The Academy reception was approaching a perspiring and vociferous close
when the Antiquary whispered an invitation to the Painter, the Patron,
and the Critic. A Scotch woodcock at "Dick's" weighs heavily, even
against the more solid pleasures of the mind, so terminating four
conferences on as many tendencies in modern art, and abandoning four
hungry souls, four hungry bodies bore down an avenue toward "Dick's"
smoky realm, where they found a quiet corner apart from the crowd. It is
a place where one may talk freely or even foolishly--one of those rare
oases in which an artist, for example, may venture to read a lesson to an
avowed patron of art. All the way down the Patron had bored us with his
new Corot, which he described at tedious length. Now the Antiquary barely
tolerated anything this side of the eighteenth century, the Painter was
of Courbet's sturdy following, the Critic had been writing for a season
that the only hope in art for the rich was to emancipate themselves from
the exclusive idolatry of Barbizon. Accordingly the Patron's rhapsodies
fell on impatient ears, and when he continued his importunities over the
Scotch woodcock and ale, the Painter was impelled to express the sense of
the meeting.
"Speaking of Corot," he began genially, "there are certain
misapprehensions about him which I am fortunately able to clear up.
People imagine, for instance, that he haunted the woods about Ville
d'Avray. Not at all. He frequented the gin-mills in Cedar Street. We are
told he wore a peasant's blouse and sabots; on the contrary, he sported a
frock-coat and congress gaiters. His long clay pipe has passed into
legend, whereas he actually smoked a tilted Pittsburg stogy. We speak of
him by the operatic name of Camille; he was prosaically called Campbell.
You think he worked out of doors at rosy dawn; he painted habitually in
an air-tight attic by lamplight."
As the Painter paused for the sensation to sink in, the Antiquary
murmured soothingly, "Get it off your mind quickly, Old Man," the Critic
remarked that the Campbells were surely coming, and the Patron asked with
nettled dignity how the Painter knew.
"Know?" he resumed, having had the necessary fillip. "Because I knew him,
smelled his stogy, and drank with him in Cedar Street. It was some time
in the early '70s, when a passion for Corot's opalescences (with the
Critic's permission) was the latest and most knowing fad. As a realist I
half mistrusted the fascination, but I felt it with the rest, and
whenever any of the besotted dealers of that rude age got in an 'Early
Morning' or a 'Dance of Nymphs,' I was there among the first. For another
reason, my friend Rosenheim, then in his modest beginnings as a
marchand-amateur, was likely to appear at such private views. With his
infallible tact for future salability, he was already unloading the
Institute, and laying in Barbizon. Find what he's buying now, and I'll
tell you the next fad."
The Critic nodded sagaciously, knowing that Rosenheim, who now poses as
collecting only for his pleasure, has already begun to affect the drastic
productions of certain clever young Spanish realists.
"Rosenheim," the Painter pursued, "really loved his Corot quite apart
from prospective values. I fancy the pink silkiness of the manner always
appeals to Jews, recalling their most authentic taste, the
eighteenth-century Frenchman. Anyhow, Rosenheim took his new love
seriously, followed up the smallest examples religiously, learned to know
the forgeries that were already afloat--in short, was the best informed
Corotist in the city. It was appropriate, then, that my first relations
with the poet-painter should have the sanction of Rosenheim's presence."
Lingering upon the reminiscence, the Painter sopped up the last bit of
anchovy paste, drained his toby, and pushed it away. The rest of us
settled back comfortably for a long session, as he persisted. "Rosenheim
wrote me one day that he had got wind of a Corot in a Cedar Street
auction room. It might be, so his news went, the pendant to the one he
had recently bought at the Bolton sale. He suggested we should go down
together and see. So we joggled down Broadway in the 'bus, on what looked
rather like a wild-goose chase. But it paid to keep the run of Cedar
Street in those days; one might find anything. The gilded black walnut
was pushing the old mahogany out of good houses; Wyant and Homer Martin
were occasionally raising the wind by ventures in omnibus sales; then
there were old masters which one cannot mention because nobody would
believe. But that particular morning the Corot had no real competitor;
its radiance fairly filled the entire junk-room. Rosenheim was in
raptures. As luck would have it, it was indeed the companion-piece to
his, and his it should be at all costs. In Cedar Street, he reasonably
felt, one might even hope to get it cheap. Then began our _duo_ on the
theme of atmosphere, vibrancy, etc.--brand new phrases, mind you, in
those innocent days. As Rosenheim for a moment carried the burden alone,
I stepped up to the canvas and saw, with a shock, that the paint was
about two days old. Under what conditions I wondered--for did I not know
the ways of paint--could a real Corot have come over so fresh? I more
than scented trickery. A sketch overpainted---or it seemed above the
quality of a sheer forgery--or was the case worse than that? Meanwhile
not a shade of doubt was in Rosenheim's mind. As I canvassed the
possibilities his _sotto-voce_ ecstasies continued, to the vast
amusement, as I perceived, of a sardonic stranger who hovered unsteadily
in the background. This ill-omened person was clad in a statesmanlike
black frock-coat with trousers of similar funereal shade. A white lawn
tie, much soiled, and congress gaiters, much frayed, were appropriate
details of a costume inevitably topped off with an army slouch hat that
had long lacked the brush. He was immensely long and sallow, wore a
drooping moustache vaguely blonde, between the unkempt curtains of which
a thin cheroot pointed heavenward. As he walked nervously up and down,
with a suspiciously stilted gait, he observed Rosenheim with evident
scorn and the picture with a strange pride. He was not merely odd, but
also offensive, for as Rosenheim whispered _'Comme c'est beau_!' there
was an unmistakable snort; when he continued, _'Mais c'est exquis_!' the
snort broadened into a mighty chuckle; while as he concluded 'Most
luminous!' the chuckle became articulate, in an 'Oh, shucks!' that could
not be ignored.
"'You seem to be interested, sir,' Rosenheim remarked. 'You bet!' was the
terse response. 'May I inquire the cause of your concern?' Rosenheim
continued placidly. With a most exasperating air of willingness to
please, the stranger rejoined: 'Why, I jest took a simple pleasure, sir,
in seeing an amachoor like you talking French about a little thing I
painted here in Cedar Street.' For a moment Rosenheim was too indignant
to speak, then he burst out with: 'It's an infernal lie; you could no
more paint that picture than you could fly.' 'I did paint it, jest the
same,' pursued the stranger imperturbably, as Rosenheim, to make an end
of the insufferable wag, snapped out sarcastically, 'Perhaps you painted
its mate, then, the Bolton Corot.' 'The one that sold for three thousand
dollars last week? Of course I painted it; it's the best nymph scene I
ever done. Don't get mad, mister; I paint most of the Corots. I'm glad
you like 'em.'
"For a moment I feared that little Rosenheim would smite the lank annoyer
dead in his tracks. 'For heaven's sake be careful!' I cried. 'The man is
drunk or crazy or he may even be right; the paint on this picture isn't
two days old.' 'Correct,' declared the stranger. 'I finished it day
before yesterday for this sale.' Then a marked change came over
Rosenheim's manner. He grew positively deferential. It delighted him to
meet an artist of talent; they must know each other better. Cards were
exchanged, and Rosenheim read with amazement the grimy inscription
'_Campbell Corot, Landscape Artist_.' 'Yes, that's my painting name,'
Campbell Corot said modestly; 'and my pictures are almost equally as good
as his'n, but not quite. They do for ordinary household purposes. I
really hate to see one get into a big sale like the Bolton; it don't seem
honest, but I can't help it; nobody'd believe me if I told.' Rosenheim's
demeanour was courtly to a fault as he pleaded an engagement and bade us
farewell. Already apparently he divined a certain importance in so
remarkable a gift of mimicry. I stayed behind, resolved on making the
nearer acquaintance of Campbell Corot."
* * * * *
"Rosenheim clearly understands the art of business," interrupted the
Antiquary. "And the business of art," added the Critic. "Could your
seedy friend have painted my Corot?" said the Patron in real distress.
"Why not?" continued the Painter remorselessly. "Only hear me out, and
you may judge for yourself. Anyhow, let's drop your Corot; we were
speaking of mine."
"To make Campbell Corot's acquaintance proved more difficult than I had
expected. He confided to me immediately that he had been a durn fool to
give himself away to my friend, but talk was cheap, and people never
believed him, anyway. Then gloom descended, and my professions of
confidence received only the most surly responses. He unbent again for a
moment with, 'Painter feller, you knowed the pesky ways of paint, didn't
yer?' but when I followed up this promising lead and claimed him as an
associate, he repulsed me with, 'Stuck up, ain't yer? Parley French like
your friend? S'pose you've showed in the Saloon at Paris.' Giving it up,
I replied simply: 'I have; I'm a landscape painter, too, but I'd like to
say before I go that I should be glad to be able to paint a picture like
that.' Looking me in the eye and seeing I meant it, 'Shake!' he replied
cordially. As we shook, his breath met me fair: it was such a breath as
was not uncommon in old-time Cedar Street. Gentlemen who affect this
aroma are, I have noticed, seldom indifferent to one sort of invitation,
so I ventured hardily: 'You know Nickerson's Glengyle, sir; perhaps you
will do me the favour to drink a glass with me while we chat.' Here I
could tell you a lot about Nickerson's." "Don't," begged the Critic, who
is abstemious. "I will only say, then, that Nickerson's, once an
all-night refuge, closes now at three--desecration has made it the yellow
marble office of a teetotaler in the banking line--and the Glengyle, that
blessed essence of the barley, heather, peat, and mist of Old Scotland,
has been taken over by an exporting company, limited. Sometimes I think I
detect a little of it in the poisons that the grocers of Glasgow and
Edinburgh send over here, or perhaps I only dream of the old taste. Then
it was itself, and by the second glass Campbell Corot was quite ready to
soliloquise. You shall have his story about as he told it, but abridged a
little in view of your tender ages and the hour.
* * * * *
"John Campbell had grown up contentedly on the old farm under Mount
Everett until one summer when a landscape painter took board with the
family. At first the lad despised the gentle art as unmanly, but as he
watched the mysterious processes he longed to try his hand. The
good-natured Düsseldorfian willingly lent brushes and bits of millboard
upon which John proceeded to make the most lurid confections. The forms
of things were, of course, an obstacle to him, as they are to everybody.
'I never could drore,' he told me, 'and I never wanted to drore like that
painter chap. Why he'd fill a big canvas with little trees and rocks and
ponds till it all seemed no bigger than a Noah's ark show. I used to ask
him, "Why don't you wait till evening when you can't see so much to
drore?"' To such criticism the painter naturally paid no attention, while
John devoted himself to sunsets and the tube of crimson lake. From
babyhood he had loved the purple hour, and his results, while without
form and void, were apparently not wholly unpleasing, for his master paid
him the compliment of using one or two such sketches as backgrounds,
adding merely the requisite hills, houses, fences, and cows. These
collaborations were mentioned not unworthily beside the sunsets of
Kensett and Cropsey next winter at the Academy. From that summer John was
for better or worse a painter.
"His first local success was, curiously enough, an historical
composition, in which the village hose company, almost swallowed up by
the smoke, held in check a conflagration of Vesuvian magnitude. The few
visible figures and Smith's turning-mill, which had heroically been saved
in part from the flames, were jotted in from photographs. Happily this
work, for which the Alert Hose Company subscribed no less than
twenty-five dollars, providing also a fifty-dollar frame, fell under the
appreciative eye of the insurance adjuster who visited the very ruins
depicted. Recognising immediately an uncommonly available form of
artistic talent, this gentleman procured John a commission as painter in
ordinary to the Vulcan, with orders to come at once to town at excellent
wages. By his twentieth year, then, John was established in an attic
chamber near the North River with a public that, barring change in the
advertising policy of the Vulcan, must inevitably become national. For
the lithographers he designed all manner of holocausts; at times he made
tours through the counties and fixed the incandescent mouth of Vulcan's
forge, the figures within being merely indicated, on the face of a
hundred ledges. That was a shame, he freely admitted to me; the rocks
looked better without. In fact, John Campbell's first manner soon came to
be a humiliation and an intolerable bondage. He felt the insincerity of
it deeply. 'You see, it's this way,' he explained to me, 'you don't see
the shapes by firelight or at sunset, but you have seen them all day and
you know they're there. Nobody that don't have those shapes in his brush
can make you feel them in a picture. Everybody puts too little droring
into sunsets. Nobody paints good ones, not even Inness [we must remember
it was in the early '70s], except a Frenchman called Roosoo. He takes 'em
very late, which is best, and he can drore some too.'"
"A very decent critic, your alcoholic friend," the Critic remarked. "He
was full of good ideas, as you shall see," the story-teller replied. "I
quite agree with you, if the bad whisky could have been kept away from
him he might have shone in your profession. Anyhow, he had the makings of
an honest man in him, and when the Vulcan enlarged its cliff-painting
programme, he cut loose bravely. Then followed ten lean years of odd
jobs, with landscape painting as a recreation, and the occasional sale of
a canvas on a street corner as a great event. When his need was greatest
he consented to earn good wages composing symbolical door designs for the
Meteor Coach Company, but that again he could not endure for long. Later
in the intervals of colouring photographs, illuminating window-shades, or
whatever came to hand, he worked out the theory which finally led him to
the feet of Corot. It was, in short, that the proper subject for an
artist deficient in linear design is sunrise.
"He explained the matter to me with zest. 'By morning you've half
forgotten the look of things. All night you've seen only dreams that
don't have any true form, and when the first light comes, nothing shows
solid for what it is. The mist uncovers a little here and there, and you
wonder what's beneath. It's all guesswork and nothing sure. Take any
morning early when I look out of my attic window to the North River.
There's nothing but a heap of fog, grey or pink, as there's more or less
sun behind. It gets a little thick over toward Jersey, and that may be
the shore, or again it mayn't. Then a solid bit of vi'let shows high up,
and I guess it's Castle Stevens, but perhaps it ain't. Then a pale-yellow
streak shoots across the river farther up and I take it to be the
Palisades, but again it may be jest a ray of sunshine. You see there
really ain't no earth; it's all air and light. That's what a man that
can't drore ought to paint; that's what my namesake, Cameel Corot, did
paint better than any one that ever lived.'
"At this point of his confession John Campbell glared savagely at me for
assent, and set down a sadly frayed and noxious stogy on Nickerson's
black walnut. I hastened to agree, though much of the doctrine was heresy
to a realist, only objecting: 'But one really has to draw a scene such as
you describe just like any other. In fact, the drawing of atmosphere is
the most difficult branch of our art. Many very good painters, like my
master, Courbet, have given it up.' 'Corbet!' he replied contemptuously;
'he didn't give it up; he never even seen it. But don't I know it's hard,
sir? For years I tried to paint it, and I never got nothing but the fog;
when I put in more I lost that. They're pretty, those sketches--like
watered silk or the scum in the docks with the sun on it; but, Lord,
there ain't nothing into 'em, and that's the truth. At last, after
fumbling around for years, I happened to walk into Vogler's gallery one
day and saw my first Corot. Ther' it was--all I had been trying for. It
was the kind of droring I knew ought to be, where a man sets down more
what he feels than what he knows. I knew I was beginning too late, but I
loved that way of working. I saw all the Corots I could, and began to
paint as much as I could his way. I got almost to have his eye, but of
course I never got his hand. Nobody could, I guess, not even an educated
artist like you, or they'd all a don' it.'
* * * * *
"After this awakening John Campbell began the artist's life afresh with
high hopes. His first picture in the sweet new style was honestly called
'Sunrise in Berkshire,' though he had interwoven with his own
reminiscences of the farm several motives from various compositions of
his great exemplar. He signed the canvas Campbell Corot, in the familiar
capital letters, because he didn't want to take all the credit; because
he desired to mark emphatically the change in his manner, and because it
struck him as a good painting name justified by the resemblance between
his surname and the master's Christian name. It was a heartfelt homage in
intention. If the disciple had been familiar with Renaissance usages, he
would undoubtedly have signed himself John of Camille.
"'Sunrise in Berkshire' fetched sixty dollars in a downtown auction room,
the highest price John had ever received; but this was only the beginning
of a bewildering rise in values. When John next saw the picture, Campbell
had been deftly removed, and the landscape, being favourably noticed in
the press, brought seven hundred dollars in an uptown salesroom. John
happened on it again in Beilstein's gallery, where the price had risen to
thirteen hundred dollars--a tidy sum for a small Corot in those early
days. At that figure it fell to a noted collector whose walls it still
adorns. Here Campbell Corot's New England conscience asserted itself. He
insisted on seeing Beilstein in person and told him the facts. Beilstein
treated the visitor as an impostor and showed him the door, taking his
address, however, and scornfully bidding him make good his story by
painting a similar picture, unsigned. For this, if it was worth anything,
the dealer promised he should be liberally paid. Naturally Campbell
Corot's professional dander was up, and he produced in a week a Corotish
'Dance of Nymphs,' if anything, more specious than the last. For this
Beilstein gave him twenty-five dollars, and within a month you might have
seen it under the skylight of a country museum, where it is still
reverently explained to successive generations of school-children.
"If Campbell Corot had been a stronger character, he might have made
some stand against the fraudulent success his second manner was
achieving. But, unhappily, in those experimental years he had acquired
an experimental knowledge of the whisky of Cedar Street. His irregular
and spend-thrift ways had put him out of all lines of employment.
Besides, he was consumed by an artist's desire to create a kind of
picture that he could not hope to sell as his own. Nor did the voice of
the tempter, Beilstein, fail to make itself heard. He offered an
unfailing market for the little canvases at twenty-five and fifty
dollars, according to size. There was a patron to supply unlimited
colours and stretchers, a pocket that never refused to advance a small
bill when thirst or lesser need found Campbell Corot penniless. Almost
inevitably he passed from occasional to habitual forgery, consoling
himself with the thought that he never signed the pictures and, before
the law at least, was blameless. But signed they all were somewhere
between their furtive entrance at Beilstein's basement and their
appearance on his walls or in the auction rooms. Of course it wasn't the
blackguard Beilstein who forged the five magic letters; he would never
take the risk, 'Blast his dirty soul!' cried Campbell Corot aloud, as he
seethed with the memory of his shame. He rose as if for summary
vengeance, to the amazement of the quiet topers in the room. For some
time his utterance had been getting both excited and thick, and now I
saw with a certain chagrin that the Glengyle had done its work only too
well. It was a question not of hearing his story out, but of getting him
home before worse befell. By mingled threats and blandishments I got him
away from Nickerson's, and after an adventurous passage down Cedar
Street, I deposited him before his attic door, in a doubtful frame of
mind, being alternately possessed by the desire to send Beilstein to
hell and to pray for the eternal welfare of the only genuine Corot."
"You certainly make queer acquaintances," ejaculated the Patron uneasily.
"Hurry up and tell us the rest; it's growing late," insisted the
Antiquary, as he beckoned for the bill.
"I saw Campbell Corot only once more, but occasionally I saw his work,
and it told a sad tale of deterioration. The sunrises and nymphals no
longer deceived anybody, having fallen nearly to the average level of
auction-room impressionism. I was not surprised, then, when running into
him near Nickerson's one day I felt that drink and poverty were speeding
their work. He tried to pass me unrecognised, but I stopped him, and
once more the invitation to a nip proved irresistible. My curiosity was
keen to learn his attitude toward his own work and that of his master,
and I attempted to draw him out with a crass compliment. He denied me
gently. 'The best things I do, or rather did, young feller, are jest a
little poorer than his worst. Between ourselves, he painted some pretty
bum things. Some I suppose he did, like me, by lamplight. Some he
sketched with one hand while he was lighting that there long pipe with
the other. Sometimes, I guess, he was in a hurry for the money. Now,
when I'm painting my level best, like I used to could, mine are about
like that. But people don't know the difference about him or about me;
and mine, as I told your Jew friend, are plenty good enough for
every-day purposes. Used to be, anyway. Nobody can paint like his best.
Think of it, young feller, you and me is painters and know what it
means--jest a little dirty paint on white canvas, and you see the
creeping of the sunrise over the land, the breathing of the mist from
the fields, and the twinkling of the dew in the young leaves. Nobody but
him could paint that, and I guess he never knowed how he done it; he
jest felt it in his brush, it seems to me.'
"After this outburst little more was to be got from him. In a word, he
had gone to pieces and knew it. Beilstein had cast him off; the works in
the third manner hung heavy in the auction places. Leaning over the
table, he asked me, 'Who was the gent that said, "My God, what a genius I
had when I done that!"?' I told him that the phrase was given to many,
but that I believed Swift was the gent. 'Jest so,' Campbell Corot
responded; 'that's the way I felt the last time I saw Beilstein. He'd
been sending back my things and, for a joke, I suppose, he wrote me to
come up and see a real Corot, and take the measure of the job I was
tackling. So up to the avenue I went, and Beilstein first gave me my
dressing down and then asked me into the red-plush private room where he
takes the big oil and wheat men when they want a little art. There on the
easel was a picture. He drew the cloth away and said: "Now, Campbell,
that's what we want in our business." As sure as you're born, sir, it was
a "Dance of Nymphs" that I done out of photographs eight years ago. But I
can't paint like that no more. I know the way your friend Swift felt;
only I guess my case is worse than his.'
"The mention of photographs gave me a clue to Campbell Corot's artistic
methods. It appeared that Beilstein had kept him in the best
reproductions of the master. But on this point the disciple was reticent,
evading my questions by a motion to go. 'I'm not for long probably,' he
said, as he refused a second glass. 'You've been patient while I've
talked--I can't to most--and I don't want you to remember me drunk. Take
good care of yourself, and, generally speaking, don't start your whisky
till your day's painting is done.' I stood for some minutes on the corner
of Broadway as his gaunt form merged into the glow that fell full into
Cedar Street from the setting sun. I wondered if the hour recalled the
old days on the farm and the formation of his first manner.
"However that may be, his premonition was right enough. The next winter I
read one morning that the body of Campbell Corot had been taken from the
river at the foot of Cedar Street. It was known that his habits were
intemperate, and it was probable that returning from a saloon he had
walked past his door and off the dock. His cards declared him to be a
landscape painter, but he was unknown in the artistic circles of the
city. I wrote to the authorities that he was indeed a landscape painter
and that the fact should be recorded on his slab in Potter's Field. I was
poor and that was the only service I could do to his memory."
The Painter ceased. We all rose to go and were parting at the doorway
with sundry hems and haws when the Patron piped up anxiously, "Do you
suppose he painted my Corot?" "I don't know and I don't care," said the
Painter shortly. "Damn it, man, can't you see it's a human not a
picture-dealing proposition?" sputtered the Antiquary. "That's right,"
echoed the Critic, as the three locked arms for the stroll downtown,
leaving the bewildered Patron to find his way alone to the Park East.