waken, like Lord Byron, and find the papers full of
you. You must admit it was a natural thought. And no man likes to boast
of a favour beforehand.”
“But, heavens and earth! how do you know I think it a favour?” I cried.
He became immediately plunged in despair. “You think it a liberty,” said
he; “I see that. I would rather have cut off my hand. I would stop it
now, only it's too late; it's published by now. And I wrote it with so
much pride and pleasure!”
I could think of nothing but how to console him. “O, I daresay it's all
right,” said I. “I know you meant it kindly, and you would be sure to do
it in good taste.”
“That you may swear to,” he cried. “It's a pure, bright, A number 1
paper; the St. Jo _Sunday Herald_. The idea of the series was quite my
own; I interviewed the editor, put it to him straight; the freshness of
the idea took him, and I walked out of that office with the contract in
my pocket, and did my first Paris letter that evening in Saint Jo. The
editor did no more than glance his eye down the headlines. 'You're the
man for us,' said he.”
I was certainly far from reassured by this sketch of the class of
literature in which I was to make my first appearance; but I said no
more, and possessed my soul in patience, until the day came when I
received a copy of a newspaper marked in the corner, “Compliments of
J.P.” I opened it with sensible shrinkings; and there, wedged between an
account of a prize-fight and a skittish article upon chiropody--think of
chiropody treated with a leer!--I came upon a column and a half in which
myself and my poor statue were embalmed. Like the editor with the first
of the series, I did but glance my eye down the head-lines and was more
than satisfied.
ANOTHER OF PINKERTON'S SPICY CHATS.
ART PRACTITIONERS IN PARIS.
MUSKEGON'S COLUMNED CAPITOL.
SON OF MILLIONAIRE DODD,
PATRIOT AND ARTIST.
“HE MEANS TO DO BETTER.”
In the body of the text, besides, my eye caught, as it passed, some
deadly expressions: “Figure somewhat fleshy,” “bright, intellectual
smile,” “the unconsciousness of genius,” “'Now, Mr. Dodd,' resumed the
reporter, 'what would be your idea of a distinctively American quality
in sculpture?'” It was true the question had been asked; it was true,
alas! that I had answered; and now here was my reply, or some strange
hash of it, gibbeted in the cold publicity of type. I thanked God that
my French fellow-students were ignorant of English; but when I thought
of the British--of Myner (for instance) or the Stennises--I think I
could have fallen on Pinkerton and beat him.
To divert my thoughts (if it were possible) from this calamity, I turned
to a letter from my father which had arrived by the same post. The
envelope contained a strip of newspaper-cutting; and my eye caught
again, “Son of Millionaire Dodd--Figure somewhat fleshy,” and the rest
of the degrading nonsense. What would my father think of it? I wondered,
and opened his manuscript. “My dearest boy,” it began, “I send you a
cutting which has pleased me very much, from a St. Joseph paper of
high standing. At last you seem to be coming fairly to the front; and
I cannot but reflect with delight and gratitude how very few youths of
your age occupy nearly two columns of press-matter all to themselves.
I only wish your dear mother had been here to read it over my shoulder;
but we will hope she shares my grateful emotion in a better place. Of
course I have sent a copy to your grandfather and uncle in Edinburgh;
so you can keep the one I enclose. This Jim Pinkerton seems a valuable
acquaintance; he has certainly great talent; and it is a good general
rule to keep in with pressmen.”
I hope it will be set down to the right side of my account, but I had
no sooner read these words, so touchingly silly, than my anger against
Pinkerton was swallowed up in gratitude. Of all the circumstances of my
career, my birth, perhaps, excepted, not one had given my poor father so
profound a pleasure as this article in the _Sunday Herald_. What a fool,
then, was I, to be lamenting! when I had at last, and for once, and
at the cost of only a few blushes, paid back a fraction of my debt
of gratitude. So that, when I next met Pinkerton, I took things very
lightly; my father was pleased, and thought the letter very clever, I
told him; for my own part, I had no taste for publicity: thought the
public had no concern with the artist, only with his art; and though I
owned he had handled it with great consideration, I should take it as a
favour if he never did it again.
“There it is,” he said despondingly. “I've hurt you. You can't deceive
me, Loudon. It's the want of tact, and it's incurable.” He sat down, and
leaned his head upon his hand. “I had no advantages when I was young,
you see,” he added.
“Not in the least, my dear fellow,” said I. “Only the next time you wish
to do me a service, just speak about my work; leave my wretched person
out, and my still more wretched conversation; and above all,” I added,
with an irrepressible shudder, “don't tell them how I said it! There's
that phrase, now: 'With a proud, glad smile.' Who cares whether I smiled
or not?”
“Oh, there now, Loudon, you're entirely wrong,” he broke in. “That's
what the public likes; that's the merit of the thing, the literary
value. It's to call up the scene before them; it's to enable the
humblest citizen to enjoy that afternoon the same as I did. Think what
it would have been to me when I was tramping around with my tin-types to
find a column and a half of real, cultured conversation--an artist, in
his studio abroad, talking of his art--and to know how he looked as he
did it, and what the room was like, and what he had for breakfast; and
to tell myself, eating tinned beans beside a creek, that if all went
well, the same sort of thing would, sooner or later, happen to myself:
why, Loudon, it would have been like a peephole into heaven!”
“Well, if it gives so much pleasure,” I admitted, “the sufferers
shouldn't complain. Only give the other fellows a turn.”
The end of the matter was to bring myself and the journalist in a more
close relation. If I know anything at all of human nature--and the IF
is no mere figure of speech, but stands for honest doubt--no series
of benefits conferred, or even dangers shared, would have so rapidly
confirmed our friendship as this quarrel avoided, this fundamental
difference of taste and training accepted and condoned.