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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/39330-8.txt b/39330-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ad70809 --- /dev/null +++ b/39330-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2125 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Immortal Youth, by Lucien Price + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license + + +Title: Immortal Youth + A Study in the Will to Create + +Author: Lucien Price + +Release Date: April 1, 2012 [EBook #39330] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMMORTAL YOUTH *** + + + + +Produced by Charlene Taylor, Matthew Wheaton and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + IMMORTAL YOUTH + + _A Study in the Will to Create_ + + + _Behold my most beautiful work: + the souls that I have sculptured. + These they cannot destroy. Let + the wood burn! The soul is mine._ + --Romain Rolland: _Colas Breugnon_ + + + IMPRINTED MCMXIX + McGRATH-SHERRILL PRESS + GRAPHIC ARTS BUILDING + BOSTON + + + COPYRIGHT NINETEEN NINETEEN + LUCIEN PRICE + + _The first printing of this memoir is one thousand copies. + When these are gone, those who wish more can obtain them from + McGrath-Sherrill Press, the publisher, Graphic Arts Building, + Boston, Massachusetts, for one dollar a copy._ + + +[Music] + + In _the third act of Wagner's last music-drama there comes a + flourish of muted horns, remote, mysterious. In it sounds the + grandeur of that quest which never ends--the quest of the Holy + Grail. The phrase is repeated, and over the flower-starred + meadow under the April sun of Good Friday morning comes a knight + in dark armor, his visor down, carrying the holy spear. It is_ + PARSIFAL. _His errand is the errand of aspiring youth in all + lands and all ages. I set that phrase of music, compact with the + poetry and pain of idealism, at the beginning of these pages in + token of the spiritual brotherhood._ + +[Illustration: _Portrait of the artist by himself_] + + + + +IMMORTAL YOUTH + + Give me that man + That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him + In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, + As I do thee. + --HAMLET + + + + +I + + +There was a humble restaurant on Charles Street where cabmen and +chauffeurs could be induced to tell the story of their lives over a +combination-supper of lamb chop and two fried eggs costing (that was +in 1912), with coffee and rolls, twenty-five cents. Across the table +one evening in the spring of that year sat a young man about +twenty-four years old. Anyone would have taken a second look at him; +also a third, a fourth, and as many more as good manners would permit. +What was there about him that attracted attention? It was hard to say. +The dark eyes with a somber light burning in them? The rugged features +and swarthy complexion with a ruddy glow of health in each jowl? The +hands; very large and finely muscled? (I have never seen a more +beautiful pair of hands on a human being.) It was all of these things +and none of them. Rather it was the look of one with immense forces in +reserve, bound on an errand. + +Impossible to guess anything from his clothes: dark suit, shirt of +gray flannel, and black knitted tie. Chauffeur? Hardly. Well then, +what? Who? + +(This is no isolated personal impression. Wherever he went people felt +the same intense curiosity about him. Sometimes they stared at him so +that he asked me if his face was smudged.) + +Was this stranger conversible? He was. Presently he was speaking of +the colonial doorways on Chestnut Street with a discrimination which +suggested the architect. No. It appeared that he was studying under +Mr. Tarbell at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. Next, that he +came from Pittsburgh. Here was a bond in common. As two young Middle +Westerners we resented the social cold storage which New England +imposes as a probationary period of acquaintance. We condoled. We +fraternized. We were as neighbors meeting in a foreign land. At last +somebody with whom it was safe to scrape acquaintance in the good +old-fashioned Middle Western way without incurring suspicion of +designs on one another's souls, bodies, or estates. + +He climbed Beacon Hill with me to the house where I lived, carrying a +paper bag which, he explained modestly, contained his breakfast: two +bananas and a shredded wheat biscuit. + +The evening was mild. Windows stood open to the breeze which rumpled +the leaves of an old linden where it spread its boughs in the +brick-walled court. + +He promptly took off his coat, displaying in the rays of a +green-shaded student lamp a pair of forearms worthy of the hands which +went with them. Summer and winter he wore his sleeves rolled above his +elbows. His wrists resented cuffs as wild creatures resent cages. He +stretched out his long legs on a cot which did duty by the fireplace +as a sofa; pushed his hair off his forehead with both hands, fingers +interlocked, a trick he had; and gave symptoms of feeling at home. + +Was he talkative? Not much! Never did clam yield shell to knife edge +more gingerly. He would and he would not. Shy, reserved, proud, +devoured with ambition, savagely determined, a prey to some +misgivings, genuinely modest, and anxious to talk it over with the +right person, but by no means sure who the right person was. + +On sped the ambrosial hours of the spring evening. Bit by bit he +revealed himself. This was his third year in the Museum School. He +admired the technique of Mr. Tarbell and Mr. Benson; he prized their +instruction. But he distrusted their smoothness. He missed vigor. All +round him he saw students neglecting their own creative bents to +produce "little Bensons" and "little Tarbells." Already he had +resolved to quit Boston as soon as his student days were over. + +"I don't say I shall ever be able to paint as well as they can; but I +must be myself,--not an imitation Tarbell." + +There had been two years in Cornell before he came to Boston. He had +rowed in his class eight on Lake Cayuga. Hence that physical +self-respect which betokens the young man accustomed unconcernedly to +strip in a college boathouse or gymnasium. But to eyes grown +impatient with the college athlete's all too customary intellectual +torpor and social complacency it was a holiday to find this well-made +body, tall, broad in the shoulder, narrow at hips, lean and muscular, +housing also the brain of the thinker and the spirit of the pioneer. + +For the astonishing thing was to find a young man of this type +studying to be a portrait painter instead of a bond salesman. It +didn't sound Yankee. I said so. That shot rang the bell. He began to +open up. + +He was, it appeared, of German extraction. His grandfather, who had +wished to become an artist, had come to America in a period when +artists were about as much in request among us as concert pianists on +a cattle ranch. He had earned his living as an architectural sculptor. +The talent plunged, like a river, underground for a generation; then +reappeared. What happened when this little fellow's fingers began to +itch for the pencil was easy to guess. The father and grandfather put +their heads together and resolved that he should have his chance. + +It began to unravel. Now one understood the earnestness which seemed +at first precocious--the seemingly cool indifference to the call of +the world, the flesh and the devil which usually troubles youngsters +of twenty-four. Here was something more than ambition. Loyalty, +affection, gratitude, and family pride. This boy had more than talent. +He had character. + + * * * * * + +With this we are in the heart of the conflict between the artist and +the trader: between the will to create and the will to possess. It is +the central conflict of any age; especially of this, and especially in +America. The young man comes to the forks of the road where he must +decide whether he shall acquire or create; whether he shall be a +business man or a prophet. He finds himself in a society which offers +princely rewards to the commercial career and little but pains and +penalties to those who would create. This youngster was just learning +his way around in the problem. He recited, with comical irony, the +squalid platitudes which are chewed out at a youth bold enough to +follow his creative bent: + +"'Is there any _money_ in it?' 'Oh, of course, if you get to be a +great painter. But how do you know you've got it in you to be a great +painter? Think you have? Got a pretty good opinion of yourself, +haven't you?' 'What if you fail? Suppose you wake up some morning and +find yourself a middle-aged man and a fizzle? Guess you'll wish then +that you'd stuck to plain everyday business and dropped all this +highfalutin about art.' 'Yes. I suppose it's an easy life: sitting +around and painting pictures. Pretty soft, eh? Give me a man's job!' +'Don't you think it's a little rash, my boy, to risk so much, when if +you'd settle down to a good business you'd be sure of a decent living? +And what about marriage? If you marry you'll have to paint pot +boilers, and then what becomes of your art? You might as well be a +business man and be done with it. And if you don't, is it worth going +without a wife and children in order to paint pictures, and so come +at last to a lonely old age?'" + +He knew all the old ones by heart. Later we used to recite them +together in concert like school children in the geography class. + +If you took the roof off any Chamber of Commerce you would find half a +dozen retired business men whose guilty secret it is that they dabble +on the quiet with paint tubes, or modeling clay, or scenarios, or a +violin--the poor, damned souls of artists. They have made their +"pile." House and lot, wife and children, motor car and country +club--all these they have; and yet, gnawing at their hearts is the +secret knowledge that they have missed the big thing. They were born +to beget children of the spirit; they were born to create in art, in +music, in literature, in social experiment; and the ignoble standards +of the society in which they live have bludgeoned and ridiculed them +into prostituting their highest powers in the market-place. + +In such relationship did this young man stand to the life of his +country and his time. With unflinching eye he listened to its taunt: + +"Artist, create at your peril! You may starve, for all me, until you +win a reputation that is a commercial asset. After which, having +despised you, I will do my best to corrupt you by rewards and +flatteries gratifying to my intellectual snobbery." + +Such were the terms. This youth, uncertain of his own powers, accepted +them with quiet courage and imperturbable good humor. Such was the +secret of that look of settled purpose so intriguing on a face so +young, and such the secret of the fire which smouldered behind those +dark eyes. He was prepared for a siege. He was ready to go to the mat. + +It had taken three generations--son, sire, and grand-sire--to make +this stand against the all-devouring maw of American commercialism: +three generations to conquer and produce an artist. And mindful of +his end I ask myself whether they did conquer. We shall see. + + * * * * * + +Midnight clanked from the city clocks. + +"Gosh!" said he, "is it as late as that?" He stood up and knocked the +ashes out of his pipe against the red bricks of the hearth. "By the +way, I don't know your name." + +I told him. + +"Mine," said he, "is Fred Demmler." + +Explaining that I already had a friend named Fred I asked if he had +any objection to being called Fritz. + +"None whatever." + +"Fritz it is, then." + +And Fritz it remained. + + + + +II + + +A once-aristocratic residential street now reduced to a teaming +thoroughfare; pedestal to Beacon Hill; narrow, ill-paved, spattered +with mud to the second story, double row of tall brick town houses, +where Thackeray and Dickens were once guests, now placarding "rooms to +let;" assorted antique shops and restaurants,--"the long, unlovely +street" of _In Memoriam_, yet with a certain wistful charm in its +decayed gentility: that is Charles Street. + +Number 94 maintained its rubber plant on console-table in dark +vestibule. There was a contraption, usually out of order, by which you +pulled a bell five times to save yourself the climb if the art colony +in the fifth-floor-back did not answer the ring. The young barbarians +were usually out. + +It was a colony of three: Ralph Heard, small, slender, fair, escaped +from a western military academy of which he could tell tales that +froze the blood; Irving Sisson, a tall, rangy Berkshire Yankee, dry +and droll, an Artemus Ward turned art student (though known as "Siss" +it would never have occurred to anyone to call him "Sissie," and if +anyone _had_ been so rash, Sisson's grim reply would have been, like +the man in the yarn, "Smile when you say that"), and Fritz. + +Their room was a first act stage-set for an American version of _La +Bohème_. It was large, low-ceiled, and had one of those sepulchral +white marble mantel-pieces of the black walnut period. There was an +iron bed and a cot, a gaslight always out of kilter, a writing-table +strewn with pipes, unanswered letters, tiny bottles of india ink, +drawing pens, crayons, thumb tacks, jars holding bouquets of paint +brushes, and scurrilous caricatures of one another scrawled on scraps +of white cardboard. The place reeked with that heavenly odor of paint +tubes. By the window was a drawing board and portfolios. Canvases were +stacked in a dark corner, faces to the wall. + +Their windows looked into a deep courtyard formed by a triangle of +tall brick houses,--the rears of houses on Charles and Brimmer +Streets, the fronts of three quaint Italianate red-brick +dwellings,--all enclosing a tiny greensward on which slender poplars +rustled their glossy leaves. In the farthest corner of this court rise +the walls and mullioned windows of the Church of the Advent, and on +mild evenings when casements were open, the thrush-like voices of the +choir boys over the melodious thunder of great organ floated up to +these windows. But I was never able to observe that it produced any +pietistic tone in number 94. On the contrary they affected to take a +lively interest in the upper windows of the houses opposite and +threatened to keep a pair of field glasses on their window sill. + +As you go down Pinckney Street to the river you pass a break in the +solid row of house fronts through which you can look up and see the +two windows of that fifth-floor-back. One always did look, and if they +were lighted, it was impossible not to go up; for in that room there +was always some form of what is technically known as "trouble." I +never pass the spot now without looking up to see if there is a light +in those windows.... They are dark. + + * * * * * + +On the walls of the room were two paintings by Fritz; student works. +One was a small landscape sketch--smouldering red of a sunset after +rain, burning through ragged drab clouds over a hill country bathed in +violet mists of twilight. It was modest, quiet. There was a strain of +thoughtful poetry in it. But the striking part was its sincerity. +There was none of that striving after effect, that ambitious rhetoric +which youngsters usually mistake for eloquence: no attempt to make the +scene anything more than what it was. The other was a portrait study +of a workman naked to the waist. It was bold, vigorous, masculine, +and overflowing with the joy of bodily health. + +So far so good. But something else was in store. + +Out of the canvases stacked against the wall he dug a study of a +woman's head in profile. One looked; and then looked again. "Who was +she?" She had come to the school as a model for one week: that was all +they knew. But her secret was on this canvas. She must have been in +her early thirties. Her face was quite serene. It was the serenity of +a place reduced to ashes. Utter resignation. "Endure. Life has done +its worst." + +By what divination had this youngster of twenty-four guessed a secret +like that? From that moment it was clear to me that he was a portrait +painter. + +"What," I asked, "is that little star in the lower corner of the +canvas?" + +"That? Oh," he explained diffidently, "that is put on pictures which +the school saves for its exhibition." + + + + +III + + +That golden Spring! Clandestine dinners at an obscure French café in +an obscure court, where one went because, though the food was +something less than so-so, the sauces were exotic; "clandestine" +because, behind closed shutters, they served _vin ordinaire_ without a +license. Our parties, to the disgust of Jacques, were teetotal, the +real attraction being that the joint might be pinched any minute. + +On May afternoons in the Fenway, disguised in a baseball suit of gray +flannel, Fritz rejoiced as a strong man to swat the pill. The pill +swatted him one day, broke his thumb, and in the end he had to have it +rebroken and reset under ether. His first words on coming to were: +"Give me my paint box." All the nurses of his ward fell for him with a +loud crash. In all innocence he told what a lot of extra trouble they +went to for him. His friends smiled in their sleeves. + +As often as there was a play of Shaw or Ibsen or Galsworthy or +Maeterlinck or Shakespeare or Synge there were expeditions to peanut +heaven. Knoblauch's _Kismet_ happened along and Fritz appropriated the +cry: "Alms! for the love of Allah" for occasions choicely +inappropriate. + +When a fine May morning of blue and gold came winging over the city on +the northwest wind he would get up extra early, hustle through his +shave and cold tubbing and join me in the tramp over Beacon Hill, +across the Common, and down into Newspaper Row for breakfast at the +celebrated Spa. On the way up Chestnut Street, where the Brahmin +pundits live, the favorite sport was to crack jokes at the expense of +the sources of income which sustained these Georgian fronts and +mahogany-and-brocade interiors: here, a famous brand of ale; there, +notorious industrial nose-grinding in Fall River spinning mills--merry +clank of dividend skeleton in genteel closet.... On the Common, jocund +morning, fresh green of turf and tree, sweet breath of the earth; +sunshine, bird-song, youth, ... Spring! + +And on a stool at the Spa, Fritz's provoking grin and sly banter of a +waitress who, after a good look at him, would conclude that if she was +being kidded she liked it and was cheerfully ready for more. After +which breakfast he trudged the mile and a half to the Art Museum to +see the morning and to save his father carfares. + + * * * * * + +It appeared that he was a walker, and not afraid of rain. He proved +it. On a May evening brewing thunder we did a dissolving view out of +the city on a train for Cape Ann. At the end of the shore road around +the Cape awaited lodgings at an inn and a midnight supper. At +Gloucester he was introduced to one of Wonson's clam chowders and we +set off at dusk. + +That evening came the first inkling of his larger purpose--his higher +than personal ambition: what he would paint after his portraits +assured him a livelihood. Something was said about Pittsburgh and the +mills. + +"They ought to be painted," said he, "exactly as they are. Not +sentimentalized like the magazine covers; not made romantic, as Joseph +Pennell has made them; but painted in all their horror. Some day. I +don't know enough yet." + +Thunder had been muttering distantly. The night had turned pitch +black. There were sullen flashes, and drops began to patter. Would he +be for turning back? Not he! Then the storm came crashing and pelting +across the granite moors of the Cape. Gorgeous flashes which flushed +the winding tidal inlets and the rocky hills a brilliant rose pink. +Flash! Crash! Swish went the rain. And the harder it stormed the +better he liked it. He strode along intoxicated with color and sound. + +Near Annisquam is a double shade-row of willows overarching the road. +Not far beyond, yellow lamplight was streaming from the windows of a +tiny cottage. Wading knee-deep in wet grass we knocked. + +Now it is a complicated process explaining to two aged New England +spinsters on a lonely road at nine o'clock of a stormy night what your +errand is, especially when you haven't any. They listened; lifted the +lamp on us for an inspection--particularly on Fritz; one soon got used +to seeing people inspect him furtively--and invited us in. + +"Walkin' round the Cape to Rockport, be ye? And in the rain? For the +fun of it! Well, come in and set down. I'd like to get a good look at +someone who'd walk to Rockport in the rain for the fun of it. Set +down, young gentlemen." + +We set. They were sisters. One was small and timid: she was of the +sort that remain naïve to the end. The other was tall, angular and +sardonic, with a mother wit smacking of the soil and the salt water. +She addressed herself to Fritz: + +"You ain't an escaped murderer, be ye?" + +Fritz cackled lustily. + +"How do you know I'm not?" said he. + +"You look like that fella who's on trial in Boston now. I see his +pictures in the paper ... and you come knockin' on the door at dead o' +night in a thunder squall like in a story book." + +"Would you say I looked like a murderer?" inquired Fritz with relish. + +"You might look worse 'n him," replied our free-speech hostess. "By +his pictures he's a good-lookin' fella. I says to Saide whiles we was +weedin' garden this morning, 't wouldn't be safe to let him go now, +for half the women in New England are ready to fall in love with +him--he's been that advertised." She eyed us with her sardonic grin. I +looked at Fritz. He was blushing. + +To her shrewd Yankee wits we were clearly two lunatics, but harmless; +and the object was to extract as much entertainment from us as the law +allowed. Such was the tone of her farewell, half an hour later. + +"If anyone asks who was here," said she, "I'll tell them it was two +young fellas walkin' to Rockport in the rain for the fun of it.--And +then they'll think _I'm_ one!" + + * * * * * + +Past midnight, stumping dog-tired into the inn; cold meat and bread, +ravenously devoured; bed, and the sleep of the just. + +... Morning; and such a morning as never was. Quite forgetting to +dress, Fritz lost himself staring out of the open window at the quaint +harbor, the fishing fleet, the blue bay and the gaunt headlands until +it was suggested to him that passers by might be enjoying him as much +as he was enjoying the morning. + +There was an hour for soaking it in before the train left for the +city, and soak it in he did. A sea of pale blue, like molten glass, +untroubled by a breeze; sky the deep blue of a morning after storms; +air sweet with the scent of blossoming orchards and dooryard lilacs +and tart with the tang of salt brine; merry twitter of robins; lazy +splash of surf; the long headlands tapering down to the sea; the squat +white tower of Straitsmouth light solitary on its rocky islet, "and +overhead the lovely skies of May." + +In the midst of it stood a young artist, dumb with delight. His eyes +drank. + +Oh brethren of the possessing class, ye who must own this and that +before you can enjoy, this world can never give the bliss for which ye +sigh. That pilgrimage cost less than $3.00 per. + + * * * * * + +Evening. Above the tiny grass-plat and spindling poplars in Mount +Vernon Square floats the magic of a night in mid-June. The windows of +the fifth-floor-back in 94 Charles are lighted and open to the +breeze. From those of the Advent come gusts of music,--rumbles of +organ and the fresh voices of boys: choir rehearsal. But I think the +sounds which float down from the windows of 94 are more in tune with +the night: peal after peal of infectious laughter. It was clear to the +meanest order of intellect that Sisson was telling stories which were +more joyous than dutiful: also that he had Fritz going. There was no +mistaking that laugh. + +A belated delivery man, basket on arm, pauses beside me to listen and +grin. + +"I bet that was a good one," says he. "Say, but can't that guy laugh!" + + + + +IV + + +In the autumn he reappeared bronzed and husky from a summer on a +Pennsylvania farm. That spring had been the overture. Now the curtain +rose. How can my thin piano score reproduce that richly glowing +orchestration? + +Gradually the artist in him unfolded. It was like a process of +nature--slow, silent, sure. In speech he was inarticulate. The spoken +word was not his trade; he knew it, and the knowledge made him +self-conscious. But give him a brush and he found tongue. His silences +were formidable. "The better to eat you with, my dear!" Nothing +escaped him. With a secret, fierce impetuosity he was storing away +impressions: glances, gestures, lines of faces, colors, inflections of +voices, landscapes, phrases, incidents, ideas: he soaked them in like +a thirsty sponge. Everything was fish that came to his net. What +sometimes looked like an intellectual torpor was the boa constrictor +digesting the zebra whole. I doubt if he realized the tremendous +vitality of his creative instinct. He went about it as a wild creature +roams the forest for its food: it was a law of his being. On tramping +trips he would stalk miles in silence; stopping stock still until he +had taken in the scarlet-and-gold maple grove in a purple autumn mist; +or a mossy wood pile under pines; or the rolling diversity of hill and +woodland. No apologies; no explanations. Business. + +It was soon clear that this young man knew exactly what he wanted and +that he intended to get it. There was a kind of animal sagacity about +his mind which told it what food to accept and what to reject. + +"_Künstler_," says Goethe, "_rede nicht. Bilde!_" (Artist, don't talk. +Create!) Fritz lived this precept. He would do first, and then let the +doing speak for itself. When a young man is so determined to do +something that he cannot be got to talk about it, you may consider the +thing as good as done. Here was a hungry mind, seeking what it might +devour and devouring it. All that provender was being assimilated. It +could not evaporate in talk, for Fritz was no talker. It had to be +expressed somehow and that somehow would have to be with a brush.... +Oh, he came and went disguised in the business suit of a young man +dedicated to the career of buying in the cheapest market and selling +in the dearest: pleasant, friendly, a prodigious eater, a sound +sleeper, invincibly healthy,--and with only that silent intentness of +eye to betray the secret of the creative power he carried within him. + +But that winter it was surprised out of him. + +Fred Middleton, then twenty-seven years old, six years out of Harvard +College, thoroughly conversant with the ethics of modern business, was +preparing to _de_-class himself and earn an honest living by manual +labor on the land--a farmer, and not a "gentleman farmer." With mock +solemnity Fritz was commissioned to do a portrait of Fred. The +transaction was conducted on a basis of "free agreement" which would +have satisfied even Peter Kropotkin. The painter was to do it any way +he chose--absolute free speech. The sitter was to choose any clothes +he liked, to sit till he was tired, and stretch when he pleased. The +purchaser was to pay what he was able. So everybody was happy, being +free. + +In the third floor back on Pinckney Street (it had north light) decks +were cleared for action: two rickety orange boxes covered with a +steamer rug did duty as a dais. With paint box, easel and palette +Fritz came down from Exeter where he had just finished a portrait of +an old lady. + +There was a glowing fire in the grate; a bluster of March winds in the +brick court; the roar of blast through the antlers of the old linden; +waning light of Saturday and Sunday afternoons; pages of Nietzsche's +epigrams and of _Jean-Christophe_ read aloud; pauses to rest and +consult. + +Fritz always noticed people's hands. He found almost as much character +in them as in faces. He admired the hands in Rodin's work, especially +that of the sculptor in his _Pygmalion_:--"the tenderness of that +hand!" he said. Fred's large hands interested him. The right one he +caught hot off the bat. The left caused him no end of trouble. Finally +one day he threw down his brush and exclaimed: + +"I've watched that left hand come down to rest on that leg a dozen +times. I've tried everything else and now I'm going to paint it +exactly as it is. After all, it _is_ a hand." + +"_Thank_ you; _thank_ you!" replied Fred, bowing suavely. "People +usually refer to it as a ham. A photographer once told me that I had a +mitt like an elephant's hoof." + + * * * * * + +And Fritz painted. And the secret was out. It came out in two +installments: the first, when he was spreading on canvas a life +history of Fred Middleton compressed into terms of a rugged face and +two large hands; the second came three years later. Fred had remarked, +after one of his sittings, that it was all he could do to keep his +face straight at some of the grimaces Fritz made while painting. The +precaution was needless. If he had laughed outright it is doubtful if +Fritz would have noticed it. + +Most of the time while he was painting the portrait of me, three years +later, I was absorbed in my own work and paid no attention to him. But +one afternoon when my wheels refused to grind I took a holiday and +watched him out of the tail of my eye.... + +It was as if some one you supposed you knew all about had removed a +set of false whiskers and spoken in his natural voice. Was this our +shy, silent Fritz? Why, the impudence of him! The shameless way he +peered into the secret places of a face! "See here, young gentleman, +who gave you permission to rummage through that trunkful of old +letters?" + +Here at last was Fritz, on his native heath, naked and unashamed, +talking his own language and, confident of its not being understood, +indulging in the most appalling candor. + +What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. While he pried +into my secrets I pried into his. I amused myself by painting a +portrait of Fritz painting. Some day I meant to show it to him.... But +here it is: + +"He may not be able to talk with his tongue. But give him his brushes +and his whole body talks. No gymnastics: but his whole being aquiver. +Silent, but his arms, fingers, head, shoulders make animated dumb +show. He is conversing delightedly with himself over his work. He has +forgotten time and place. Intense mental concentration, and nervous +energy. He squints, grimaces, stoops and looks at his canvas +wrong-side up. He sets his teeth, compresses lips, squares his +shoulders,--lost in his work. He mixes colors with minute +particularity. Sometimes he dabs with a tiny brush, a peek here, a +peck there, like a dainty bird. Again he paints in sweeping +flourishes, beating a kind of rapturous rhythm with his brush, +gesturing with it between strokes, like an orchestral conductor hewing +out the rhythms of a symphony.... He pauses; he hangs limp over his +palette, considering.... Or he gives a joyous little bounce in his +chair as the decision comes. His hands and forearms, strong and +supple, talk in every sinew. Fingers mobile, infinitely expressive: +they thumb the brush; turn its handle in a ruminating pause; reflect a +sudden resolution in the stiffening of tendons.... + +"And above all this quiet animation and silent dexterity is the +regnant, gallant head with dark eyes flashing mastery; the mouth set +with purpose; the thick mass of shining black hair breaking into a +wave as it falls away from the clear forehead--and all in complete +self-forgetfulness, the oblivion of the artist rapt in the joy of +creating." + +It was quite simple. Here was a soul which dwelt in a prison of +shyness. Painting unlocked the door. Out it rushed. Free. It could be +itself at last. No fears; no concealments. Liberty! + +That was all very well for Fritz, but how about his sitter? About the +time the sitter sensed what was going on he felt moved to exclaim: + +"Just a moment, Fritz. Don't you think you are getting a trifle +familiar?" + +I heard one of his painter friends, eyeing a canvas which Fritz had +just finished, mutter, + +"There is some marvelous subtlety about that mind." + +Already his knack of guessing people was damnable. He played no +favorites. "I am going to paint what I see or I am not going to paint +at all." If what he saw was fatuous, he told it with the disconcerting +gusto of a child; if it was sad, he told it (as in that student +portrait) so as to produce a burning pressure behind the eyelids; if +it was strong and gentle, he told it (as in the portrait of the young +farmer) so as to kindle respect and affection. Often all this was +unconscious. Again he knew exactly what he was doing and took a wicked +relish in it. Of some wealthies whom he was painting he confided with +a grin: + +"Of course they patronize me within an inch of my life, but I +sometimes wonder what would happen if they knew...." + +Perhaps he was not so unsophisticated as advertised in the catalogue. +He helped himself pretty generously out of the popular supposition +that an artist is a mild form of lunatic. He made good use of his +talent for silence. But what ears and eyes! Nobody who had seen him +paint could ever feel quite safe with him again. + + + + +V + + +It happened that Alexander James was studying at the Museum School. +That the son of "the psychologist who made psychology read like a +novel" and the nephew of "the novelist who made a novel read like +psychology" should have identified Fritz's talent the first crack out +of the box was about the least surprising thing in the world. The two +young painters proceeded to form an offensive and defensive alliance. +Where one was, there was the other also; on the baseball field, on +painting expeditions, on pilgrimages in early spring into New +Hampshire to climb Chocorua, and on occasional voyages into the land +of pretty girls. It was good to see the pair together: two +thoroughbreds. Both athletes, both artists, one dark, the other fair, +both about the same height and build. People would turn to look after +them as they passed with an expression of "Wonder who they are. +Somebody out of the ordinary." + +Alexander was wont to disguise his frank admiration of Fritz behind a +smoke screen of banter. This Fritz would suffer with an amused grin +and the massive calm of a mastiff, for he had no such arsenal of +repartee as this young gentleman from the household of a Harvard +professor; but once in a while he would land a retort so neat as to +set Alexander spinning. It did not take the Cambridge youth long to +discover the use Fritz made of his talent for silence and it was his +delight to give him away in his game of holding his tongue the better +to use his eyes,--as Alexander said: "the wise old Bruin!" + + * * * * * + +In Massachusetts the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, April 19, +is a holiday. It was 1913. In the parlor of an inn whose windows look +northward across the snug haven of Rockport to the surf-scoured ledges +of Pigeon Cove I was seated at a piano, back to the door, painfully +dissecting a score of _Tristan_. + +The door opened and a voice exclaimed, "Good Lord!" + +It was Fritz. With him was Alexander James. Both were half ossified +with the chill of the mid-April afternoon, for they had been painting +on the shore down towards Straitsmouth. + +General astonishment. The two expeditions had originated quite +independently. It was whimsically like those momentous chance +encounters in picturesque spots which abound in the novels of +Alexander's uncle Henry; but the novelist, be it noted, doesn't always +save these coincidences from a slightly fishy sound which was totally +wanting in this. + +They thawed themselves out and exhibited their sketches. Fritz had, as +usual, gone after it and got it--a spirited bit: druidical heaps of +pink granite boulders against dashing surf: dazzling white of +foam-crest on deep blue. + +There was a jolly supper in the brown-walled dining room (it had been +the kitchen of an eighteenth century farm house) which the last rays +of the spring sun flooded with red golden light; the two painters +comparing notes on the exhibitions of the Scandinavians and the Ten +Americans. + +They departed for a home-talent play at a local hall in a frame of +mind which boded no good for the performance.... About eleven o'clock +they breezed in with the announcement that there was a Northwest wind +(the New England wind which sweeps the sky cloudless blue), a full +moon and a dashing sea; and that to go to bed was a crime. Away, then, +for Land's End, along shore paths at the edge of grassy cliffs, by +bushy lanes, over meadows, moors, popple beaches and brooks, across +the moon-blanched land beside the moon-burnished sea. Straitsmouth +Light burned a yellow spark. The twin lights on Thatcher's Island +shone weird blue in their tall towers. Low on the rim of sky and sea +hung gigantic masses of cloud whitened by the bluish pallor of the +moon. In the marsh bottoms frogs cheeped their shrill sweet song of +spring: the northwester bellowed through the willow twigs ... mournful +pour of surf ... splendor of spring moon ... the lonely moor ... the +steadfast light-house flames ... the white walls and gray roofs of the +sleeping town.... + +At one in the morning, tip-toeing into the dining room, we devoured a +plate of bread and butter left for late comers. Both of them were too +genuine artists to comment on what we had seen. + + * * * * * + +It is a lovely afternoon of June, 1914, at the pier of the Allan Line +steamships in Charlestown. The ship is the old _Nubian_, safe and +slow, saloon upholstered in plush of maple sugar brown, brass oil +lamps swinging in gimbles as befitted a smart packet of the late 80's. +Boston to Glasgow. Scotland swarmed the wharf. + +Mixed in was an artists' colony. For that was the great day. Fritz and +Alexander were sailing for a year's study abroad: London, Paris, +Munich. The gang which came to see them off were _dramatis personae_ +of Act II of _La Bohème_: four painters, an interior decorator, an +illustrator assorted scribblers, and a Scottish chieftain (lord of an +ancient clan, hero of a hundred skin-of-your-teeth escapes, veteran of +Polish revolutionary escapades, uncrowned king of an African tribe: as +_raconteur_ he had his rival, Robert Louis Stevenson, lashed to the +bed). This day he strode resplendent in plaid knee socks, plaid kilt, +a murderous Hieland dirk swung at his hip, short jacket the breast of +which blazed with medals, and long black locks caught up under a cap. +As he crossed the wharf planking at a stride like deer-stalking over +his native crags, the rest of us half expected the assembled Scots to +prostrate themselves and knock foreheads on flooring in fealty. He did +excite some attention. Sisson said--well, no matter what Sisson +said.[1] + +[1] After all, why not? Some one was explaining that the chief (who +was a genuinely fine fellow) had come to America to raise funds for +his clan. Sisson said: "He'll he lucky if he gets back to Scotland +with his kilt." + +It was a great occasion. Fritz, his black eyes snapping with +excitement, came up the gang plank from deck to wharf to be pounced on +by a jolly crew. He was outwardly cool, but his engines were racing. +After him came Alexander James. Pounce number two. Showers of rice +clattered on a bridal pair close by, but their festival was tame +compared to this. To meet Henry James and John Sargent in London: to +study in Paris and Munich: to see the great galleries. They were +embarking on greater seas than the Atlantic. This was the great day, +the great hour, and with a troop of friends rejoicing in their good +fortune to sweeten it.... Away to the land of heart's desire.... +Romance.... Bohemia.... Europe. + + "O Youth, and the days that were!" + +From the caplog at the pier head as the _Nubian_ swung into midstream +of the Charles, the band of pariahs bawled ribald farewells and wrung +out handkerchiefs in mock tears. Alexander James, the Clive Newcome +of the adventure, leaned on the teakwood rail, waving his straw hat; +and Fritz, the "J.J." of the story, sat on the lowest ratline of the +shrouds, feet on rail, pretending to weep into his hat and then +emptying the brine into the brine. + +The ship's side, black hull and white upperworks, took a burnishing +from the late afternoon sun. Under the gaiety there was a queer +feeling. There, divided from us by a hundred yards of harbor water, +were the two friends with whom we had just shaken hands, and the strip +between was widening, would widen to an ocean. They stood out amid the +throng of passengers as distinct as though they had been the only +souls aboard. They waved: we waved. As the vessel straightened away in +her course they imitated our several gestures to signify personal +farewells: it was thought and done impromptu. And long after their +figures grew indistinct as the ship lessened down the harbor lane +between elbowing wharves and the piled masses of city towers and +spires, there were gleams of two white straw hats which we knew.... + +All the same, it was a trifle too much like a dress rehearsal for +death. + + * * * * * + +Then, in less than six weeks, a world in tumult. Continental ateliers +were emptying their students on the battlefield. Fritz, who was in +England, prudently kept out of the rush homeward and made the most of +his few weeks. + +He was in Downing Street in front of that dingy Georgian façade the +night the British Cabinet sat waiting for Germany's reply to their +ultimatum. + +"It gave one an odd feeling," said he, "to realize that behind those +drawn shades sat men who were settling the question of life or death +for hundreds of thousands of their fellow creatures. The crowd +cheered. I did not." + +Of Henry James he saw comparatively little, for the novelist was in +poor health, but he was immensely stimulated by the little he did see, +for beginning with _Roderick Hudson_ he had been quick to discover how +much this master of style had to teach a painter of what he had +himself learned from painters. + +There was a memorable session with Mr. Sargent in his London studio. +Mr. Sargent happened just then to be doing a portrait of Lord Curzon, +and Fritz related with wicked glee (imitating Mr. Sargent as he backed +away from his easel) how the painter had remarked: + +"I have not made up my mind how to finish it. If I can't get enough +interest out of the face, I'll put a scarlet coat on him." + + * * * * * + +It was late in October before he sailed for home, as one of a handful +of passengers on a freighter. The voyage was one of continuous foul +weather which, to the mystification of the others, was vastly to the +delight of Fritz. He lived on deck, begrudging time to sleep. He +fraternized with the crew. One day of thin drizzle and greasy swells, +getting into old togs, he helped the deck-hands greatly to their +satisfaction and somewhat to the scandal of the other passengers, +shovel coal down a hatch. + +"They didn't think I'd stick it through," said he. + +After that he was one of them. + + + + +VI + + +He had chosen to live in Pittsburgh, partly because it was his home +and partly because it promised him more elbow room. + +"I want to paint," said he, "and I do not want to have to play social +politics in order to get commissions, as I am afraid I would have to +do in Boston. Besides, in Pittsburgh, there are fewer painters to +influence me. I stand more chance of being myself." + +Alexander James said it was brutal of Fritz to go away to Pittsburgh. +The rest of the colony agreed. But it became Fritz's delight to swoop +down on us in Boston unannounced. + +... It is late in a wild night of mid-winter, a furious gale of wind +and snow whipping across the gables and chimney stacks of Beacon Hill: +a night for tucking oneself up in a wing chair beside a fire with a +book and reading lamp, roar of storm in ears.... + +A rap sounds on the door. + +"Come!" + +The rap is repeated. + +"Come in!" + +The door opens and framed in its blackness stands Fritz. + +With him is Ralph Heard in a state of jubilation. + +"You remember," says he, "I told you only two days ago that I sort of +had a hunch that Fritz might be dropping in on us most any time now? +Well, to-night I was sitting at my writing-table, when the door opened +with a bang. I thought, without looking around, 'That is the way Fritz +opens a door.' And there was Fritz." + +His one emotional luxury was this enjoyment of watching his friends +fall all over their own feet in the glad surprise of seeing him. + +He was on his way to paint some portraits of Exeter schoolmasters. It +was slowly wormed out of him that romance had visited his shores. A +St. Louis woman was motoring to New York. In a street of Pittsburgh a +tire blew out. As it was raining, she got out of the car and went into +an art store in front of which it had stopped, to wait for repairs. +Her errand in New York was to choose a portrait painter. In the art +store a portrait by Fritz was on exhibition. She decided that there +was no need of going on to New York. That evening Fritz was called to +her hotel. It ended by his going on to St. Louis and painting +portraits of the whole family. + +What his bread-and-butter problems were I never fully knew. I think +they were more in what he faced than in what he had to encounter. +Within two or three years after he left the Museum School, he was +paying his own way. He lived with the utmost frugality. His studio was +a workshop: four walls and a north light. + +"I keep it bare on purpose," he confided, "to frighten away loafers." + +It appeared that certain amiable slayers of their own and others' +time, envisaging a studio of divans, Russian cigarettes, tea and +twaddle, paid one visit, and only one. + +His attitude toward money was an island of sanity in a lunatic ocean. +It was no time before he sensed the absurdity of attempting to measure +creative work by commercial values, and that is, of course, the avenue +by which the artist-thinker divines the idiotic husbandry of +organizing society to batten those who distribute and those who own by +penalizing those who produce and those who create. Money he viewed as +an article neither to be spent nor to be hoarded, but rather to be +reinvested where it would draw intellectual dividends. His one +extravagance was to buy his mind the food it needed if he had the +wherewithal to pay for it. "And," as Erasmus remarks, "after that, +some clothes." The same independence which had fortified him against +those who had once pointed him out as a crack-brained youngster with +the presumption to suppose he could be a great artist sustained him +now when he was pointed out as a promising portrait painter who was +already "getting good money for his work." + +Finding himself, as he did, endowed with a creative purpose +considerably at odds with the structure of the society around him; put +to it, as he was, to protect that fledgling from the well-intentioned +but fatal meddlings of the mediocre, not a shadow of ill-humor did he +allow to cross his average human intercourse. He made me think of a +wise old cat who, having carefully hidden her kittens in the hayloft, +presents a tolerant frame to the cuffs and caresses of the children. + +By the beginning of 1916 it was clear to anyone who knew him that all +he needed to reach the summit was to keep climbing, and this he +appeared abundantly able and determined to do. + + + + +VII + + +He was growing up. Shy he would always be, but in place of his boyish +self-distrust had come a quiet confidence in his own powers. His mind +was on the watch for its food, like an eagle ready to pounce. There +was an eager, vigilant look in his eyes when one spoke of certain +books unknown to him: he was questioning whether they would be what he +wanted. He would pump me about the content of certain authors. I could +see him accepting and rejecting. He read the poets as one quarrying +marble for architectural designs of his own. His hungry reading was as +different from that of the perfunctory college student as the +oarsmanship of a dory fisherman on the Grand Banks is from that of an +eight-oared crew on the placid Charles: the producer as contrasted +with the consumer. + +George Meredith and Walt Whitman became two of his great companions. +Once he told me that he was reading everything of Thomas Hardy he +could lay his hands on. + +"Why?" I asked. + +"He knows how to set the human figure against vast backgrounds of +Nature: figures outlined half against a heath and half against sky." + +I wonder if Romain Rolland realizes the intimacy of the friendship +which has sprung up between _Jean-Christophe_ and the youth of to-day. +Fritz and Christophe took an amazing shine to each other from the +start. It was _Christophe_ who led Fritz to read everything else of +Romain Rolland he could find, and thus his steps were guided to the +summit of that Mount of Vision, Rolland's _Life of Tolstoy_, whence he +looked far and wide into the stern grandeur of that moral wilderness +unsubdued by man through which the heroic thinker and prophet pushes +on alone.... To look is to follow. He began to devour Tolstoy's works. +_The Kreutzer Sonata_ he sat up half the night beside my fire to +finish. Waking towards morning I saw him scowling over it. He asked to +take the book away with him. Soon he was up to his neck in the +dramatists: Ibsen, Strindberg, Brieux, Sudermann, Galsworthy, Synge, +Shaw. + +There was a performance of _Candida_ with Mr. Milton Rosmer as the +poet. They say that a secret can be told only to him who knows it +already. There is a secret in two tremendous speeches at the close of +that play which (as the dramatist himself says) few but poets know: + + MORELL: (_alarmed_) Candida: don't let him do anything rash. + + CANDIDA: (_confident, smiling at Eugene_) Oh, there is no fear. + He has learnt to live without happiness. + + MARCHBANKS: I no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than + that. Parson James, I give you my happiness with both hands. + +Those lines stung Fritz as the whip stings a mettled horse. His flesh +rebelled, but the poet in him leaped to the truth. + +On March 20, 1913, the colony at 94 Charles Street adjourned to a +performance of _Man and Superman_. Fritz kept his room-mate up until +two in the morning discussing it. The next night he routed me out of +bed at ten and quizzed me about it until three in the morning. + +He had had his glimpse of the collision between sex and ambition; +between the impulse of the woman to create children of flesh and +blood, with the man as adjunct and provider; and the impulse of the +man to create children of the spirit independently of the woman. He +was quick to realize that he had struck something which he had to +settle, and he was settling it. The thing was deliciously transparent. +Here was a young gentleman tremendously in earnest about being an +artist. Being an artist he loved beauty. Hitherto, in his shy way, he +had secretly been rather tickled by the flutter which his striking +head created in the dove cots of pretty girls. But after March 20, +1913, the tune changed. He was affable, delighted to make their +acquaintance--but on his guard. He had not the slightest intention of +letting sex thwart his ambition. + +"Yes, but...?" + +"Yes, but...." He played the game. A commercial society decrees that +the artist cannot have a livelihood until his work is accepted at a +commercial value. Pending that acceptance, if he assumes the +responsibility of wife and children he also assumes the risk of +shackling himself to pot-boiling work for life. + +Society also decrees a standard of prenuptial chastity for the male. +Suppose the male happens to be more interested in art than in +domesticity. He must then ask himself whether he shall abide by a +decree which bourgeois society promulgates with more emphasis than +sincerity. With his eyes wide open to the fact that the very society +which promulgates this decree openly winks at its evasion, Fritz abode +by it. A slightly sterner set to his jaw; a slightly darker flash in +his eye; a slightly grimmer stoicism in the grip on his emotions were +all that betrayed the battle which had raged in him between the two +creative forces: sex and intellect. He never pretended that the battle +was won for keeps. The crust on which he walked he knew to be thin. +But it was won for the present. He well knew that there are no bargain +days at life's counter: he had come there to purchase one of the most +precious commodities--a creative career--and he was willing to pay the +fee. If he found the fee somewhat high (and I have reason to know that +he did) he never complained. It was his reward to enjoy that supreme +luxury of conduct--to be the thing he seemed. He lived in that kind of +glass house which is not damaged by any amount of stone-throwing, +because there is nothing to hit: a glass house with all the curtains +up. "Naked and unashamed" could have been written over the door of his +mind. Time and again he quoted a passage from _Trilby_ in which Du +Maurier says that mental chastity begins in the artist when the model +drops her last garment. He was frank to add that this was strictly +true; that in the intense concentration of his mind on problems of +form and color he had found in painting from the nude no room for +images of sex but on the contrary an actual release from the heats and +fevers which plague young men. The remedy he proposed was: "Get rid of +mystery." + +There is a portrait painted at about this time which tells the story +of the inner struggle which he was fighting and winning. It is of a +young girl, about his own age, with a wondrously sweet expression and +sparkling eyes. The delicacy, the spirituality which shines through it +makes it hard to believe that the portrait could have been painted by +a young man. Not a hint of sexuality. He later told me that the girl +was afflicted with a lameness and he told how grateful he was to her +for valuing him for his mind and not obtruding sex. I doubt if he knew +how publicly yet with what delicacy he had thanked her. + +There were moods of him, as when he stood silently drinking in a +landscape, which made me think of that fine old chant which one hears +in the churches: + + "O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." + + * * * * * + +In the emptiness left by his death I came to realize that one of the +principal anticipations of my life had been looking forward to watch, +year by year, the unfolding of his mind and the ripening of his +powers. His talent had long since passed the stage at which it was a +sporting proposition--the stage at which one could chaff him about +cashing in heavily some day on a pair of "early Demmlers." + +There was no kind of doubt that he carried within him the creative +"daimon." His very instincts betrayed it. He went at a landscape the +way Hugo Wolf went at a song: he lived with the poem before creating +the music. For the first few days in a novel countryside he never +thought of touching brush to canvas. He walked around in the scene, +his every sense alert to its feature and color, to its sound and +smell. He laid in wait for its moods. He eyed it in every circumstance +of wind and weather, as if it had been a face he was preparing to +paint, or a woman he was preparing to wed. No words. The quality he +most appreciated in a companion at such times was silence. And it was +entertainment enough to watch the play of expression in his face as +his eyes roamed meadow, hill or sea horizon--vigilance, delight, +eagerness, discriminating study, instructions to memory, brooding +thought--his life was a perpetual honeymoon with nature for his bride. + +Then would come the day and the hour when he was ready to paint. By +that time, in the wealth of his materials, his only study would be not +what to put in but what to leave out. I doubt if he had reached the +point of knowingly causing his subconscious to work for him, but it +will be apparent from the foregoing that he was doing so +unconsciously. + +He was able, somehow, to communicate his sense of form and color to +another, without resort to speech, or with only the fewest words. +Perhaps it was the stimulus of seeing how much there was for him in +the distant shining of sunlight on winding waters, or a range of low +hills scrawling their signature on the chill blue of horizon sky, +which taught others to find the wonder and dignity in what they would +once have looked on as commonplace. At any rate, I find myself, in all +seasons, seeing landscapes through his eyes.... "Now that looks +commonplace, but it isn't. Fritz would have seen something in these +somber March-brown meadows drowned in the freshets of spring; these +red-budding birches; this delicate flush of pink in a drab evening +sky...." And so he, being dead, yet seeth. + +He was well aware, by this time, that the artist who is not also a +thinker is a one-legged man. He accepted the obligation of +understanding matters which, superficially, might have seemed far +outside his province. It was in 1915 that he encountered Tolstoy's +great work on Christian anarchism, _The Kingdom of God Is Within You_. +It revolutionized his view of life. It convinced him of the futility +of violence as a method of settling disputes, personal or national. +And the shock of having to transvalue all the accepted values, of +having, in a world organized on the basis of fear, to conceive of a +world organized on the basis of good will, made him a thinker in his +own right. + +Next he encountered Romain Rolland's _Life of Michael Angelo_. Far +from being chilled by the classic austerity of that work, it warmed +him. In it he found the food he had been seeking. He made it a part of +him. It confirmed, with revelations of the laws of mental conduct +which governed that giant of the Renaissance, principles which this +young man had been formulating and practising by the naked instinct of +his will to create. Things which he had been doing or forbearing to +do, he could not have told you why, here received their sanction or +veto in the experience of a genius. + +Little as was said about this between us, it was easy to see how +profoundly this discovery of the similarity between his own mental +processes and those of a great master had strengthened his confidence +in himself. Michael Angelo was added to the list of his Great +Companions. + +He had another. Rembrandt. + +There was a gallery in London, which one I forget, which he visited +day after day. + +"In the first room you entered," said he, "was a portrait of an old +woman by Rembrandt, painted in his last period. Time after time I went +there intending to see the rest of the gallery. Sometimes I even tried +a room or two. What was the use? I went back to that portrait. It +seemed like a waste of time to look at the other pictures. Everything +they said--if they said anything--was said in that portrait by +Rembrandt and said better. It seemed to me as if the whole history of +humanity were concentrated in that old woman's face.... Finally I +surrendered and went only to see that." + + * * * * * + +There is a chastity of the mind, just as there is a chastity of the +body. There are certain creative processes which a sincere thinker +would no more reveal to casual eyes than he would strip in a public +place. A rule of mental chastity: Do not hold promiscuous mental +intercourse. The shallow would intrude into these austere places like +picnickers in a sanctuary, littering it with their luncheon refuse. +Let the artist raise his thought-stained face from his toil, smiling +but mute. + +Fritz guarded his secrets well. A sudden flash of arrested eye, a +certain silent intentness of gaze, an interest in a subject which +would seem altogether out of proportion to its importance, a look of +perpetual expectancy were all that betrayed his search. He was +learning, learning, learning: every hour, every minute. Sometimes for +days together he would seem dormant--practical people would have said +loafing--lazily absorbing impressions as it had been through his +pores. Again he seemed to devour scenery, faces, books, ideas with an +appetite that was insatiable. + +A young sculptor, meeting Fritz, observed to me privately, + +"What an unromantic exterior for an artist!" + +The joke was too good to tell Fritz for, all innocently on +the sculptor's part, it revealed a secret which I was not +supposed to know: that Fritz instinctively cultivated this +young-man-just-out-of-college-and-doing-well-in-business exterior as a +high board fence behind which, free from intrusion, to train the +muscles of his mind and cultivate the golden orchards of his soul. + +He had to. For once he had mastered the tools of his trade there was +absolutely no one to teach him the things he most needed to know. He +must go it alone. He knew it. And he was going. That was the secret of +the watchful, hungry look of him--the look of one aware of a ravenous +appetite and never sure of his next meal. That was the secret of his +inarticulate gratitude to anyone who happened to be able to put him in +the way of finding the food his spirit craved. He discovered that the +composers knew more about painting than most painters, and he used to +turn up at Symphony concerts or at the opera with the look of a small +boy fresh from a session with the jam pot behind the pantry door. He +wasn't saying anything, but you knew that he'd got it. He made a +bee-line for Beethoven and Wagner. He came away after a performance of +_Tristan_ most divinely drunk on the strongest wine in music. + +For the method of these composers was the method which he had chosen +for himself unconsciously. He was not satisfied to write a thin +melody. He was determined to teach his brush the rich and complicated +instrumentation of an orchestral score. Not this face or that +landscape was what he planned to put on canvas, but the abundance of +life which he had absorbed through every avenue of sense. Not a +violin alone, nothing less than the full orchestra would content him. + +I ask myself whether I shall ever see anything more inspiriting than +the quiet, secret quest of this young man for an excellence and a +mastery not only unrecognized and unrewarded by the social order in +which he lived, but not even comprehended. This is the courage of the +creative mind: that it is prepared to meet alike its triumph or its +defeat in an utter moral solitude. Stories of the physical courage +which Fritz displayed on the field of battle were to come later.... +Which is likely to advance the Kingdom of Heaven on earth more +speedily--the courage of the body, to destroy; or the courage of the +mind, to create? + +Is all this too eulogistic? "Oh, come! He must have had faults, +weaknesses, common spots." ... I suppose so. To tell the truth I never +noticed them. There was a trait, as I first remember him, of too ready +assent to the opinions of others which it amused me to attribute to +peasant ancestry; but, after all, that conformity was only outward and +it soon disappeared. In matters really vital to him his will was +granite and he commanded a silence which could vociferate "Hands off!" + +His very inarticulate tongue gave promise of greatness. One saw all +this life-stuff entering into him. He could never express it in +speech. It was a necessity of his being to express it somehow. It +would have to come out on canvas. + +Oh, once in a great while the curtain would be dropped. Some lucky +turn of conversation would relax the inhibitions and liberate his +tongue. Then for a few minutes, perhaps for an hour, one would be +shown the treasure house within. What shall I say of those glimpses? +There are times to walk fearfully lest one smash something which +cannot be replaced, and these occasions were of them. Treasures not of +this world; possessions which honored the possessor by being held in +honor; bins heaped, as it had been, with jewels and brocades; others +which gaped with a sacrificial emptiness; spaces eked out with the +heroic poverty of one dedicated to the monasticism of a creative +career. + +Enough.... I saw--what I saw. + + * * * * * + +And withal he was half pagan. The physical gratification with which he +drank in the beauty of the world reminded me of that statuette by +_Roderick Hudson_, Dipsos ("Thirst")--a boy, feet planted +wide apart, head thrown back, slaking his throat out of a gourd held +in both hands. Fritz was that boy. The ugliness of modern clothes +disgusted him. He was alert for chances to take off his own: impromptu +baths in cold brooks on walking trips, or long days of summer sunshine +on lonely stretches of sea beach with gleaming yellow sands. There was +some place among the mountains of West Virginia where he used to go: +ledges of flat rock above a rushing river. All day long they gathered +warmth from the sun, retaining it well into the night. When the moon +had risen he loved to steal away for a plunge in the river, then lie +out naked in the moonlight on these great slabs of warm rock, alone +with the magic night. + + + + +VIII + + +In May, 1917, he came to Boston from Pittsburgh. I was in Parkersburg, +West Virginia. He came there. + +Conscription impended. Under his composure the struggle was going on. +Tolstoy had converted him. What was he to do? + +"If there were no one but myself to consider...," said he, "But the +suffering which you would have no hesitation in imposing on yourself +you hesitate to impose on those dearer to you than yourself." + +He was thrilled by the nonresistance of the still-young Russian +revolution: + +"Wonderful people, liberated by their refusal to kill! They fold their +arms and say 'Shoot!' The Cossacks refuse to shoot them. And a +despotism, centuries old, comes tumbling down. It proves everything +that Tolstoy has said." + +For three days, tramping about the scrubby countryside, rambling along +the banks of the Ohio, rowing up the swift, muddy current of the +Kanawah, the dilemma of a man born to create and commandeered to +destroy was threshed out. Never before had he spoken so freely. The +economic causes of the trouble he understood fairly well, but it was +startling with what a seeing eye he pierced the illusions which beset +that time. By that faculty of divination peculiar to the artist's mind +he reached, at one leap, conclusions which the thinker only arrives at +after laborious effort. And he was a young man without an illusion +left, steadfastly looking the ugliest facts of our social order in the +face. + +On the last evening of his stay we were standing on the steel spider +web of a suspension bridge which spans the Ohio, watching a sunset +unfurl its banners of blood and fire. + +All day there had been thunder and rain, and eastward behind the +towers and spires of the city skyline still hung the retreating +clouds, sullen and dark. Fritz pointed to where, against that gloomy +cloud bank, high above the city and gilded red from the setting sun, +rose two symbols: one on the tip of a spire, the other on the staff +atop a tower: cross and flag. + +"Church," said he grimly, "and State." + +The next day he returned to Pittsburgh to register for the draft. + + * * * * * + +July found me back in New England at a farm on the banks of the +Merrimac in West Newbury. Returning one noon from an errand up the +hills to the village I was hailed by the children with a shout: + +"A friend of yours is here." + +"Who is he?" + +"He told us his name but we've forgotten it." + +"What does he look like?" + +Descriptions varied: + +"He's awfully strong," said the boy. + +"He has shiny black hair and black eyes," said the littlest girl. + +"He wears his coat off and his sleeves rolled up," said the biggest +little girl, and she added, with the spontaneous poetry of childhood, +"And his hands are beeootiful!" + +"Where is he?" + +"Down by the river." + +Under the maples, lying in the tall grass at the foot of a steep bank +which sloped to the stream, with children clambering all over him, was +Fritz. He scrambled to his feet and came forward putting out his hand +with that awkwardness of meeting after an absence which he never quite +outgrew, but his eyes snapped with enjoyment at my astonishment. + +It appeared that he had been painting some one in a Massachusetts mill +city and had dashed up here between-whiles. + +There is a tiny hut perched like a brown owl on a knoll in a grove of +hickories beside the river. To this hermitage we retired and he +related the news of the intellectual underworld in Pittsburgh. Roger +Baldwin had been there, much to his comfort. A friend whose portrait +he had been painting, aware that the mildest radicalism had now become +high treason, had remarked by way of chaffing him, + +"I hope they give you a cell with a north light." + +He unburdened with a tone of sheer physical relief: + +"This frantic enthusiasm for 'democracy,'" said he, "on the part of +people who have spent their whole lives combating it!" + +He sat relaxed in a deep chair, hands hanging limp on its arms--hands +large, strongly muscled, marked with heavy veins, the fingers +full-fleshed at their tips, the skin bronzed by the sun. + +Tatters of sunlight, reflected from the wavelets of the river +obliquely up underneath the hickory boughs, flickered on the ceiling +and walls of the hut. + +Disillusioned he was, but not cynical. His humor was a bath to a sore +spirit. He kindled, in the moral solitude of that hour, a little fire +of faith and hope. It struck me anew, eyeing him as he sat there, what +a beautiful creature he was, inside and out. + +There was in him, too, an odd streak of stoicism. Keen as he was for +"the eats," he delighted in little acts of self-discipline. That +afternoon, it being necessary for me to try for a nap, he cleared out +to gather views of river and woods. An hour later I discovered this +young Spartan, hands clasped behind head, spine stretched along the +plank flooring of the narrow ledge in front of the hut, sleeping +quietly.... + +The next day he made himself everlastingly solid with the people at +the farm by spending the whole morning fitting screens to the +multitudinous doors and windows of their ark of a house. Everyone +wanted Fritz to stay a month. + +At nine that evening he left. As we trudged over the road in the warm +darkness of the summer night, he talked soberly of the dubious future. + + * * * * * + +He was not called until the following April, 1918. Twice that winter +he came to Boston. Number 94 Charles Street had been dismantled. But +the third-floor-back on Pinckney Street received him with an extra cot +for bivouac. + +... This should have been the longest chapter of all, and the best. I +find that I cannot write it. + + * * * * * + +Only a postscript. I asked him for a picture of himself. + +"What do you want," he inquired, "a painting?" + +My ideas had been far more modest: + +"Beggars should not be choosers. I will take what I can get: painting, +photograph, snap-shot: and be thankful." + +"What size would you like?" + +"Small enough so that it can go wherever I go." + +He made no promises. His way was to wait until the time came and then +let the performance speak. + +Not three weeks later it came: a sketch in oils, head and shoulders, +ten inches by twelve, not at all the cold greenish grays I had +anticipated from his habitual attitude of self-effacement, but on the +contrary a scheme of rich golden browns. He has painted his own +portrait with the same reticence which looks out of its eyes. +Strangers seeing it remark, + +"What a striking face!" + +His friends view it and say, + +"He was much finer looking than that." + + + + +IX + + +The rest is seen dimly, as through a mist. His voice is heard, +distinct and clear, but as from a great distance. + +To Ralph Heard he writes from Camp Lee, Virginia: + +"I am eating, sleeping, and drilling with physical enthusiasm," and +later, "Tell the fellows that the dust is gathering on my palette." + +A letter to me in May tells of taking his pipe at the day's end and +strolling into the woods of the camp to be alone with the song of +birds and tints of sunset. Late in July came a letter from France +describing a march "between gleam of gold in the west and a rising +full moon in the east, ... aëroplanes in action overhead and +cannonading over the hills to the east." Then occurs this: + +"I am little different from as you know me, even though now in a +machine gun company:--Curious irony.--" + +And this: + +"Continue your work.... Other victories are transient." + +And this was his farewell: + +"We have seen great visions and dreamed splendid dreams. And the faith +you have in me,--which I prize so desperately,--I have in you, no +matter where each of us may be headed. We will live the best we +can--that, through our friendship, is all we ask of each other." + + * * * * * + +On January 23, 1919, one of his brothers writes from Le Mans, France: + +"St. Remis du Plain is the name of the little town where Fred's +company was billeted. It is perched on the top of a hill in the middle +of a vast plain and was visible for a long time as I headed towards +it. This was the trip I had planned long ago, and pictured a happy +meeting; however, it was decreed otherwise. Passing up the narrow +street I saw 'Headquarters, 136 M. G. Bn.' written on the door of an +old stone house. The orderly room was full of officers. I inquired for +Lieut. Rew, the one who had previously written to me, and introduced +myself as Fred's brother. The officer who was dictating stopped work, +came over and shook hands with me. The captain commanding the +battalion came from behind the table, greeted me and offered a word of +sympathy. Soon all the officers were grouped about me and I saw that +Fred was considered one of their number. The captain said, 'He was the +best sergeant I ever had.' They invited me to mess with them, and +Lieut. Rew said I was to bunk with him, 'for my men have cooties,' but +I saw this was all done so that they might have a chance to speak of +Fred. One of the sergeants told me that when the news came, the +officers were even more broken up about it than the men. + +"I was introduced to the noncoms with whom Fred seems to have been a +favorite. In the evening, as we sat around an open fireplace, I asked +if Fred had had a 'buddy.' The sergeant with whom Fred used to sleep +said, 'No. He was everybody's friend.' + +"As I was walking up to the kitchen, a private stepped out of the mess +line and came up to me saying he knew me through my resemblance to +Fred. Soon the mess line was demoralized and I was the center of a +lively mass all talking at once and I could easily see why the captain +recommended him so highly as a sergeant.--'He never said a harsh +word,'--'He was always cheerful and never kicked,'--'When we +complained about the feed or anything, he said it would be better +later.' They talked so long that at last the cook asked me if I would +not please eat so that they would eat and let him get through. + + * * * * * + +"The division left Camp Lee, June 21, 1918, and sailed from Newport +News on the Italian transport _Caserta_. It was a dirty boat, the feed +rotten, and the trip rough. Everybody was disgusted. Fred was about +the only one of the company who never missed a meal. A private told me +that he and Fred were standing at the rail in the bow of the ship one +night talking about a number of things. This fellow voiced the +sentiment of most of the company when he said he only wanted to make +one more ocean trip and that was in the reverse direction. Fred looked +far out across the water and remarked: 'I could stand a few more.' + +"They landed at Brest on July 5 and entrained at once for Souville. +They used the French type of compartment cars where with ten men and +full equipment there wasn't much room to move about. Fred was in +charge of his compartment and, with his usual ingenuity, devised means +of disposing of the equipment to best advantage for their comfort. He +also carefully arranged the daily menu consisting of bread, corned +beef, tomatoes, beans, and jam. He did all this in such a serio-comic +way that the fellows are still laughing over the memories of the trip. + +"On September 20 the division led the drive into the Argonne forest. +This is reputed to have been the hardest battle of the war in respect +to the Germans' shell fire and the suffering caused by the rainy +weather and lack of shelter. Through it all there was not a healthier +nor more cheerful man than Fred. Recognized by the commanding officer +as having 'the coolest head in the company and afraid of nothing' he +was made a sergeant after this battle over the heads of some old +National Guardsmen; but there was not a murmur--all were satisfied. +When they came out of the woods he helped the doctor with the wounded +(he seems to have helped everywhere, from the kitchen to the captain's +private office). After they had all been attended to, he asked the +doctor to look him over. He had received three flesh wounds in +shoulder and arm. He picked out the pieces of shrapnel himself and had +the doctor bandage him. After which he went about his work as usual. + +"October 10 found the company in the St. Mihiel sector, and on October +22 it moved into Belgium. All this meant miles of weary hiking under a +full pack; but Fred remained the same cheerful fellow as ever. He +amused the whole company with his doings. He found an old hair-clipper +among some salvage and immediately opened a barber shop where +lieutenants as well as privates got their hair cut. Another thing that +I recognized as characteristic were the remarks pertaining to his +appetite. He never lost it. He was known to have 'eats' on his person +all the time. He had a special knack of hunting out farm houses, +engaging _madame_ in conversation, and coming away with bread, eggs, +or cheese in his knapsack. Occasionally he did some sketching and his +letters were a joy to the lieutenant who censored them because of the +excellent descriptions they contained.... + +"The company went over the top early in the morning of October 31. +Fred was wounded in the left side by a piece of high explosive shell +at about 5:30 A.M. It was before daylight and few knew he had been +hit. When they did hear it, they were far in advance and Fred had been +carried to Evacuation Hospital Number Five, at Staden, Belgium. He +died there on November 2. One of the boys who helped carry him to the +rear says that he was fully conscious despite the serious nature of +his wound, and tells of how he directed them what to do--how he told +them to leave him when the shells fell too fast (which they wouldn't +do)--of how they left him, quite himself, at the first-aid station.... + +"He was never referred to as a bully or even as a fighter--he was +spared the grewsome experience of hand-to-hand fighting, for from the +first the Germans were in full flight; but he was remembered for his +cheerfulness, his kindness toward others and especially for his lack +of harsh words. His favorite text from the Bible was that part of the +Sermon on the Mount known as the beatitudes, _and he often wondered +why ministers did not preach on it more_. _He constantly spoke of this +to the men._ (The italics are not in the original.) + +"His fire has gone out, but he left a glow in the hearts of these men +which will never go out." + + * * * * * + +And now it is time that a few questions be asked, simple and direct. +It is due him. + +Why is it that when he set himself to create he had to contend against +that dead-weight of indifference if not the active hostility of +organized society recorded in these pages; but when he was +commandeered to destroy, that society clothed him, fed him, sheltered +him, trained him, transported him, paid him, nursed him, and buried +him? + +It is well that we should know what has been squandered. He that might +have ennobled generations of men with his great visions and his +splendid dreams is mingling his clay with the soil of Belgium. He had +the seeds of genius. Capitalism made him a machine gunner. + +Is this the best we can find for our artists to do? Is it any wonder +that the creative minds of to-day are finding themselves driven to +social revolution as their art-form? + +In the brown-owl hut beside the Merrimac that summer day in 1917 he +remarked in a tone of indulgent irony: + +"The 'military experts' have found a nice, polite term for men killed +or too badly maimed to fight any more." + +"What is it?" I asked. + +"'Wastage.'" + +[Music:--Beethoven: Finale of The Ninth Symphony.] + + + + +X + +VISITATION + + +Here, at the end, let those measures of the Ninth Symphony sound: no +dirge; but a pæan of joy. For in that choral ecstasy of Beethoven's +hymn to human brotherhood speaks the whole meaning and purpose of the +life that was. + +Why have I detained you for a tale so plain? What was he but an +obscure young painter, thirty years old, with his way to make? Why +should I point him out to you among the millions? Because he was my +friend? No. Because he is yours. Because I thought I saw in him the +seeds of greatness? No. Because the seeds of greatness which were in +him are in you; and he shall make you see them. + +I give him to you young men to be your friend, loyal and high-minded. +I give him to you young women to be your lover, clean of body and of +soul. He will be worthy of your friendship and of your love, and you +shall be worthy of his in return. + +I give him to you in all the beauty of his youth and he shall never +grow old, but he shall himself become one of the heroic friends, one +of the great companions. I give you his soul to carry in your own, a +life within a life. Through his eyes you may see the wonder and glory +of the beautiful world which he saw so joyously. Let his generous +heart beat through yours his passion for an ideal society and a better +time than ours. + +He is to be immortal. And it is you who must make him so. Let him +kindle in your hearts a fire which will not go out. He that would have +made great canvases glow with the might of his spirit and the splendor +of his imagination shall not now live by art alone, but by the living +deeds of you. You shall be his masterpieces. You, immortal youth, +shall be his immortality. + +Away from the dust and heat of the day, when the loud world crowds and +clamors, he shall make for you, all in a dim, cool chamber of your +souls, a sanctuary--a little space of sacred friendship--where you may +enter and, closing the door, renew your vows. + +You may have him to stand beside you in hours of triumph, and in hours +of disaster; steadier of your aim, sustainer of your courage. + +Sit in the twilight with folded hands and he shall speak to you. When +moonbeams pour their silent music into your chamber at dead of night +and your sight rejoices in them, it is he. Hearken to the beat of surf +along a lonely shore; to the song of the hermit thrush in dense +thickets; to the whisper of the night wind among the leaves: "It is +he!" Kindle to the charm and mystery of a face in the crowd, and "It +is he!" Thrill at the return of many-blossomed spring, at the strength +of men, at the grace of women, and your joy shall be his joy. In every +visitation to you of the truth that not by hate, not by blows, but +only by the love of the human heart can the world be won from its +evil, he shall live, he shall live again. And the color and rhythm of +life, the joy of begetting which he never knew, the joy of creating +which he knew so abundantly, when it is yours shall be his also. And +so all that is highest and best in you, all that inspired him and that +he inspired, shall be the works of art by which he is remembered. + +Immortal youth, let him be comrade and friend to you as he was to me; +let him live forever in your young hearts, himself forever young, +bathed in the glory of eternal dawn. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Immortal Youth, by Lucien Price + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMMORTAL YOUTH *** + +***** This file should be named 39330-8.txt or 39330-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/3/3/39330/ + +Produced by Charlene Taylor, Matthew Wheaton and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license + + +Title: Immortal Youth + A Study in the Will to Create + +Author: Lucien Price + +Release Date: April 1, 2012 [EBook #39330] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMMORTAL YOUTH *** + + + + +Produced by Charlene Taylor, Matthew Wheaton and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1 class="booktitle">IMMORTAL YOUTH</h1> + +<p class="h2"><i>A Study in the<br /> +Will to Create</i></p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/titledecorative.jpg" width="100" height="259" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="inset18"> +<p> +<i>Behold my most beautiful work:<br /> +the souls that I have sculptured.<br /> +These they cannot destroy. Let<br /> +the wood burn! The soul is mine.</i><br /> +<span class="right"> —Romain Rolland: <i>Colas Breugnon</i></span></p> +</div> + +<p class="spacer"> </p> + +<p class="h5">IMPRINTED MCMXIX<br /> +<big>McGRATH-SHERRILL PRESS</big><br /> +GRAPHIC ARTS BUILDING<br /> +<big>BOSTON</big></p> + +<p class="spacer"> </p> + +<p class="h5">COPYRIGHT NINETEEN NINETEEN<br /> +LUCIEN PRICE</p> + +<blockquote> +<p><i>The first printing of this memoir is one thousand copies. When these +are gone, those who wish more can obtain them from McGrath-Sherrill +Press, the publisher, Graphic Arts Building, Boston, Massachusetts, +for one dollar a copy.</i></p> +</blockquote> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a href="midi/music1.mid"> +<img class="border2" title="Select to hear music" src="images/music1.jpg" width="400" height="250" alt="" /> +</a> +</div> + +<p class="caption">Select to hear music.</p> + +<div class="trnote music1"> +<p class="h3">Transcriber's Note:</p> +<p>This quotation from Parsifal is given in the form of a piano +reduction which does not convey well the +"flourish of muted horns, remote, mysterious". +Therefore, the piano reduction is followed by just the treble clef +as it would sound played by horns.</p> +</div> + +<blockquote> +<p class="dropcap">IN <i>the third act of Wagner's last music-drama there comes a flourish +of muted horns, remote, mysterious. In it sounds the grandeur of that +quest which never ends—the quest of the Holy Grail. The phrase is +repeated, and over the flower-starred meadow under the April sun of +Good Friday morning comes a knight in dark armor, his visor down, +carrying the holy spear. It is</i> <span class="smcap">Parsifal</span>. <i>His errand is the errand of +aspiring youth in all lands and all ages. I set that phrase of music, +compact with the poetry and pain of idealism, at the beginning of +these pages in token of the spiritual brotherhood.</i></p> +</blockquote> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="400" height="572" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p class="caption"><i>Portrait of the artist by himself</i></p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p class="h2">IMMORTAL YOUTH</p> + +<div class="inset20"> +<p> +<span class="in8">Give me that man</span><br /> +That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him<br /> +In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,<br /> +As I do thee.<br /> +<span class="right">—<span class="smcap">Hamlet</span></span> +</p> +</div> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<h2>I</h2> + +<p class="dropcap"><b>THERE</b> was a humble restaurant on Charles Street where cabmen and +chauffeurs could be induced to tell the story of their lives over a +combination-supper of lamb chop and two fried eggs costing (that was +in 1912), with coffee and rolls, twenty-five cents. Across the table +one evening in the spring of that year sat a young man about +twenty-four years old. Anyone would have taken a second look at him; +also a third, a fourth, and as many more as good manners would permit. +What was there about him that attracted attention? It was hard to say. +The dark eyes with a somber light burning in them? The rugged features +and swarthy complexion with a ruddy glow of health in each jowl? The +hands; very large and finely muscled? (I have never seen a more +beautiful pair of hands on a human being.) It was all of these things +and none of them. Rather it was the look of one with immense forces in +reserve, bound on an errand.</p> + +<p>Impossible to guess anything from his clothes: dark suit, shirt of +gray flannel, and black knitted tie. Chauffeur? Hardly. Well then, +what? Who?</p> + +<p>(This is no isolated personal impression. Wherever he went people felt +the same intense curiosity about him. Sometimes they stared at him so +that he asked me if his face was smudged.)</p> + +<p>Was this stranger conversible? He was. Presently he was speaking of +the colonial doorways on Chestnut Street with a discrimination which +suggested the architect. No. It appeared that he was studying under +Mr. Tarbell at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. Next, that he +came from Pittsburgh. Here was a bond in common. As two young Middle +Westerners we resented the social cold storage which New England +imposes as a probationary period of acquaintance. We condoled. We +fraternized. We were as neighbors meeting in a foreign land. At last +somebody with whom it was safe to scrape acquaintance in the good +old-fashioned Middle Western way without incurring suspicion of +designs on one another's souls, bodies, or estates.</p> + +<p>He climbed Beacon Hill with me to the house where I lived, carrying a +paper bag which, he explained modestly, contained his breakfast: two +bananas and a shredded wheat biscuit.</p> + +<p>The evening was mild. Windows stood open to the breeze which rumpled +the leaves of an old linden where it spread its boughs in the +brick-walled court.</p> + +<p>He promptly took off his coat, displaying in the rays of a +green-shaded student lamp a pair of forearms worthy of the hands which +went with them. Summer and winter he wore his sleeves rolled above his +elbows. His wrists resented cuffs as wild creatures resent cages. He +stretched out his long legs on a cot which did duty by the fireplace +as a sofa; pushed his hair off his forehead with both hands, fingers +interlocked, a trick he had; and gave symptoms of feeling at home.</p> + +<p>Was he talkative? Not much! Never did clam yield shell to knife edge +more gingerly. He would and he would not. Shy, reserved, proud, +devoured with ambition, savagely determined, a prey to some +misgivings, genuinely modest, and anxious to talk it over with the +right person, but by no means sure who the right person was.</p> + +<p>On sped the ambrosial hours of the spring evening. Bit by bit he +revealed himself. This was his third year in the Museum School. He +admired the technique of Mr. Tarbell and Mr. Benson; he prized their +instruction. But he distrusted their smoothness. He missed vigor. All +round him he saw students neglecting their own creative bents to +produce "little Bensons" and "little Tarbells." Already he had +resolved to quit Boston as soon as his student days were over.</p> + +<p>"I don't say I shall ever be able to paint as well as they can; but I +must be myself,—not an imitation Tarbell."</p> + +<p>There had been two years in Cornell before he came to Boston. He had +rowed in his class eight on Lake Cayuga. Hence that physical +self-respect which betokens the young man accustomed unconcernedly to +strip in a college boathouse or gymnasium. But to eyes grown +impatient with the college athlete's all too customary intellectual +torpor and social complacency it was a holiday to find this well-made +body, tall, broad in the shoulder, narrow at hips, lean and muscular, +housing also the brain of the thinker and the spirit of the pioneer.</p> + +<p>For the astonishing thing was to find a young man of this type +studying to be a portrait painter instead of a bond salesman. It +didn't sound Yankee. I said so. That shot rang the bell. He began to +open up.</p> + +<p>He was, it appeared, of German extraction. His grandfather, who had +wished to become an artist, had come to America in a period when +artists were about as much in request among us as concert pianists on +a cattle ranch. He had earned his living as an architectural sculptor. +The talent plunged, like a river, underground for a generation; then +reappeared. What happened when this little fellow's fingers began to +itch for the pencil was easy to guess. The father and grandfather put +their heads together and resolved that he should have his chance.</p> + +<p>It began to unravel. Now one understood the earnestness which seemed +at first precocious—the seemingly cool indifference to the call of +the world, the flesh and the devil which usually troubles youngsters +of twenty-four. Here was something more than ambition. Loyalty, +affection, gratitude, and family pride. This boy had more than talent. +He had character.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>With this we are in the heart of the conflict between the artist and +the trader: between the will to create and the will to possess. It is +the central conflict of any age; especially of this, and especially in +America. The young man comes to the forks of the road where he must +decide whether he shall acquire or create; whether he shall be a +business man or a prophet. He finds himself in a society which offers +princely rewards to the commercial career and little but pains and +penalties to those who would create. This youngster was just learning +his way around in the problem. He recited, with comical irony, the +squalid platitudes which are chewed out at a youth bold enough to +follow his creative bent:</p> + +<p>"'Is there any <i>money</i> in it?' 'Oh, of course, if you get to be a +great painter. But how do you know you've got it in you to be a great +painter? Think you have? Got a pretty good opinion of yourself, +haven't you?' 'What if you fail? Suppose you wake up some morning and +find yourself a middle-aged man and a fizzle? Guess you'll wish then +that you'd stuck to plain everyday business and dropped all this +highfalutin about art.' 'Yes. I suppose it's an easy life: sitting +around and painting pictures. Pretty soft, eh? Give me a man's job!' +'Don't you think it's a little rash, my boy, to risk so much, when if +you'd settle down to a good business you'd be sure of a decent living? +And what about marriage? If you marry you'll have to paint pot +boilers, and then what becomes of your art? You might as well be a +business man and be done with it. And if you don't, is it worth going + +without a wife and children in order to paint pictures, and so come +at last to a lonely old age?'"</p> + +<p>He knew all the old ones by heart. Later we used to recite them +together in concert like school children in the geography class.</p> + +<p>If you took the roof off any Chamber of Commerce you would find half a +dozen retired business men whose guilty secret it is that they dabble +on the quiet with paint tubes, or modeling clay, or scenarios, or a +violin—the poor, damned souls of artists. They have made their +"pile." House and lot, wife and children, motor car and country +club—all these they have; and yet, gnawing at their hearts is the +secret knowledge that they have missed the big thing. They were born +to beget children of the spirit; they were born to create in art, in +music, in literature, in social experiment; and the ignoble standards +of the society in which they live have bludgeoned and ridiculed them +into prostituting their highest powers in the market-place.</p> + +<p>In such relationship did this young man stand to the life of his +country and his time. With unflinching eye he listened to its taunt:</p> + +<p>"Artist, create at your peril! You may starve, for all me, until you +win a reputation that is a commercial asset. After which, having +despised you, I will do my best to corrupt you by rewards and +flatteries gratifying to my intellectual snobbery."</p> + +<p>Such were the terms. This youth, uncertain of his own powers, accepted +them with quiet courage and imperturbable good humor. Such was the +secret of that look of settled purpose so intriguing on a face so +young, and such the secret of the fire which smouldered behind those +dark eyes. He was prepared for a siege. He was ready to go to the mat.</p> + +<p>It had taken three generations—son, sire, and grand-sire—to make +this stand against the all-devouring maw of American commercialism: + +three generations to conquer and produce an artist. And mindful of +his end I ask myself whether they did conquer. We shall see.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Midnight clanked from the city clocks.</p> + +<p>"Gosh!" said he, "is it as late as that?" He stood up and knocked the +ashes out of his pipe against the red bricks of the hearth. "By the +way, I don't know your name."</p> + +<p>I told him.</p> + +<p>"Mine," said he, "is Fred Demmler."</p> + +<p>Explaining that I already had a friend named Fred I asked if he had +any objection to being called Fritz.</p> + +<p>"None whatever."</p> + +<p>"Fritz it is, then."</p> + +<p>And Fritz it remained.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<h2>II</h2> + +<p>A once-aristocratic residential street now reduced to a teaming +thoroughfare; pedestal to Beacon Hill; narrow, ill-paved, spattered +with mud to the second story, double row of tall brick town houses, +where Thackeray and Dickens were once guests, now placarding "rooms to +let;" assorted antique shops and restaurants,—"the long, unlovely +street" of <i>In Memoriam</i>, yet with a certain wistful charm in its +decayed gentility: that is Charles Street.</p> + +<p>Number 94 maintained its rubber plant on console-table in dark +vestibule. There was a contraption, usually out of order, by which you +pulled a bell five times to save yourself the climb if the art colony +in the fifth-floor-back did not answer the ring. The young barbarians +were usually out.</p> + +<p>It was a colony of three: Ralph Heard, small, slender, fair, escaped +from a western military academy of which he could tell tales that +froze the blood; Irving Sisson, a tall, rangy Berkshire Yankee, dry +and droll, an Artemus Ward turned art student (though known as "Siss" +it would never have occurred to anyone to call him "Sissie," and if +anyone <i>had</i> been so rash, Sisson's grim reply would have been, like +the man in the yarn, "Smile when you say that"), and Fritz.</p> + +<p>Their room was a first act stage-set for an American version of <i>La +Bohème</i>. It was large, low-ceiled, and had one of those sepulchral +white marble mantel-pieces of the black walnut period. There was an +iron bed and a cot, a gaslight always out of kilter, a writing-table +strewn with pipes, unanswered letters, tiny bottles of india ink, +drawing pens, crayons, thumb tacks, jars holding bouquets of paint +brushes, and scurrilous caricatures of one another scrawled on scraps +of white cardboard. The place reeked with that heavenly odor of paint +tubes. By the window was a drawing board and portfolios. Canvases were +stacked in a dark corner, faces to the wall.</p> + +<p>Their windows looked into a deep courtyard formed by a triangle of +tall brick houses,—the rears of houses on Charles and Brimmer +Streets, the fronts of three quaint Italianate red-brick +dwellings,—all enclosing a tiny greensward on which slender poplars +rustled their glossy leaves. In the farthest corner of this court rise +the walls and mullioned windows of the Church of the Advent, and on +mild evenings when casements were open, the thrush-like voices of the +choir boys over the melodious thunder of great organ floated up to +these windows. But I was never able to observe that it produced any +pietistic tone in number 94. On the contrary they affected to take a +lively interest in the upper windows of the houses opposite and +threatened to keep a pair of field glasses on their window sill.</p> + +<p>As you go down Pinckney Street to the river you pass a break in the +solid row of house fronts through which you can look up and see the +two windows of that fifth-floor-back. One always did look, and if they +were lighted, it was impossible not to go up; for in that room there +was always some form of what is technically known as "trouble." I +never pass the spot now without looking up to see if there is a light +in those windows.... They are dark.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>On the walls of the room were two paintings by Fritz; student works. +One was a small landscape sketch—smouldering red of a sunset after +rain, burning through ragged drab clouds over a hill country bathed in +violet mists of twilight. It was modest, quiet. There was a strain of +thoughtful poetry in it. But the striking part was its sincerity. +There was none of that striving after effect, that ambitious rhetoric +which youngsters usually mistake for eloquence: no attempt to make the +scene anything more than what it was. The other was a portrait study +of a workman naked to the waist. It was bold, vigorous, masculine, +and overflowing with the joy of bodily health.</p> + +<p>So far so good. But something else was in store.</p> + +<p>Out of the canvases stacked against the wall he dug a study of a +woman's head in profile. One looked; and then looked again. "Who was +she?" She had come to the school as a model for one week: that was all +they knew. But her secret was on this canvas. She must have been in +her early thirties. Her face was quite serene. It was the serenity of +a place reduced to ashes. Utter resignation. "Endure. Life has done +its worst."</p> + +<p>By what divination had this youngster of twenty-four guessed a secret +like that? From that moment it was clear to me that he was a portrait +painter.</p> + +<p>"What," I asked, "is that little star in the lower corner of the +canvas?"</p> + +<p>"That? Oh," he explained diffidently, "that is put on pictures which +the school saves for its exhibition."</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<h2>III</h2> + +<p>That golden Spring! Clandestine dinners at an obscure French café in +an obscure court, where one went because, though the food was +something less than so-so, the sauces were exotic; "clandestine" +because, behind closed shutters, they served <i>vin ordinaire</i> without a +license. Our parties, to the disgust of Jacques, were teetotal, the +real attraction being that the joint might be pinched any minute.</p> + +<p>On May afternoons in the Fenway, disguised in a baseball suit of gray +flannel, Fritz rejoiced as a strong man to swat the pill. The pill +swatted him one day, broke his thumb, and in the end he had to have it +rebroken and reset under ether. His first words on coming to were: +"Give me my paint box." All the nurses of his ward fell for him with a +loud crash. In all innocence he told what a lot of extra trouble they +went to for him. His friends smiled in their sleeves.</p> + +<p>As often as there was a play of Shaw or Ibsen or Galsworthy or +Maeterlinck or Shakespeare or Synge there were expeditions to peanut +heaven. Knoblauch's <i>Kismet</i> happened along and Fritz appropriated the +cry: "Alms! for the love of Allah" for occasions choicely +inappropriate.</p> + +<p>When a fine May morning of blue and gold came winging over the city on +the northwest wind he would get up extra early, hustle through his +shave and cold tubbing and join me in the tramp over Beacon Hill, +across the Common, and down into Newspaper Row for breakfast at the +celebrated Spa. On the way up Chestnut Street, where the Brahmin +pundits live, the favorite sport was to crack jokes at the expense of +the sources of income which sustained these Georgian fronts and +mahogany-and-brocade interiors: here, a famous brand of ale; there, +notorious industrial nose-grinding in Fall River spinning mills—merry +clank of dividend skeleton in genteel closet.... On the Common, jocund +morning, fresh green of turf and tree, sweet breath of the earth; +sunshine, bird-song, youth, ... Spring!</p> + +<p>And on a stool at the Spa, Fritz's provoking grin and sly banter of a +waitress who, after a good look at him, would conclude that if she was +being kidded she liked it and was cheerfully ready for more. After +which breakfast he trudged the mile and a half to the Art Museum to +see the morning and to save his father carfares.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>It appeared that he was a walker, and not afraid of rain. He proved +it. On a May evening brewing thunder we did a dissolving view out of +the city on a train for Cape Ann. At the end of the shore road around +the Cape awaited lodgings at an inn and a midnight supper. At +Gloucester he was introduced to one of Wonson's clam chowders and we +set off at dusk.</p> + +<p>That evening came the first inkling of his larger purpose—his higher +than personal ambition: what he would paint after his portraits +assured him a livelihood. Something was said about Pittsburgh and the +mills.</p> + +<p>"They ought to be painted," said he, "exactly as they are. Not +sentimentalized like the magazine covers; not made romantic, as Joseph +Pennell has made them; but painted in all their horror. Some day. I +don't know enough yet."</p> + +<p>Thunder had been muttering distantly. The night had turned pitch +black. There were sullen flashes, and drops began to patter. Would he +be for turning back? Not he! Then the storm came crashing and pelting +across the granite moors of the Cape. Gorgeous flashes which flushed +the winding tidal inlets and the rocky hills a brilliant rose pink. +Flash! Crash! Swish went the rain. And the harder it stormed the +better he liked it. He strode along intoxicated with color and sound.</p> + +<p>Near Annisquam is a double shade-row of willows overarching the road. +Not far beyond, yellow lamplight was streaming from the windows of a +tiny cottage. Wading knee-deep in wet grass we knocked.</p> + +<p>Now it is a complicated process explaining to two aged New England +spinsters on a lonely road at nine o'clock of a stormy night what your +errand is, especially when you haven't any. They listened; lifted the +lamp on us for an inspection—particularly on Fritz; one soon got used +to seeing people inspect him furtively—and invited us in.</p> + +<p>"Walkin' round the Cape to Rockport, be ye? And in the rain? For the +fun of it! Well, come in and set down. I'd like to get a good look at +someone who'd walk to Rockport in the rain for the fun of it. Set +down, young gentlemen."</p> + +<p>We set. They were sisters. One was small and timid: she was of the +sort that remain naïve to the end. The other was tall, angular and +sardonic, with a mother wit smacking of the soil and the salt water. +She addressed herself to Fritz:</p> + +<p>"You ain't an escaped murderer, be ye?"</p> + +<p>Fritz cackled lustily.</p> + +<p>"How do you know I'm not?" said he.</p> + +<p>"You look like that fella who's on trial in Boston now. I see his +pictures in the paper ... and you come knockin' on the door at dead o' +night in a thunder squall like in a story book."</p> + +<p>"Would you say I looked like a murderer?" inquired Fritz with relish.</p> + +<p>"You might look worse 'n him," replied our free-speech hostess. "By +his pictures he's a good-lookin' fella. I says to Saide whiles we was +weedin' garden this morning, 't wouldn't be safe to let him go now, +for half the women in New England are ready to fall in love with +him—he's been that advertised." She eyed us with her sardonic grin. I +looked at Fritz. He was blushing.</p> + +<p>To her shrewd Yankee wits we were clearly two lunatics, but harmless; +and the object was to extract as much entertainment from us as the law +allowed. Such was the tone of her farewell, half an hour later.</p> + +<p>"If anyone asks who was here," said she, "I'll tell them it was two +young fellas walkin' to Rockport in the rain for the fun of it.—And +then they'll think <i>I'm</i> one!"</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Past midnight, stumping dog-tired into the inn; cold meat and bread, +ravenously devoured; bed, and the sleep of the just.</p> + +<p>... Morning; and such a morning as never was. Quite forgetting to +dress, Fritz lost himself staring out of the open window at the quaint +harbor, the fishing fleet, the blue bay and the gaunt headlands until +it was suggested to him that passers by might be enjoying him as much +as he was enjoying the morning.</p> + +<p>There was an hour for soaking it in before the train left for the +city, and soak it in he did. A sea of pale blue, like molten glass, +untroubled by a breeze; sky the deep blue of a morning after storms; +air sweet with the scent of blossoming orchards and dooryard lilacs +and tart with the tang of salt brine; merry twitter of robins; lazy +splash of surf; the long headlands tapering down to the sea; the squat +white tower of Straitsmouth light solitary on its rocky islet, "and +overhead the lovely skies of May."</p> + +<p>In the midst of it stood a young artist, dumb with delight. His eyes +drank.</p> + +<p>Oh brethren of the possessing class, ye who must own this and that +before you can enjoy, this world can never give the bliss for which ye +sigh. That pilgrimage cost less than $3.00 per.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Evening. Above the tiny grass-plat and spindling poplars in Mount +Vernon Square floats the magic of a night in mid-June. The windows of +the fifth-floor-back in 94 Charles are lighted and open to the +breeze. From those of the Advent come gusts of music,—rumbles of +organ and the fresh voices of boys: choir rehearsal. But I think the +sounds which float down from the windows of 94 are more in tune with +the night: peal after peal of infectious laughter. It was clear to the +meanest order of intellect that Sisson was telling stories which were +more joyous than dutiful: also that he had Fritz going. There was no +mistaking that laugh.</p> + +<p>A belated delivery man, basket on arm, pauses beside me to listen and +grin.</p> + +<p>"I bet that was a good one," says he. "Say, but can't that guy laugh!"</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<h2>IV</h2> + +<p>In the autumn he reappeared bronzed and husky from a summer on a +Pennsylvania farm. That spring had been the overture. Now the curtain +rose. How can my thin piano score reproduce that richly glowing +orchestration?</p> + +<p>Gradually the artist in him unfolded. It was like a process of +nature—slow, silent, sure. In speech he was inarticulate. The spoken +word was not his trade; he knew it, and the knowledge made him +self-conscious. But give him a brush and he found tongue. His silences +were formidable. "The better to eat you with, my dear!" Nothing +escaped him. With a secret, fierce impetuosity he was storing away +impressions: glances, gestures, lines of faces, colors, inflections of +voices, landscapes, phrases, incidents, ideas: he soaked them in like +a thirsty sponge. Everything was fish that came to his net. What +sometimes looked like an intellectual torpor was the boa constrictor +digesting the zebra whole. I doubt if he realized the tremendous +vitality of his creative instinct. He went about it as a wild creature +roams the forest for its food: it was a law of his being. On tramping +trips he would stalk miles in silence; stopping stock still until he +had taken in the scarlet-and-gold maple grove in a purple autumn mist; +or a mossy wood pile under pines; or the rolling diversity of hill and +woodland. No apologies; no explanations. Business.</p> + +<p>It was soon clear that this young man knew exactly what he wanted and +that he intended to get it. There was a kind of animal sagacity about +his mind which told it what food to accept and what to reject.</p> + +<p>"<i>Künstler</i>," says Goethe, "<i>rede nicht. Bilde!</i>" (Artist, don't talk. +Create!) Fritz lived this precept. He would do first, and then let the +doing speak for itself. When a young man is so determined to do +something that he cannot be got to talk about it, you may consider the +thing as good as done. Here was a hungry mind, seeking what it might +devour and devouring it. All that provender was being assimilated. It +could not evaporate in talk, for Fritz was no talker. It had to be +expressed somehow and that somehow would have to be with a brush.... +Oh, he came and went disguised in the business suit of a young man +dedicated to the career of buying in the cheapest market and selling +in the dearest: pleasant, friendly, a prodigious eater, a sound +sleeper, invincibly healthy,—and with only that silent intentness of +eye to betray the secret of the creative power he carried within him.</p> + +<p>But that winter it was surprised out of him.</p> + +<p>Fred Middleton, then twenty-seven years old, six years out of Harvard +College, thoroughly conversant with the ethics of modern business, was +preparing to <i>de</i>-class himself and earn an honest living by manual +labor on the land—a farmer, and not a "gentleman farmer." With mock +solemnity Fritz was commissioned to do a portrait of Fred. The +transaction was conducted on a basis of "free agreement" which would +have satisfied even Peter Kropotkin. The painter was to do it any way +he chose—absolute free speech. The sitter was to choose any clothes +he liked, to sit till he was tired, and stretch when he pleased. The +purchaser was to pay what he was able. So everybody was happy, being +free.</p> + +<p>In the third floor back on Pinckney Street (it had north light) decks +were cleared for action: two rickety orange boxes covered with a +steamer rug did duty as a dais. With paint box, easel and palette +Fritz came down from Exeter where he had just finished a portrait of +an old lady.</p> + +<p>There was a glowing fire in the grate; a bluster of March winds in the +brick court; the roar of blast through the antlers of the old linden; +waning light of Saturday and Sunday afternoons; pages of Nietzsche's +epigrams and of <i>Jean-Christophe</i> read aloud; pauses to rest and +consult.</p> + +<p>Fritz always noticed people's hands. He found almost as much character +in them as in faces. He admired the hands in Rodin's work, especially +that of the sculptor in his <i>Pygmalion</i>:—"the tenderness of that +hand!" he said. Fred's large hands interested him. The right one he +caught hot off the bat. The left caused him no end of trouble. Finally +one day he threw down his brush and exclaimed:</p> + +<p>"I've watched that left hand come down to rest on that leg a dozen +times. I've tried everything else and now I'm going to paint it +exactly as it is. After all, it <i>is</i> a hand."</p> + +<p>"<i>Thank</i> you; <i>thank</i> you!" replied Fred, bowing suavely. "People +usually refer to it as a ham. A photographer once told me that I had a +mitt like an elephant's hoof."</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>And Fritz painted. And the secret was out. It came out in two +installments: the first, when he was spreading on canvas a life +history of Fred Middleton compressed into terms of a rugged face and +two large hands; the second came three years later. Fred had remarked, +after one of his sittings, that it was all he could do to keep his +face straight at some of the grimaces Fritz made while painting. The +precaution was needless. If he had laughed outright it is doubtful if +Fritz would have noticed it.</p> + +<p>Most of the time while he was painting the portrait of me, three years +later, I was absorbed in my own work and paid no attention to him. But +one afternoon when my wheels refused to grind I took a holiday and +watched him out of the tail of my eye....</p> + +<p>It was as if some one you supposed you knew all about had removed a +set of false whiskers and spoken in his natural voice. Was this our +shy, silent Fritz? Why, the impudence of him! The shameless way he +peered into the secret places of a face! "See here, young gentleman, +who gave you permission to rummage through that trunkful of old +letters?"</p> + +<p>Here at last was Fritz, on his native heath, naked and unashamed, +talking his own language and, confident of its not being understood, +indulging in the most appalling candor.</p> + +<p>What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. While he pried +into my secrets I pried into his. I amused myself by painting a +portrait of Fritz painting. Some day I meant to show it to him.... But +here it is:</p> + +<p>"He may not be able to talk with his tongue. But give him his brushes +and his whole body talks. No gymnastics: but his whole being aquiver. +Silent, but his arms, fingers, head, shoulders make animated dumb +show. He is conversing delightedly with himself over his work. He has +forgotten time and place. Intense mental concentration, and nervous +energy. He squints, grimaces, stoops and looks at his canvas +wrong-side up. He sets his teeth, compresses lips, squares his +shoulders,—lost in his work. He mixes colors with minute +particularity. Sometimes he dabs with a tiny brush, a peek here, a +peck there, like a dainty bird. Again he paints in sweeping +flourishes, beating a kind of rapturous rhythm with his brush, +gesturing with it between strokes, like an orchestral conductor hewing +out the rhythms of a symphony.... He pauses; he hangs limp over his +palette, considering.... Or he gives a joyous little bounce in his +chair as the decision comes. His hands and forearms, strong and +supple, talk in every sinew. Fingers mobile, infinitely expressive: +they thumb the brush; turn its handle in a ruminating pause; reflect a +sudden resolution in the stiffening of tendons....</p> + +<p>"And above all this quiet animation and silent dexterity is the +regnant, gallant head with dark eyes flashing mastery; the mouth set +with purpose; the thick mass of shining black hair breaking into a +wave as it falls away from the clear forehead—and all in complete +self-forgetfulness, the oblivion of the artist rapt in the joy of +creating."</p> + +<p>It was quite simple. Here was a soul which dwelt in a prison of +shyness. Painting unlocked the door. Out it rushed. Free. It could be +itself at last. No fears; no concealments. Liberty!</p> + +<p>That was all very well for Fritz, but how about his sitter? About the +time the sitter sensed what was going on he felt moved to exclaim:</p> + +<p>"Just a moment, Fritz. Don't you think you are getting a trifle +familiar?"</p> + +<p>I heard one of his painter friends, eyeing a canvas which Fritz had +just finished, mutter,</p> + +<p>"There is some marvelous subtlety about that mind."</p> + +<p>Already his knack of guessing people was damnable. He played no +favorites. "I am going to paint what I see or I am not going to paint +at all." If what he saw was fatuous, he told it with the disconcerting +gusto of a child; if it was sad, he told it (as in that student +portrait) so as to produce a burning pressure behind the eyelids; if +it was strong and gentle, he told it (as in the portrait of the young +farmer) so as to kindle respect and affection. Often all this was +unconscious. Again he knew exactly what he was doing and took a wicked +relish in it. Of some wealthies whom he was painting he confided with +a grin:</p> + +<p>"Of course they patronize me within an inch of my life, but I +sometimes wonder what would happen if they knew...."</p> + +<p>Perhaps he was not so unsophisticated as advertised in the catalogue. +He helped himself pretty generously out of the popular supposition +that an artist is a mild form of lunatic. He made good use of his +talent for silence. But what ears and eyes! Nobody who had seen him +paint could ever feel quite safe with him again.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<h2>V</h2> + +<p>It happened that Alexander James was studying at the Museum School. +That the son of "the psychologist who made psychology read like a +novel" and the nephew of "the novelist who made a novel read like +psychology" should have identified Fritz's talent the first crack out +of the box was about the least surprising thing in the world. The two +young painters proceeded to form an offensive and defensive alliance. +Where one was, there was the other also; on the baseball field, on +painting expeditions, on pilgrimages in early spring into New +Hampshire to climb Chocorua, and on occasional voyages into the land +of pretty girls. It was good to see the pair together: two +thoroughbreds. Both athletes, both artists, one dark, the other fair, +both about the same height and build. People would turn to look after +them as they passed with an expression of "Wonder who they are. +Somebody out of the ordinary."</p> + +<p>Alexander was wont to disguise his frank admiration of Fritz behind a +smoke screen of banter. This Fritz would suffer with an amused grin +and the massive calm of a mastiff, for he had no such arsenal of +repartee as this young gentleman from the household of a Harvard +professor; but once in a while he would land a retort so neat as to +set Alexander spinning. It did not take the Cambridge youth long to +discover the use Fritz made of his talent for silence and it was his +delight to give him away in his game of holding his tongue the better +to use his eyes,—as Alexander said: "the wise old Bruin!"</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>In Massachusetts the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, April 19, +is a holiday. It was 1913. In the parlor of an inn whose windows look +northward across the snug haven of Rockport to the surf-scoured ledges +of Pigeon Cove I was seated at a piano, back to the door, painfully +dissecting a score of <i>Tristan</i>.</p> + +<p>The door opened and a voice exclaimed, "Good Lord!"</p> + +<p>It was Fritz. With him was Alexander James. Both were half ossified +with the chill of the mid-April afternoon, for they had been painting +on the shore down towards Straitsmouth.</p> + +<p>General astonishment. The two expeditions had originated quite +independently. It was whimsically like those momentous chance +encounters in picturesque spots which abound in the novels of +Alexander's uncle Henry; but the novelist, be it noted, doesn't always +save these coincidences from a slightly fishy sound which was totally +wanting in this.</p> + +<p>They thawed themselves out and exhibited their sketches. Fritz had, as +usual, gone after it and got it—a spirited bit: druidical heaps of +pink granite boulders against dashing surf: dazzling white of +foam-crest on deep blue.</p> + +<p>There was a jolly supper in the brown-walled dining room (it had been +the kitchen of an eighteenth century farm house) which the last rays +of the spring sun flooded with red golden light; the two painters +comparing notes on the exhibitions of the Scandinavians and the Ten +Americans.</p> + +<p>They departed for a home-talent play at a local hall in a frame of +mind which boded no good for the performance.... About eleven o'clock +they breezed in with the announcement that there was a Northwest wind +(the New England wind which sweeps the sky cloudless blue), a full +moon and a dashing sea; and that to go to bed was a crime. Away, then, +for Land's End, along shore paths at the edge of grassy cliffs, by +bushy lanes, over meadows, moors, popple beaches and brooks, across +the moon-blanched land beside the moon-burnished sea. Straitsmouth +Light burned a yellow spark. The twin lights on Thatcher's Island +shone weird blue in their tall towers. Low on the rim of sky and sea +hung gigantic masses of cloud whitened by the bluish pallor of the +moon. In the marsh bottoms frogs cheeped their shrill sweet song of +spring: the northwester bellowed through the willow twigs ... mournful +pour of surf ... splendor of spring moon ... the lonely moor ... the +steadfast light-house flames ... the white walls and gray roofs of the +sleeping town....</p> + +<p>At one in the morning, tip-toeing into the dining room, we devoured a +plate of bread and butter left for late comers. Both of them were too +genuine artists to comment on what we had seen.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>It is a lovely afternoon of June, 1914, at the pier of the Allan Line +steamships in Charlestown. The ship is the old <i>Nubian</i>, safe and +slow, saloon upholstered in plush of maple sugar brown, brass oil +lamps swinging in gimbles as befitted a smart packet of the late 80's. +Boston to Glasgow. Scotland swarmed the wharf.</p> + +<p>Mixed in was an artists' colony. For that was the great day. Fritz and +Alexander were sailing for a year's study abroad: London, Paris, +Munich. The gang which came to see them off were <i>dramatis personae</i> +of Act II of <i>La Bohème</i>: four painters, an interior decorator, an +illustrator assorted scribblers, and a Scottish chieftain (lord of an +ancient clan, hero of a hundred skin-of-your-teeth escapes, veteran of +Polish revolutionary escapades, uncrowned king of an African tribe: as +<i>raconteur</i> he had his rival, Robert Louis Stevenson, lashed to the +bed). This day he strode resplendent in plaid knee socks, plaid kilt, +a murderous Hieland dirk swung at his hip, short jacket the breast of +which blazed with medals, and long black locks caught up under a cap. +As he crossed the wharf planking at a stride like deer-stalking over +his native crags, the rest of us half expected the assembled Scots to +prostrate themselves and knock foreheads on flooring in fealty. He did +excite some attention. Sisson said—well, no matter what Sisson +said.<a id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> After all, why not? Some one was explaining that the +chief (who was a genuinely fine fellow) had come to America to raise +funds for his clan. Sisson said: "He'll he lucky if he gets back to +Scotland with his kilt."</p></div> + +<p>It was a great occasion. Fritz, his black eyes snapping with +excitement, came up the gang plank from deck to wharf to be pounced on +by a jolly crew. He was outwardly cool, but his engines were racing. +After him came Alexander James. Pounce number two. Showers of rice +clattered on a bridal pair close by, but their festival was tame +compared to this. To meet Henry James and John Sargent in London: to +study in Paris and Munich: to see the great galleries. They were +embarking on greater seas than the Atlantic. This was the great day, +the great hour, and with a troop of friends rejoicing in their good +fortune to sweeten it.... Away to the land of heart's desire.... +Romance.... Bohemia.... Europe.</p> + +<div class="inset14"> +<p> +"O Youth, and the days that were!" +</p> +</div> + +<p>From the caplog at the pier head as the <i>Nubian</i> swung into midstream +of the Charles, the band of pariahs bawled ribald farewells and wrung +out handkerchiefs in mock tears. Alexander James, the Clive Newcome +of the adventure, leaned on the teakwood rail, waving his straw hat; +and Fritz, the "J.J." of the story, sat on the lowest ratline of the +shrouds, feet on rail, pretending to weep into his hat and then +emptying the brine into the brine.</p> + +<p>The ship's side, black hull and white upperworks, took a burnishing +from the late afternoon sun. Under the gaiety there was a queer +feeling. There, divided from us by a hundred yards of harbor water, +were the two friends with whom we had just shaken hands, and the strip +between was widening, would widen to an ocean. They stood out amid the +throng of passengers as distinct as though they had been the only +souls aboard. They waved: we waved. As the vessel straightened away in +her course they imitated our several gestures to signify personal +farewells: it was thought and done impromptu. And long after their +figures grew indistinct as the ship lessened down the harbor lane +between elbowing wharves and the piled masses of city towers and +spires, there were gleams of two white straw hats which we knew....</p> + +<p>All the same, it was a trifle too much like a dress rehearsal for +death.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>Then, in less than six weeks, a world in tumult. Continental ateliers +were emptying their students on the battlefield. Fritz, who was in +England, prudently kept out of the rush homeward and made the most of +his few weeks.</p> + +<p>He was in Downing Street in front of that dingy Georgian façade the +night the British Cabinet sat waiting for Germany's reply to their +ultimatum.</p> + +<p>"It gave one an odd feeling," said he, "to realize that behind those +drawn shades sat men who were settling the question of life or death +for hundreds of thousands of their fellow creatures. The crowd +cheered. I did not."</p> + +<p>Of Henry James he saw comparatively little, for the novelist was in +poor health, but he was immensely stimulated by the little he did see, +for beginning with <i>Roderick Hudson</i> he had been quick to discover how +much this master of style had to teach a painter of what he had +himself learned from painters.</p> + +<p>There was a memorable session with Mr. Sargent in his London studio. +Mr. Sargent happened just then to be doing a portrait of Lord Curzon, +and Fritz related with wicked glee (imitating Mr. Sargent as he backed +away from his easel) how the painter had remarked:</p> + +<p>"I have not made up my mind how to finish it. If I can't get enough +interest out of the face, I'll put a scarlet coat on him."</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>It was late in October before he sailed for home, as one of a handful +of passengers on a freighter. The voyage was one of continuous foul +weather which, to the mystification of the others, was vastly to the +delight of Fritz. He lived on deck, begrudging time to sleep. He +fraternized with the crew. One day of thin drizzle and greasy swells, +getting into old togs, he helped the deck-hands greatly to their +satisfaction and somewhat to the scandal of the other passengers, +shovel coal down a hatch.</p> + +<p>"They didn't think I'd stick it through," said he.</p> + +<p>After that he was one of them.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<h2>VI</h2> + +<p>He had chosen to live in Pittsburgh, partly because it was his home +and partly because it promised him more elbow room.</p> + +<p>"I want to paint," said he, "and I do not want to have to play social +politics in order to get commissions, as I am afraid I would have to +do in Boston. Besides, in Pittsburgh, there are fewer painters to +influence me. I stand more chance of being myself."</p> + +<p>Alexander James said it was brutal of Fritz to go away to Pittsburgh. +The rest of the colony agreed. But it became Fritz's delight to swoop +down on us in Boston unannounced.</p> + +<p>... It is late in a wild night of mid-winter, a furious gale of wind +and snow whipping across the gables and chimney stacks of Beacon Hill: +a night for tucking oneself up in a wing chair beside a fire with a +book and reading lamp, roar of storm in ears....</p> + +<p>A rap sounds on the door.</p> + +<p>"Come!"</p> + +<p>The rap is repeated.</p> + +<p>"Come in!"</p> + +<p>The door opens and framed in its blackness stands Fritz.</p> + +<p>With him is Ralph Heard in a state of jubilation.</p> + +<p>"You remember," says he, "I told you only two days ago that I sort of +had a hunch that Fritz might be dropping in on us most any time now? +Well, to-night I was sitting at my writing-table, when the door opened +with a bang. I thought, without looking around, 'That is the way Fritz +opens a door.' And there was Fritz."</p> + +<p>His one emotional luxury was this enjoyment of watching his friends +fall all over their own feet in the glad surprise of seeing him.</p> + +<p>He was on his way to paint some portraits of Exeter schoolmasters. It +was slowly wormed out of him that romance had visited his shores. A +St. Louis woman was motoring to New York. In a street of Pittsburgh a +tire blew out. As it was raining, she got out of the car and went into +an art store in front of which it had stopped, to wait for repairs. +Her errand in New York was to choose a portrait painter. In the art +store a portrait by Fritz was on exhibition. She decided that there +was no need of going on to New York. That evening Fritz was called to +her hotel. It ended by his going on to St. Louis and painting +portraits of the whole family.</p> + +<p>What his bread-and-butter problems were I never fully knew. I think +they were more in what he faced than in what he had to encounter. +Within two or three years after he left the Museum School, he was +paying his own way. He lived with the utmost frugality. His studio was +a workshop: four walls and a north light.</p> + +<p>"I keep it bare on purpose," he confided, "to frighten away loafers."</p> + +<p>It appeared that certain amiable slayers of their own and others' +time, envisaging a studio of divans, Russian cigarettes, tea and +twaddle, paid one visit, and only one.</p> + +<p>His attitude toward money was an island of sanity in a lunatic ocean. +It was no time before he sensed the absurdity of attempting to measure +creative work by commercial values, and that is, of course, the avenue +by which the artist-thinker divines the idiotic husbandry of +organizing society to batten those who distribute and those who own by +penalizing those who produce and those who create. Money he viewed as +an article neither to be spent nor to be hoarded, but rather to be +reinvested where it would draw intellectual dividends. His one +extravagance was to buy his mind the food it needed if he had the +wherewithal to pay for it. "And," as Erasmus remarks, "after that, +some clothes." The same independence which had fortified him against +those who had once pointed him out as a crack-brained youngster with +the presumption to suppose he could be a great artist sustained him +now when he was pointed out as a promising portrait painter who was +already "getting good money for his work."</p> + +<p>Finding himself, as he did, endowed with a creative purpose +considerably at odds with the structure of the society around him; put +to it, as he was, to protect that fledgling from the well-intentioned +but fatal meddlings of the mediocre, not a shadow of ill-humor did he +allow to cross his average human intercourse. He made me think of a +wise old cat who, having carefully hidden her kittens in the hayloft, +presents a tolerant frame to the cuffs and caresses of the children.</p> + +<p>By the beginning of 1916 it was clear to anyone who knew him that all +he needed to reach the summit was to keep climbing, and this he +appeared abundantly able and determined to do.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<h2>VII</h2> + +<p>He was growing up. Shy he would always be, but in place of his boyish +self-distrust had come a quiet confidence in his own powers. His mind +was on the watch for its food, like an eagle ready to pounce. There +was an eager, vigilant look in his eyes when one spoke of certain +books unknown to him: he was questioning whether they would be what he +wanted. He would pump me about the content of certain authors. I could +see him accepting and rejecting. He read the poets as one quarrying +marble for architectural designs of his own. His hungry reading was as +different from that of the perfunctory college student as the +oarsmanship of a dory fisherman on the Grand Banks is from that of an +eight-oared crew on the placid Charles: the producer as contrasted +with the consumer.</p> + +<p>George Meredith and Walt Whitman became two of his great companions. +Once he told me that he was reading everything of Thomas Hardy he +could lay his hands on.</p> + +<p>"Why?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"He knows how to set the human figure against vast backgrounds of +Nature: figures outlined half against a heath and half against sky."</p> + +<p>I wonder if Romain Rolland realizes the intimacy of the friendship +which has sprung up between <i>Jean-Christophe</i> and the youth of to-day. +Fritz and Christophe took an amazing shine to each other from the +start. It was <i>Christophe</i> who led Fritz to read everything else of +Romain Rolland he could find, and thus his steps were guided to the +summit of that Mount of Vision, Rolland's <i>Life of Tolstoy</i>, whence he +looked far and wide into the stern grandeur of that moral wilderness +unsubdued by man through which the heroic thinker and prophet pushes +on alone.... To look is to follow. He began to devour Tolstoy's works. +<i>The Kreutzer Sonata</i> he sat up half the night beside my fire to +finish. Waking towards morning I saw him scowling over it. He asked to +take the book away with him. Soon he was up to his neck in the +dramatists: Ibsen, Strindberg, Brieux, Sudermann, Galsworthy, Synge, +Shaw.</p> + +<p>There was a performance of <i>Candida</i> with Mr. Milton Rosmer as the +poet. They say that a secret can be told only to him who knows it +already. There is a secret in two tremendous speeches at the close of +that play which (as the dramatist himself says) few but poets know:</p> + +<blockquote> +<div class="center"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr> + <td class="tdl bold">Morell:</td> + <td class="tdl">(<i>alarmed</i>) Candida: don't let him do anything rash.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl bold">Candida:</td> + <td class="tdl">(<i>confident, smiling at Eugene</i>) Oh, there is no fear. He has learnt to live without happiness.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl bold">Marchbanks:</td> + <td class="tdl">I no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than that. Parson James, I give you my happiness with both hands.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> +</blockquote> + +<p>Those lines stung Fritz as the whip stings a mettled horse. His flesh +rebelled, but the poet in him leaped to the truth.</p> + +<p>On March 20, 1913, the colony at 94 Charles Street adjourned to a +performance of <i>Man and Superman</i>. Fritz kept his room-mate up until +two in the morning discussing it. The next night he routed me out of +bed at ten and quizzed me about it until three in the morning.</p> + +<p>He had had his glimpse of the collision between sex and ambition; +between the impulse of the woman to create children of flesh and +blood, with the man as adjunct and provider; and the impulse of the +man to create children of the spirit independently of the woman. He +was quick to realize that he had struck something which he had to +settle, and he was settling it. The thing was deliciously transparent. +Here was a young gentleman tremendously in earnest about being an +artist. Being an artist he loved beauty. Hitherto, in his shy way, he +had secretly been rather tickled by the flutter which his striking +head created in the dove cots of pretty girls. But after March 20, +1913, the tune changed. He was affable, delighted to make their +acquaintance—but on his guard. He had not the slightest intention of +letting sex thwart his ambition.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but...?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but...." He played the game. A commercial society decrees that +the artist cannot have a livelihood until his work is accepted at a +commercial value. Pending that acceptance, if he assumes the +responsibility of wife and children he also assumes the risk of +shackling himself to pot-boiling work for life.</p> + +<p>Society also decrees a standard of prenuptial chastity for the male. +Suppose the male happens to be more interested in art than in +domesticity. He must then ask himself whether he shall abide by a +decree which bourgeois society promulgates with more emphasis than +sincerity. With his eyes wide open to the fact that the very society +which promulgates this decree openly winks at its evasion, Fritz abode +by it. A slightly sterner set to his jaw; a slightly darker flash in +his eye; a slightly grimmer stoicism in the grip on his emotions were +all that betrayed the battle which had raged in him between the two +creative forces: sex and intellect. He never pretended that the battle +was won for keeps. The crust on which he walked he knew to be thin. +But it was won for the present. He well knew that there are no bargain +days at life's counter: he had come there to purchase one of the most +precious commodities—a creative career—and he was willing to pay the +fee. If he found the fee somewhat high (and I have reason to know that +he did) he never complained. It was his reward to enjoy that supreme +luxury of conduct—to be the thing he seemed. He lived in that kind of +glass house which is not damaged by any amount of stone-throwing, +because there is nothing to hit: a glass house with all the curtains +up. "Naked and unashamed" could have been written over the door of his +mind. Time and again he quoted a passage from <i>Trilby</i> in which Du +Maurier says that mental chastity begins in the artist when the model +drops her last garment. He was frank to add that this was strictly +true; that in the intense concentration of his mind on problems of +form and color he had found in painting from the nude no room for +images of sex but on the contrary an actual release from the heats and +fevers which plague young men. The remedy he proposed was: "Get rid of +mystery."</p> + +<p>There is a portrait painted at about this time which tells the story +of the inner struggle which he was fighting and winning. It is of a +young girl, about his own age, with a wondrously sweet expression and +sparkling eyes. The delicacy, the spirituality which shines through it +makes it hard to believe that the portrait could have been painted by +a young man. Not a hint of sexuality. He later told me that the girl +was afflicted with a lameness and he told how grateful he was to her +for valuing him for his mind and not obtruding sex. I doubt if he knew +how publicly yet with what delicacy he had thanked her.</p> + +<p>There were moods of him, as when he stood silently drinking in a +landscape, which made me think of that fine old chant which one hears +in the churches:</p> + +<p> +<span class="in2">"O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness."</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>In the emptiness left by his death I came to realize that one of the +principal anticipations of my life had been looking forward to watch, +year by year, the unfolding of his mind and the ripening of his +powers. His talent had long since passed the stage at which it was a +sporting proposition—the stage at which one could chaff him about +cashing in heavily some day on a pair of "early Demmlers."</p> + +<p>There was no kind of doubt that he carried within him the creative +"daimon." His very instincts betrayed it. He went at a landscape the +way Hugo Wolf went at a song: he lived with the poem before creating +the music. For the first few days in a novel countryside he never +thought of touching brush to canvas. He walked around in the scene, +his every sense alert to its feature and color, to its sound and +smell. He laid in wait for its moods. He eyed it in every circumstance +of wind and weather, as if it had been a face he was preparing to +paint, or a woman he was preparing to wed. No words. The quality he +most appreciated in a companion at such times was silence. And it was +entertainment enough to watch the play of expression in his face as +his eyes roamed meadow, hill or sea horizon—vigilance, delight, +eagerness, discriminating study, instructions to memory, brooding +thought—his life was a perpetual honeymoon with nature for his bride.</p> + +<p>Then would come the day and the hour when he was ready to paint. By +that time, in the wealth of his materials, his only study would be not +what to put in but what to leave out. I doubt if he had reached the +point of knowingly causing his subconscious to work for him, but it +will be apparent from the foregoing that he was doing so +unconsciously.</p> + +<p>He was able, somehow, to communicate his sense of form and color to +another, without resort to speech, or with only the fewest words. +Perhaps it was the stimulus of seeing how much there was for him in +the distant shining of sunlight on winding waters, or a range of low +hills scrawling their signature on the chill blue of horizon sky, +which taught others to find the wonder and dignity in what they would +once have looked on as commonplace. At any rate, I find myself, in all +seasons, seeing landscapes through his eyes.... "Now that looks +commonplace, but it isn't. Fritz would have seen something in these +somber March-brown meadows drowned in the freshets of spring; these +red-budding birches; this delicate flush of pink in a drab evening +sky...." And so he, being dead, yet seeth.</p> + +<p>He was well aware, by this time, that the artist who is not also a +thinker is a one-legged man. He accepted the obligation of +understanding matters which, superficially, might have seemed far +outside his province. It was in 1915 that he encountered Tolstoy's +great work on Christian anarchism, <i>The Kingdom of God Is Within You</i>. +It revolutionized his view of life. It convinced him of the futility +of violence as a method of settling disputes, personal or national. +And the shock of having to transvalue all the accepted values, of +having, in a world organized on the basis of fear, to conceive of a +world organized on the basis of good will, made him a thinker in his +own right.</p> + +<p>Next he encountered Romain Rolland's <i>Life of Michael Angelo</i>. Far +from being chilled by the classic austerity of that work, it warmed +him. In it he found the food he had been seeking. He made it a part of +him. It confirmed, with revelations of the laws of mental conduct +which governed that giant of the Renaissance, principles which this +young man had been formulating and practising by the naked instinct of +his will to create. Things which he had been doing or forbearing to +do, he could not have told you why, here received their sanction or +veto in the experience of a genius.</p> + +<p>Little as was said about this between us, it was easy to see how +profoundly this discovery of the similarity between his own mental +processes and those of a great master had strengthened his confidence +in himself. Michael Angelo was added to the list of his Great +Companions.</p> + +<p>He had another. Rembrandt.</p> + +<p>There was a gallery in London, which one I forget, which he visited +day after day.</p> + +<p>"In the first room you entered," said he, "was a portrait of an old +woman by Rembrandt, painted in his last period. Time after time I went +there intending to see the rest of the gallery. Sometimes I even tried +a room or two. What was the use? I went back to that portrait. It +seemed like a waste of time to look at the other pictures. Everything +they said—if they said anything—was said in that portrait by +Rembrandt and said better. It seemed to me as if the whole history of +humanity were concentrated in that old woman's face.... Finally I +surrendered and went only to see that."</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>There is a chastity of the mind, just as there is a chastity of the +body. There are certain creative processes which a sincere thinker +would no more reveal to casual eyes than he would strip in a public +place. A rule of mental chastity: Do not hold promiscuous mental +intercourse. The shallow would intrude into these austere places like +picnickers in a sanctuary, littering it with their luncheon refuse. +Let the artist raise his thought-stained face from his toil, smiling +but mute.</p> + +<p>Fritz guarded his secrets well. A sudden flash of arrested eye, a +certain silent intentness of gaze, an interest in a subject which +would seem altogether out of proportion to its importance, a look of +perpetual expectancy were all that betrayed his search. He was +learning, learning, learning: every hour, every minute. Sometimes for +days together he would seem dormant—practical people would have said +loafing—lazily absorbing impressions as it had been through his +pores. Again he seemed to devour scenery, faces, books, ideas with an +appetite that was insatiable.</p> + +<p>A young sculptor, meeting Fritz, observed to me privately,</p> + +<p>"What an unromantic exterior for an artist!"</p> + +<p>The joke was too good to tell Fritz for, all innocently on +the sculptor's part, it revealed a secret which I was not +supposed to know: that Fritz instinctively cultivated this +young-man-just-out-of-college-and-doing-well-in-business exterior as a +high board fence behind which, free from intrusion, to train the +muscles of his mind and cultivate the golden orchards of his soul.</p> + +<p>He had to. For once he had mastered the tools of his trade there was +absolutely no one to teach him the things he most needed to know. He +must go it alone. He knew it. And he was going. That was the secret of +the watchful, hungry look of him—the look of one aware of a ravenous +appetite and never sure of his next meal. That was the secret of his +inarticulate gratitude to anyone who happened to be able to put him in +the way of finding the food his spirit craved. He discovered that the +composers knew more about painting than most painters, and he used to +turn up at Symphony concerts or at the opera with the look of a small +boy fresh from a session with the jam pot behind the pantry door. He +wasn't saying anything, but you knew that he'd got it. He made a +bee-line for Beethoven and Wagner. He came away after a performance of +<i>Tristan</i> most divinely drunk on the strongest wine in music.</p> + +<p>For the method of these composers was the method which he had chosen +for himself unconsciously. He was not satisfied to write a thin +melody. He was determined to teach his brush the rich and complicated +instrumentation of an orchestral score. Not this face or that +landscape was what he planned to put on canvas, but the abundance of +life which he had absorbed through every avenue of sense. Not a +violin alone, nothing less than the full orchestra would content him.</p> + +<p>I ask myself whether I shall ever see anything more inspiriting than +the quiet, secret quest of this young man for an excellence and a +mastery not only unrecognized and unrewarded by the social order in +which he lived, but not even comprehended. This is the courage of the +creative mind: that it is prepared to meet alike its triumph or its +defeat in an utter moral solitude. Stories of the physical courage +which Fritz displayed on the field of battle were to come later.... +Which is likely to advance the Kingdom of Heaven on earth more +speedily—the courage of the body, to destroy; or the courage of the +mind, to create?</p> + +<p>Is all this too eulogistic? "Oh, come! He must have had faults, +weaknesses, common spots." ... I suppose so. To tell the truth I never +noticed them. There was a trait, as I first remember him, of too ready +assent to the opinions of others which it amused me to attribute to +peasant ancestry; but, after all, that conformity was only outward and +it soon disappeared. In matters really vital to him his will was +granite and he commanded a silence which could vociferate "Hands off!"</p> + +<p>His very inarticulate tongue gave promise of greatness. One saw all +this life-stuff entering into him. He could never express it in +speech. It was a necessity of his being to express it somehow. It +would have to come out on canvas.</p> + +<p>Oh, once in a great while the curtain would be dropped. Some lucky +turn of conversation would relax the inhibitions and liberate his +tongue. Then for a few minutes, perhaps for an hour, one would be +shown the treasure house within. What shall I say of those glimpses? +There are times to walk fearfully lest one smash something which +cannot be replaced, and these occasions were of them. Treasures not of +this world; possessions which honored the possessor by being held in +honor; bins heaped, as it had been, with jewels and brocades; others +which gaped with a sacrificial emptiness; spaces eked out with the +heroic poverty of one dedicated to the monasticism of a creative +career.</p> + +<p>Enough.... I saw—what I saw.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>And withal he was half pagan. The physical gratification with which he +drank in the beauty of the world reminded me of that statuette by +<i>Roderick Hudson</i>, Δίψος ("Thirst")—a boy, feet planted +wide apart, head thrown back, slaking his throat out of a gourd held +in both hands. Fritz was that boy. The ugliness of modern clothes +disgusted him. He was alert for chances to take off his own: impromptu +baths in cold brooks on walking trips, or long days of summer sunshine +on lonely stretches of sea beach with gleaming yellow sands. There was +some place among the mountains of West Virginia where he used to go: +ledges of flat rock above a rushing river. All day long they gathered +warmth from the sun, retaining it well into the night. When the moon +had risen he loved to steal away for a plunge in the river, then lie +out naked in the moonlight on these great slabs of warm rock, alone +with the magic night.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<h2>VIII</h2> + +<p>In May, 1917, he came to Boston from Pittsburgh. I was in Parkersburg, +West Virginia. He came there.</p> + +<p>Conscription impended. Under his composure the struggle was going on. +Tolstoy had converted him. What was he to do?</p> + +<p>"If there were no one but myself to consider...," said he, "But the +suffering which you would have no hesitation in imposing on yourself +you hesitate to impose on those dearer to you than yourself."</p> + +<p>He was thrilled by the nonresistance of the still-young Russian +revolution:</p> + +<p>"Wonderful people, liberated by their refusal to kill! They fold their +arms and say 'Shoot!' The Cossacks refuse to shoot them. And a +despotism, centuries old, comes tumbling down. It proves everything +that Tolstoy has said."</p> + +<p>For three days, tramping about the scrubby countryside, rambling along +the banks of the Ohio, rowing up the swift, muddy current of the +Kanawah, the dilemma of a man born to create and commandeered to +destroy was threshed out. Never before had he spoken so freely. The +economic causes of the trouble he understood fairly well, but it was +startling with what a seeing eye he pierced the illusions which beset +that time. By that faculty of divination peculiar to the artist's mind +he reached, at one leap, conclusions which the thinker only arrives at +after laborious effort. And he was a young man without an illusion +left, steadfastly looking the ugliest facts of our social order in the +face.</p> + +<p>On the last evening of his stay we were standing on the steel spider +web of a suspension bridge which spans the Ohio, watching a sunset +unfurl its banners of blood and fire.</p> + +<p>All day there had been thunder and rain, and eastward behind the +towers and spires of the city skyline still hung the retreating +clouds, sullen and dark. Fritz pointed to where, against that gloomy +cloud bank, high above the city and gilded red from the setting sun, +rose two symbols: one on the tip of a spire, the other on the staff +atop a tower: cross and flag.</p> + +<p>"Church," said he grimly, "and State."</p> + +<p>The next day he returned to Pittsburgh to register for the draft.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>July found me back in New England at a farm on the banks of the +Merrimac in West Newbury. Returning one noon from an errand up the +hills to the village I was hailed by the children with a shout:</p> + +<p>"A friend of yours is here."</p> + +<p>"Who is he?"</p> + +<p>"He told us his name but we've forgotten it."</p> + +<p>"What does he look like?"</p> + +<p>Descriptions varied:</p> + +<p>"He's awfully strong," said the boy.</p> + +<p>"He has shiny black hair and black eyes," said the littlest girl.</p> + +<p>"He wears his coat off and his sleeves rolled up," said the biggest +little girl, and she added, with the spontaneous poetry of childhood, +"And his hands are beeootiful!"</p> + +<p>"Where is he?"</p> + +<p>"Down by the river."</p> + +<p>Under the maples, lying in the tall grass at the foot of a steep bank +which sloped to the stream, with children clambering all over him, was +Fritz. He scrambled to his feet and came forward putting out his hand +with that awkwardness of meeting after an absence which he never quite +outgrew, but his eyes snapped with enjoyment at my astonishment.</p> + +<p>It appeared that he had been painting some one in a Massachusetts mill +city and had dashed up here between-whiles.</p> + +<p>There is a tiny hut perched like a brown owl on a knoll in a grove of +hickories beside the river. To this hermitage we retired and he +related the news of the intellectual underworld in Pittsburgh. Roger +Baldwin had been there, much to his comfort. A friend whose portrait +he had been painting, aware that the mildest radicalism had now become +high treason, had remarked by way of chaffing him,</p> + +<p>"I hope they give you a cell with a north light."</p> + +<p>He unburdened with a tone of sheer physical relief:</p> + +<p>"This frantic enthusiasm for 'democracy,'" said he, "on the part of +people who have spent their whole lives combating it!"</p> + +<p>He sat relaxed in a deep chair, hands hanging limp on its arms—hands +large, strongly muscled, marked with heavy veins, the fingers +full-fleshed at their tips, the skin bronzed by the sun.</p> + +<p>Tatters of sunlight, reflected from the wavelets of the river +obliquely up underneath the hickory boughs, flickered on the ceiling +and walls of the hut.</p> + +<p>Disillusioned he was, but not cynical. His humor was a bath to a sore +spirit. He kindled, in the moral solitude of that hour, a little fire +of faith and hope. It struck me anew, eyeing him as he sat there, what +a beautiful creature he was, inside and out.</p> + +<p>There was in him, too, an odd streak of stoicism. Keen as he was for +"the eats," he delighted in little acts of self-discipline. That +afternoon, it being necessary for me to try for a nap, he cleared out +to gather views of river and woods. An hour later I discovered this +young Spartan, hands clasped behind head, spine stretched along the +plank flooring of the narrow ledge in front of the hut, sleeping +quietly....</p> + +<p>The next day he made himself everlastingly solid with the people at +the farm by spending the whole morning fitting screens to the +multitudinous doors and windows of their ark of a house. Everyone +wanted Fritz to stay a month.</p> + +<p>At nine that evening he left. As we trudged over the road in the warm +darkness of the summer night, he talked soberly of the dubious future.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>He was not called until the following April, 1918. Twice that winter +he came to Boston. Number 94 Charles Street had been dismantled. But +the third-floor-back on Pinckney Street received him with an extra cot +for bivouac.</p> + +<p>... This should have been the longest chapter of all, and the best. I +find that I cannot write it.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>Only a postscript. I asked him for a picture of himself.</p> + +<p>"What do you want," he inquired, "a painting?"</p> + +<p>My ideas had been far more modest:</p> + +<p>"Beggars should not be choosers. I will take what I can get: painting, +photograph, snap-shot: and be thankful."</p> + +<p>"What size would you like?"</p> + +<p>"Small enough so that it can go wherever I go."</p> + +<p>He made no promises. His way was to wait until the time came and then +let the performance speak.</p> + +<p>Not three weeks later it came: a sketch in oils, head and shoulders, +ten inches by twelve, not at all the cold greenish grays I had +anticipated from his habitual attitude of self-effacement, but on the +contrary a scheme of rich golden browns. He has painted his own +portrait with the same reticence which looks out of its eyes. +Strangers seeing it remark,</p> + +<p>"What a striking face!"</p> + +<p>His friends view it and say,</p> + +<p>"He was much finer looking than that."</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<h2>IX</h2> + +<p>The rest is seen dimly, as through a mist. His voice is heard, +distinct and clear, but as from a great distance.</p> + +<p>To Ralph Heard he writes from Camp Lee, Virginia:</p> + +<p>"I am eating, sleeping, and drilling with physical enthusiasm," and +later, "Tell the fellows that the dust is gathering on my palette."</p> + +<p>A letter to me in May tells of taking his pipe at the day's end and +strolling into the woods of the camp to be alone with the song of +birds and tints of sunset. Late in July came a letter from France +describing a march "between gleam of gold in the west and a rising +full moon in the east, ... aëroplanes in action overhead and +cannonading over the hills to the east." Then occurs this:</p> + +<p>"I am little different from as you know me, even though now in a +machine gun company:—Curious irony.—"</p> + +<p>And this:</p> + +<p>"Continue your work.... Other victories are transient."</p> + +<p>And this was his farewell:</p> + +<p>"We have seen great visions and dreamed splendid dreams. And the faith +you have in me,—which I prize so desperately,—I have in you, no +matter where each of us may be headed. We will live the best we +can—that, through our friendship, is all we ask of each other."</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>On January 23, 1919, one of his brothers writes from Le Mans, France:</p> + +<p>"St. Remis du Plain is the name of the little town where Fred's +company was billeted. It is perched on the top of a hill in the middle +of a vast plain and was visible for a long time as I headed towards +it. This was the trip I had planned long ago, and pictured a happy +meeting; however, it was decreed otherwise. Passing up the narrow +street I saw 'Headquarters, 136 M. G. Bn.' written on the door of an +old stone house. The orderly room was full of officers. I inquired for +Lieut. Rew, the one who had previously written to me, and introduced +myself as Fred's brother. The officer who was dictating stopped work, +came over and shook hands with me. The captain commanding the +battalion came from behind the table, greeted me and offered a word of +sympathy. Soon all the officers were grouped about me and I saw that +Fred was considered one of their number. The captain said, 'He was the +best sergeant I ever had.' They invited me to mess with them, and +Lieut. Rew said I was to bunk with him, 'for my men have cooties,' but +I saw this was all done so that they might have a chance to speak of +Fred. One of the sergeants told me that when the news came, the +officers were even more broken up about it than the men.</p> + +<p>"I was introduced to the noncoms with whom Fred seems to have been a +favorite. In the evening, as we sat around an open fireplace, I asked +if Fred had had a 'buddy.' The sergeant with whom Fred used to sleep +said, 'No. He was everybody's friend.'</p> + +<p>"As I was walking up to the kitchen, a private stepped out of the mess +line and came up to me saying he knew me through my resemblance to +Fred. Soon the mess line was demoralized and I was the center of a +lively mass all talking at once and I could easily see why the captain +recommended him so highly as a sergeant.—'He never said a harsh +word,'—'He was always cheerful and never kicked,'—'When we +complained about the feed or anything, he said it would be better +later.' They talked so long that at last the cook asked me if I would +not please eat so that they would eat and let him get through.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>"The division left Camp Lee, June 21, 1918, and sailed from Newport +News on the Italian transport <i>Caserta</i>. It was a dirty boat, the feed +rotten, and the trip rough. Everybody was disgusted. Fred was about +the only one of the company who never missed a meal. A private told me +that he and Fred were standing at the rail in the bow of the ship one +night talking about a number of things. This fellow voiced the +sentiment of most of the company when he said he only wanted to make +one more ocean trip and that was in the reverse direction. Fred looked +far out across the water and remarked: 'I could stand a few more.'</p> + +<p>"They landed at Brest on July 5 and entrained at once for Souville. +They used the French type of compartment cars where with ten men and +full equipment there wasn't much room to move about. Fred was in +charge of his compartment and, with his usual ingenuity, devised means +of disposing of the equipment to best advantage for their comfort. He +also carefully arranged the daily menu consisting of bread, corned +beef, tomatoes, beans, and jam. He did all this in such a serio-comic +way that the fellows are still laughing over the memories of the trip.</p> + +<p>"On September 20 the division led the drive into the Argonne forest. +This is reputed to have been the hardest battle of the war in respect +to the Germans' shell fire and the suffering caused by the rainy +weather and lack of shelter. Through it all there was not a healthier +nor more cheerful man than Fred. Recognized by the commanding officer +as having 'the coolest head in the company and afraid of nothing' he +was made a sergeant after this battle over the heads of some old +National Guardsmen; but there was not a murmur—all were satisfied. +When they came out of the woods he helped the doctor with the wounded +(he seems to have helped everywhere, from the kitchen to the captain's +private office). After they had all been attended to, he asked the +doctor to look him over. He had received three flesh wounds in +shoulder and arm. He picked out the pieces of shrapnel himself and had +the doctor bandage him. After which he went about his work as usual.</p> + +<p>"October 10 found the company in the St. Mihiel sector, and on October +22 it moved into Belgium. All this meant miles of weary hiking under a +full pack; but Fred remained the same cheerful fellow as ever. He +amused the whole company with his doings. He found an old hair-clipper +among some salvage and immediately opened a barber shop where +lieutenants as well as privates got their hair cut. Another thing that +I recognized as characteristic were the remarks pertaining to his +appetite. He never lost it. He was known to have 'eats' on his person +all the time. He had a special knack of hunting out farm houses, +engaging <i>madame</i> in conversation, and coming away with bread, eggs, +or cheese in his knapsack. Occasionally he did some sketching and his +letters were a joy to the lieutenant who censored them because of the +excellent descriptions they contained....</p> + +<p>"The company went over the top early in the morning of October 31. +Fred was wounded in the left side by a piece of high explosive shell +at about 5:30 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span> It was before daylight and few knew he had been +hit. When they did hear it, they were far in advance and Fred had been +carried to Evacuation Hospital Number Five, at Staden, Belgium. He +died there on November 2. One of the boys who helped carry him to the +rear says that he was fully conscious despite the serious nature of +his wound, and tells of how he directed them what to do—how he told +them to leave him when the shells fell too fast (which they wouldn't +do)—of how they left him, quite himself, at the first-aid station....</p> + +<p>"He was never referred to as a bully or even as a fighter—he was +spared the grewsome experience of hand-to-hand fighting, for from the +first the Germans were in full flight; but he was remembered for his +cheerfulness, his kindness toward others and especially for his lack +of harsh words. His favorite text from the Bible was that part of the +Sermon on the Mount known as the beatitudes, <i>and he often wondered +why ministers did not preach on it more</i>. <i>He constantly spoke of this +to the men.</i> (The italics are not in the original.)</p> + +<p>"His fire has gone out, but he left a glow in the hearts of these men +which will never go out."</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/three-stars.jpg" width="50" height="60" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>And now it is time that a few questions be asked, simple and direct. +It is due him.</p> + +<p>Why is it that when he set himself to create he had to contend against +that dead-weight of indifference if not the active hostility of +organized society recorded in these pages; but when he was +commandeered to destroy, that society clothed him, fed him, sheltered +him, trained him, transported him, paid him, nursed him, and buried +him?</p> + +<p>It is well that we should know what has been squandered. He that might +have ennobled generations of men with his great visions and his +splendid dreams is mingling his clay with the soil of Belgium. He had +the seeds of genius. Capitalism made him a machine gunner.</p> + +<p>Is this the best we can find for our artists to do? Is it any wonder +that the creative minds of to-day are finding themselves driven to +social revolution as their art-form?</p> + +<p>In the brown-owl hut beside the Merrimac that summer day in 1917 he +remarked in a tone of indulgent irony:</p> + +<p>"The 'military experts' have found a nice, polite term for men killed +or too badly maimed to fight any more."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"'Wastage.'"</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a href="midi/music2.mid"> +<img class="border2" src="images/music2.jpg" width="400" height="425" alt="" /> +</a> +</div> + +<p class="caption">—Beethoven: Finale of The Ninth Symphony.</p> + +<div class="trnote music2">Select music sheet to hear score.</div> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<h2>X</h2> + +<p class="h3">VISITATION</p> + +<p>Here, at the end, let those measures of the Ninth Symphony sound: no +dirge; but a pæan of joy. For in that choral ecstasy of Beethoven's +hymn to human brotherhood speaks the whole meaning and purpose of the +life that was.</p> + +<p>Why have I detained you for a tale so plain? What was he but an +obscure young painter, thirty years old, with his way to make? Why +should I point him out to you among the millions? Because he was my +friend? No. Because he is yours. Because I thought I saw in him the +seeds of greatness? No. Because the seeds of greatness which were in +him are in you; and he shall make you see them.</p> + +<p>I give him to you young men to be your friend, loyal and high-minded. +I give him to you young women to be your lover, clean of body and of +soul. He will be worthy of your friendship and of your love, and you +shall be worthy of his in return.</p> + +<p>I give him to you in all the beauty of his youth and he shall never +grow old, but he shall himself become one of the heroic friends, one +of the great companions. I give you his soul to carry in your own, a +life within a life. Through his eyes you may see the wonder and glory +of the beautiful world which he saw so joyously. Let his generous +heart beat through yours his passion for an ideal society and a better +time than ours.</p> + +<p>He is to be immortal. And it is you who must make him so. Let him +kindle in your hearts a fire which will not go out. He that would have +made great canvases glow with the might of his spirit and the splendor +of his imagination shall not now live by art alone, but by the living +deeds of you. You shall be his masterpieces. You, immortal youth, +shall be his immortality.</p> + +<p>Away from the dust and heat of the day, when the loud world crowds and +clamors, he shall make for you, all in a dim, cool chamber of your +souls, a sanctuary—a little space of sacred friendship—where you may +enter and, closing the door, renew your vows.</p> + +<p>You may have him to stand beside you in hours of triumph, and in hours +of disaster; steadier of your aim, sustainer of your courage.</p> + +<p>Sit in the twilight with folded hands and he shall speak to you. When +moonbeams pour their silent music into your chamber at dead of night +and your sight rejoices in them, it is he. Hearken to the beat of surf +along a lonely shore; to the song of the hermit thrush in dense +thickets; to the whisper of the night wind among the leaves: "It is +he!" Kindle to the charm and mystery of a face in the crowd, and "It +is he!" Thrill at the return of many-blossomed spring, at the strength +of men, at the grace of women, and your joy shall be his joy. In every +visitation to you of the truth that not by hate, not by blows, but +only by the love of the human heart can the world be won from its +evil, he shall live, he shall live again. And the color and rhythm of +life, the joy of begetting which he never knew, the joy of creating +which he knew so abundantly, when it is yours shall be his also. And +so all that is highest and best in you, all that inspired him and that +he inspired, shall be the works of art by which he is remembered.</p> + +<p>Immortal youth, let him be comrade and friend to you as he was to me; +let him live forever in your young hearts, himself forever young, +bathed in the glory of eternal dawn.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Immortal Youth, by Lucien Price + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMMORTAL YOUTH *** + +***** This file should be named 39330-h.htm or 39330-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/3/3/39330/ + +Produced by Charlene Taylor, Matthew Wheaton and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license + + +Title: Immortal Youth + A Study in the Will to Create + +Author: Lucien Price + +Release Date: April 1, 2012 [EBook #39330] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMMORTAL YOUTH *** + + + + +Produced by Charlene Taylor, Matthew Wheaton and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + IMMORTAL YOUTH + + _A Study in the Will to Create_ + + + _Behold my most beautiful work: + the souls that I have sculptured. + These they cannot destroy. Let + the wood burn! The soul is mine._ + --Romain Rolland: _Colas Breugnon_ + + + IMPRINTED MCMXIX + McGRATH-SHERRILL PRESS + GRAPHIC ARTS BUILDING + BOSTON + + + COPYRIGHT NINETEEN NINETEEN + LUCIEN PRICE + + _The first printing of this memoir is one thousand copies. + When these are gone, those who wish more can obtain them from + McGrath-Sherrill Press, the publisher, Graphic Arts Building, + Boston, Massachusetts, for one dollar a copy._ + + +[Music] + + In _the third act of Wagner's last music-drama there comes a + flourish of muted horns, remote, mysterious. In it sounds the + grandeur of that quest which never ends--the quest of the Holy + Grail. The phrase is repeated, and over the flower-starred + meadow under the April sun of Good Friday morning comes a knight + in dark armor, his visor down, carrying the holy spear. It is_ + PARSIFAL. _His errand is the errand of aspiring youth in all + lands and all ages. I set that phrase of music, compact with the + poetry and pain of idealism, at the beginning of these pages in + token of the spiritual brotherhood._ + +[Illustration: _Portrait of the artist by himself_] + + + + +IMMORTAL YOUTH + + Give me that man + That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him + In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, + As I do thee. + --HAMLET + + + + +I + + +There was a humble restaurant on Charles Street where cabmen and +chauffeurs could be induced to tell the story of their lives over a +combination-supper of lamb chop and two fried eggs costing (that was +in 1912), with coffee and rolls, twenty-five cents. Across the table +one evening in the spring of that year sat a young man about +twenty-four years old. Anyone would have taken a second look at him; +also a third, a fourth, and as many more as good manners would permit. +What was there about him that attracted attention? It was hard to say. +The dark eyes with a somber light burning in them? The rugged features +and swarthy complexion with a ruddy glow of health in each jowl? The +hands; very large and finely muscled? (I have never seen a more +beautiful pair of hands on a human being.) It was all of these things +and none of them. Rather it was the look of one with immense forces in +reserve, bound on an errand. + +Impossible to guess anything from his clothes: dark suit, shirt of +gray flannel, and black knitted tie. Chauffeur? Hardly. Well then, +what? Who? + +(This is no isolated personal impression. Wherever he went people felt +the same intense curiosity about him. Sometimes they stared at him so +that he asked me if his face was smudged.) + +Was this stranger conversible? He was. Presently he was speaking of +the colonial doorways on Chestnut Street with a discrimination which +suggested the architect. No. It appeared that he was studying under +Mr. Tarbell at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. Next, that he +came from Pittsburgh. Here was a bond in common. As two young Middle +Westerners we resented the social cold storage which New England +imposes as a probationary period of acquaintance. We condoled. We +fraternized. We were as neighbors meeting in a foreign land. At last +somebody with whom it was safe to scrape acquaintance in the good +old-fashioned Middle Western way without incurring suspicion of +designs on one another's souls, bodies, or estates. + +He climbed Beacon Hill with me to the house where I lived, carrying a +paper bag which, he explained modestly, contained his breakfast: two +bananas and a shredded wheat biscuit. + +The evening was mild. Windows stood open to the breeze which rumpled +the leaves of an old linden where it spread its boughs in the +brick-walled court. + +He promptly took off his coat, displaying in the rays of a +green-shaded student lamp a pair of forearms worthy of the hands which +went with them. Summer and winter he wore his sleeves rolled above his +elbows. His wrists resented cuffs as wild creatures resent cages. He +stretched out his long legs on a cot which did duty by the fireplace +as a sofa; pushed his hair off his forehead with both hands, fingers +interlocked, a trick he had; and gave symptoms of feeling at home. + +Was he talkative? Not much! Never did clam yield shell to knife edge +more gingerly. He would and he would not. Shy, reserved, proud, +devoured with ambition, savagely determined, a prey to some +misgivings, genuinely modest, and anxious to talk it over with the +right person, but by no means sure who the right person was. + +On sped the ambrosial hours of the spring evening. Bit by bit he +revealed himself. This was his third year in the Museum School. He +admired the technique of Mr. Tarbell and Mr. Benson; he prized their +instruction. But he distrusted their smoothness. He missed vigor. All +round him he saw students neglecting their own creative bents to +produce "little Bensons" and "little Tarbells." Already he had +resolved to quit Boston as soon as his student days were over. + +"I don't say I shall ever be able to paint as well as they can; but I +must be myself,--not an imitation Tarbell." + +There had been two years in Cornell before he came to Boston. He had +rowed in his class eight on Lake Cayuga. Hence that physical +self-respect which betokens the young man accustomed unconcernedly to +strip in a college boathouse or gymnasium. But to eyes grown +impatient with the college athlete's all too customary intellectual +torpor and social complacency it was a holiday to find this well-made +body, tall, broad in the shoulder, narrow at hips, lean and muscular, +housing also the brain of the thinker and the spirit of the pioneer. + +For the astonishing thing was to find a young man of this type +studying to be a portrait painter instead of a bond salesman. It +didn't sound Yankee. I said so. That shot rang the bell. He began to +open up. + +He was, it appeared, of German extraction. His grandfather, who had +wished to become an artist, had come to America in a period when +artists were about as much in request among us as concert pianists on +a cattle ranch. He had earned his living as an architectural sculptor. +The talent plunged, like a river, underground for a generation; then +reappeared. What happened when this little fellow's fingers began to +itch for the pencil was easy to guess. The father and grandfather put +their heads together and resolved that he should have his chance. + +It began to unravel. Now one understood the earnestness which seemed +at first precocious--the seemingly cool indifference to the call of +the world, the flesh and the devil which usually troubles youngsters +of twenty-four. Here was something more than ambition. Loyalty, +affection, gratitude, and family pride. This boy had more than talent. +He had character. + + * * * * * + +With this we are in the heart of the conflict between the artist and +the trader: between the will to create and the will to possess. It is +the central conflict of any age; especially of this, and especially in +America. The young man comes to the forks of the road where he must +decide whether he shall acquire or create; whether he shall be a +business man or a prophet. He finds himself in a society which offers +princely rewards to the commercial career and little but pains and +penalties to those who would create. This youngster was just learning +his way around in the problem. He recited, with comical irony, the +squalid platitudes which are chewed out at a youth bold enough to +follow his creative bent: + +"'Is there any _money_ in it?' 'Oh, of course, if you get to be a +great painter. But how do you know you've got it in you to be a great +painter? Think you have? Got a pretty good opinion of yourself, +haven't you?' 'What if you fail? Suppose you wake up some morning and +find yourself a middle-aged man and a fizzle? Guess you'll wish then +that you'd stuck to plain everyday business and dropped all this +highfalutin about art.' 'Yes. I suppose it's an easy life: sitting +around and painting pictures. Pretty soft, eh? Give me a man's job!' +'Don't you think it's a little rash, my boy, to risk so much, when if +you'd settle down to a good business you'd be sure of a decent living? +And what about marriage? If you marry you'll have to paint pot +boilers, and then what becomes of your art? You might as well be a +business man and be done with it. And if you don't, is it worth going +without a wife and children in order to paint pictures, and so come +at last to a lonely old age?'" + +He knew all the old ones by heart. Later we used to recite them +together in concert like school children in the geography class. + +If you took the roof off any Chamber of Commerce you would find half a +dozen retired business men whose guilty secret it is that they dabble +on the quiet with paint tubes, or modeling clay, or scenarios, or a +violin--the poor, damned souls of artists. They have made their +"pile." House and lot, wife and children, motor car and country +club--all these they have; and yet, gnawing at their hearts is the +secret knowledge that they have missed the big thing. They were born +to beget children of the spirit; they were born to create in art, in +music, in literature, in social experiment; and the ignoble standards +of the society in which they live have bludgeoned and ridiculed them +into prostituting their highest powers in the market-place. + +In such relationship did this young man stand to the life of his +country and his time. With unflinching eye he listened to its taunt: + +"Artist, create at your peril! You may starve, for all me, until you +win a reputation that is a commercial asset. After which, having +despised you, I will do my best to corrupt you by rewards and +flatteries gratifying to my intellectual snobbery." + +Such were the terms. This youth, uncertain of his own powers, accepted +them with quiet courage and imperturbable good humor. Such was the +secret of that look of settled purpose so intriguing on a face so +young, and such the secret of the fire which smouldered behind those +dark eyes. He was prepared for a siege. He was ready to go to the mat. + +It had taken three generations--son, sire, and grand-sire--to make +this stand against the all-devouring maw of American commercialism: +three generations to conquer and produce an artist. And mindful of +his end I ask myself whether they did conquer. We shall see. + + * * * * * + +Midnight clanked from the city clocks. + +"Gosh!" said he, "is it as late as that?" He stood up and knocked the +ashes out of his pipe against the red bricks of the hearth. "By the +way, I don't know your name." + +I told him. + +"Mine," said he, "is Fred Demmler." + +Explaining that I already had a friend named Fred I asked if he had +any objection to being called Fritz. + +"None whatever." + +"Fritz it is, then." + +And Fritz it remained. + + + + +II + + +A once-aristocratic residential street now reduced to a teaming +thoroughfare; pedestal to Beacon Hill; narrow, ill-paved, spattered +with mud to the second story, double row of tall brick town houses, +where Thackeray and Dickens were once guests, now placarding "rooms to +let;" assorted antique shops and restaurants,--"the long, unlovely +street" of _In Memoriam_, yet with a certain wistful charm in its +decayed gentility: that is Charles Street. + +Number 94 maintained its rubber plant on console-table in dark +vestibule. There was a contraption, usually out of order, by which you +pulled a bell five times to save yourself the climb if the art colony +in the fifth-floor-back did not answer the ring. The young barbarians +were usually out. + +It was a colony of three: Ralph Heard, small, slender, fair, escaped +from a western military academy of which he could tell tales that +froze the blood; Irving Sisson, a tall, rangy Berkshire Yankee, dry +and droll, an Artemus Ward turned art student (though known as "Siss" +it would never have occurred to anyone to call him "Sissie," and if +anyone _had_ been so rash, Sisson's grim reply would have been, like +the man in the yarn, "Smile when you say that"), and Fritz. + +Their room was a first act stage-set for an American version of _La +Boheme_. It was large, low-ceiled, and had one of those sepulchral +white marble mantel-pieces of the black walnut period. There was an +iron bed and a cot, a gaslight always out of kilter, a writing-table +strewn with pipes, unanswered letters, tiny bottles of india ink, +drawing pens, crayons, thumb tacks, jars holding bouquets of paint +brushes, and scurrilous caricatures of one another scrawled on scraps +of white cardboard. The place reeked with that heavenly odor of paint +tubes. By the window was a drawing board and portfolios. Canvases were +stacked in a dark corner, faces to the wall. + +Their windows looked into a deep courtyard formed by a triangle of +tall brick houses,--the rears of houses on Charles and Brimmer +Streets, the fronts of three quaint Italianate red-brick +dwellings,--all enclosing a tiny greensward on which slender poplars +rustled their glossy leaves. In the farthest corner of this court rise +the walls and mullioned windows of the Church of the Advent, and on +mild evenings when casements were open, the thrush-like voices of the +choir boys over the melodious thunder of great organ floated up to +these windows. But I was never able to observe that it produced any +pietistic tone in number 94. On the contrary they affected to take a +lively interest in the upper windows of the houses opposite and +threatened to keep a pair of field glasses on their window sill. + +As you go down Pinckney Street to the river you pass a break in the +solid row of house fronts through which you can look up and see the +two windows of that fifth-floor-back. One always did look, and if they +were lighted, it was impossible not to go up; for in that room there +was always some form of what is technically known as "trouble." I +never pass the spot now without looking up to see if there is a light +in those windows.... They are dark. + + * * * * * + +On the walls of the room were two paintings by Fritz; student works. +One was a small landscape sketch--smouldering red of a sunset after +rain, burning through ragged drab clouds over a hill country bathed in +violet mists of twilight. It was modest, quiet. There was a strain of +thoughtful poetry in it. But the striking part was its sincerity. +There was none of that striving after effect, that ambitious rhetoric +which youngsters usually mistake for eloquence: no attempt to make the +scene anything more than what it was. The other was a portrait study +of a workman naked to the waist. It was bold, vigorous, masculine, +and overflowing with the joy of bodily health. + +So far so good. But something else was in store. + +Out of the canvases stacked against the wall he dug a study of a +woman's head in profile. One looked; and then looked again. "Who was +she?" She had come to the school as a model for one week: that was all +they knew. But her secret was on this canvas. She must have been in +her early thirties. Her face was quite serene. It was the serenity of +a place reduced to ashes. Utter resignation. "Endure. Life has done +its worst." + +By what divination had this youngster of twenty-four guessed a secret +like that? From that moment it was clear to me that he was a portrait +painter. + +"What," I asked, "is that little star in the lower corner of the +canvas?" + +"That? Oh," he explained diffidently, "that is put on pictures which +the school saves for its exhibition." + + + + +III + + +That golden Spring! Clandestine dinners at an obscure French cafe in +an obscure court, where one went because, though the food was +something less than so-so, the sauces were exotic; "clandestine" +because, behind closed shutters, they served _vin ordinaire_ without a +license. Our parties, to the disgust of Jacques, were teetotal, the +real attraction being that the joint might be pinched any minute. + +On May afternoons in the Fenway, disguised in a baseball suit of gray +flannel, Fritz rejoiced as a strong man to swat the pill. The pill +swatted him one day, broke his thumb, and in the end he had to have it +rebroken and reset under ether. His first words on coming to were: +"Give me my paint box." All the nurses of his ward fell for him with a +loud crash. In all innocence he told what a lot of extra trouble they +went to for him. His friends smiled in their sleeves. + +As often as there was a play of Shaw or Ibsen or Galsworthy or +Maeterlinck or Shakespeare or Synge there were expeditions to peanut +heaven. Knoblauch's _Kismet_ happened along and Fritz appropriated the +cry: "Alms! for the love of Allah" for occasions choicely +inappropriate. + +When a fine May morning of blue and gold came winging over the city on +the northwest wind he would get up extra early, hustle through his +shave and cold tubbing and join me in the tramp over Beacon Hill, +across the Common, and down into Newspaper Row for breakfast at the +celebrated Spa. On the way up Chestnut Street, where the Brahmin +pundits live, the favorite sport was to crack jokes at the expense of +the sources of income which sustained these Georgian fronts and +mahogany-and-brocade interiors: here, a famous brand of ale; there, +notorious industrial nose-grinding in Fall River spinning mills--merry +clank of dividend skeleton in genteel closet.... On the Common, jocund +morning, fresh green of turf and tree, sweet breath of the earth; +sunshine, bird-song, youth, ... Spring! + +And on a stool at the Spa, Fritz's provoking grin and sly banter of a +waitress who, after a good look at him, would conclude that if she was +being kidded she liked it and was cheerfully ready for more. After +which breakfast he trudged the mile and a half to the Art Museum to +see the morning and to save his father carfares. + + * * * * * + +It appeared that he was a walker, and not afraid of rain. He proved +it. On a May evening brewing thunder we did a dissolving view out of +the city on a train for Cape Ann. At the end of the shore road around +the Cape awaited lodgings at an inn and a midnight supper. At +Gloucester he was introduced to one of Wonson's clam chowders and we +set off at dusk. + +That evening came the first inkling of his larger purpose--his higher +than personal ambition: what he would paint after his portraits +assured him a livelihood. Something was said about Pittsburgh and the +mills. + +"They ought to be painted," said he, "exactly as they are. Not +sentimentalized like the magazine covers; not made romantic, as Joseph +Pennell has made them; but painted in all their horror. Some day. I +don't know enough yet." + +Thunder had been muttering distantly. The night had turned pitch +black. There were sullen flashes, and drops began to patter. Would he +be for turning back? Not he! Then the storm came crashing and pelting +across the granite moors of the Cape. Gorgeous flashes which flushed +the winding tidal inlets and the rocky hills a brilliant rose pink. +Flash! Crash! Swish went the rain. And the harder it stormed the +better he liked it. He strode along intoxicated with color and sound. + +Near Annisquam is a double shade-row of willows overarching the road. +Not far beyond, yellow lamplight was streaming from the windows of a +tiny cottage. Wading knee-deep in wet grass we knocked. + +Now it is a complicated process explaining to two aged New England +spinsters on a lonely road at nine o'clock of a stormy night what your +errand is, especially when you haven't any. They listened; lifted the +lamp on us for an inspection--particularly on Fritz; one soon got used +to seeing people inspect him furtively--and invited us in. + +"Walkin' round the Cape to Rockport, be ye? And in the rain? For the +fun of it! Well, come in and set down. I'd like to get a good look at +someone who'd walk to Rockport in the rain for the fun of it. Set +down, young gentlemen." + +We set. They were sisters. One was small and timid: she was of the +sort that remain naive to the end. The other was tall, angular and +sardonic, with a mother wit smacking of the soil and the salt water. +She addressed herself to Fritz: + +"You ain't an escaped murderer, be ye?" + +Fritz cackled lustily. + +"How do you know I'm not?" said he. + +"You look like that fella who's on trial in Boston now. I see his +pictures in the paper ... and you come knockin' on the door at dead o' +night in a thunder squall like in a story book." + +"Would you say I looked like a murderer?" inquired Fritz with relish. + +"You might look worse 'n him," replied our free-speech hostess. "By +his pictures he's a good-lookin' fella. I says to Saide whiles we was +weedin' garden this morning, 't wouldn't be safe to let him go now, +for half the women in New England are ready to fall in love with +him--he's been that advertised." She eyed us with her sardonic grin. I +looked at Fritz. He was blushing. + +To her shrewd Yankee wits we were clearly two lunatics, but harmless; +and the object was to extract as much entertainment from us as the law +allowed. Such was the tone of her farewell, half an hour later. + +"If anyone asks who was here," said she, "I'll tell them it was two +young fellas walkin' to Rockport in the rain for the fun of it.--And +then they'll think _I'm_ one!" + + * * * * * + +Past midnight, stumping dog-tired into the inn; cold meat and bread, +ravenously devoured; bed, and the sleep of the just. + +... Morning; and such a morning as never was. Quite forgetting to +dress, Fritz lost himself staring out of the open window at the quaint +harbor, the fishing fleet, the blue bay and the gaunt headlands until +it was suggested to him that passers by might be enjoying him as much +as he was enjoying the morning. + +There was an hour for soaking it in before the train left for the +city, and soak it in he did. A sea of pale blue, like molten glass, +untroubled by a breeze; sky the deep blue of a morning after storms; +air sweet with the scent of blossoming orchards and dooryard lilacs +and tart with the tang of salt brine; merry twitter of robins; lazy +splash of surf; the long headlands tapering down to the sea; the squat +white tower of Straitsmouth light solitary on its rocky islet, "and +overhead the lovely skies of May." + +In the midst of it stood a young artist, dumb with delight. His eyes +drank. + +Oh brethren of the possessing class, ye who must own this and that +before you can enjoy, this world can never give the bliss for which ye +sigh. That pilgrimage cost less than $3.00 per. + + * * * * * + +Evening. Above the tiny grass-plat and spindling poplars in Mount +Vernon Square floats the magic of a night in mid-June. The windows of +the fifth-floor-back in 94 Charles are lighted and open to the +breeze. From those of the Advent come gusts of music,--rumbles of +organ and the fresh voices of boys: choir rehearsal. But I think the +sounds which float down from the windows of 94 are more in tune with +the night: peal after peal of infectious laughter. It was clear to the +meanest order of intellect that Sisson was telling stories which were +more joyous than dutiful: also that he had Fritz going. There was no +mistaking that laugh. + +A belated delivery man, basket on arm, pauses beside me to listen and +grin. + +"I bet that was a good one," says he. "Say, but can't that guy laugh!" + + + + +IV + + +In the autumn he reappeared bronzed and husky from a summer on a +Pennsylvania farm. That spring had been the overture. Now the curtain +rose. How can my thin piano score reproduce that richly glowing +orchestration? + +Gradually the artist in him unfolded. It was like a process of +nature--slow, silent, sure. In speech he was inarticulate. The spoken +word was not his trade; he knew it, and the knowledge made him +self-conscious. But give him a brush and he found tongue. His silences +were formidable. "The better to eat you with, my dear!" Nothing +escaped him. With a secret, fierce impetuosity he was storing away +impressions: glances, gestures, lines of faces, colors, inflections of +voices, landscapes, phrases, incidents, ideas: he soaked them in like +a thirsty sponge. Everything was fish that came to his net. What +sometimes looked like an intellectual torpor was the boa constrictor +digesting the zebra whole. I doubt if he realized the tremendous +vitality of his creative instinct. He went about it as a wild creature +roams the forest for its food: it was a law of his being. On tramping +trips he would stalk miles in silence; stopping stock still until he +had taken in the scarlet-and-gold maple grove in a purple autumn mist; +or a mossy wood pile under pines; or the rolling diversity of hill and +woodland. No apologies; no explanations. Business. + +It was soon clear that this young man knew exactly what he wanted and +that he intended to get it. There was a kind of animal sagacity about +his mind which told it what food to accept and what to reject. + +"_Kuenstler_," says Goethe, "_rede nicht. Bilde!_" (Artist, don't talk. +Create!) Fritz lived this precept. He would do first, and then let the +doing speak for itself. When a young man is so determined to do +something that he cannot be got to talk about it, you may consider the +thing as good as done. Here was a hungry mind, seeking what it might +devour and devouring it. All that provender was being assimilated. It +could not evaporate in talk, for Fritz was no talker. It had to be +expressed somehow and that somehow would have to be with a brush.... +Oh, he came and went disguised in the business suit of a young man +dedicated to the career of buying in the cheapest market and selling +in the dearest: pleasant, friendly, a prodigious eater, a sound +sleeper, invincibly healthy,--and with only that silent intentness of +eye to betray the secret of the creative power he carried within him. + +But that winter it was surprised out of him. + +Fred Middleton, then twenty-seven years old, six years out of Harvard +College, thoroughly conversant with the ethics of modern business, was +preparing to _de_-class himself and earn an honest living by manual +labor on the land--a farmer, and not a "gentleman farmer." With mock +solemnity Fritz was commissioned to do a portrait of Fred. The +transaction was conducted on a basis of "free agreement" which would +have satisfied even Peter Kropotkin. The painter was to do it any way +he chose--absolute free speech. The sitter was to choose any clothes +he liked, to sit till he was tired, and stretch when he pleased. The +purchaser was to pay what he was able. So everybody was happy, being +free. + +In the third floor back on Pinckney Street (it had north light) decks +were cleared for action: two rickety orange boxes covered with a +steamer rug did duty as a dais. With paint box, easel and palette +Fritz came down from Exeter where he had just finished a portrait of +an old lady. + +There was a glowing fire in the grate; a bluster of March winds in the +brick court; the roar of blast through the antlers of the old linden; +waning light of Saturday and Sunday afternoons; pages of Nietzsche's +epigrams and of _Jean-Christophe_ read aloud; pauses to rest and +consult. + +Fritz always noticed people's hands. He found almost as much character +in them as in faces. He admired the hands in Rodin's work, especially +that of the sculptor in his _Pygmalion_:--"the tenderness of that +hand!" he said. Fred's large hands interested him. The right one he +caught hot off the bat. The left caused him no end of trouble. Finally +one day he threw down his brush and exclaimed: + +"I've watched that left hand come down to rest on that leg a dozen +times. I've tried everything else and now I'm going to paint it +exactly as it is. After all, it _is_ a hand." + +"_Thank_ you; _thank_ you!" replied Fred, bowing suavely. "People +usually refer to it as a ham. A photographer once told me that I had a +mitt like an elephant's hoof." + + * * * * * + +And Fritz painted. And the secret was out. It came out in two +installments: the first, when he was spreading on canvas a life +history of Fred Middleton compressed into terms of a rugged face and +two large hands; the second came three years later. Fred had remarked, +after one of his sittings, that it was all he could do to keep his +face straight at some of the grimaces Fritz made while painting. The +precaution was needless. If he had laughed outright it is doubtful if +Fritz would have noticed it. + +Most of the time while he was painting the portrait of me, three years +later, I was absorbed in my own work and paid no attention to him. But +one afternoon when my wheels refused to grind I took a holiday and +watched him out of the tail of my eye.... + +It was as if some one you supposed you knew all about had removed a +set of false whiskers and spoken in his natural voice. Was this our +shy, silent Fritz? Why, the impudence of him! The shameless way he +peered into the secret places of a face! "See here, young gentleman, +who gave you permission to rummage through that trunkful of old +letters?" + +Here at last was Fritz, on his native heath, naked and unashamed, +talking his own language and, confident of its not being understood, +indulging in the most appalling candor. + +What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. While he pried +into my secrets I pried into his. I amused myself by painting a +portrait of Fritz painting. Some day I meant to show it to him.... But +here it is: + +"He may not be able to talk with his tongue. But give him his brushes +and his whole body talks. No gymnastics: but his whole being aquiver. +Silent, but his arms, fingers, head, shoulders make animated dumb +show. He is conversing delightedly with himself over his work. He has +forgotten time and place. Intense mental concentration, and nervous +energy. He squints, grimaces, stoops and looks at his canvas +wrong-side up. He sets his teeth, compresses lips, squares his +shoulders,--lost in his work. He mixes colors with minute +particularity. Sometimes he dabs with a tiny brush, a peek here, a +peck there, like a dainty bird. Again he paints in sweeping +flourishes, beating a kind of rapturous rhythm with his brush, +gesturing with it between strokes, like an orchestral conductor hewing +out the rhythms of a symphony.... He pauses; he hangs limp over his +palette, considering.... Or he gives a joyous little bounce in his +chair as the decision comes. His hands and forearms, strong and +supple, talk in every sinew. Fingers mobile, infinitely expressive: +they thumb the brush; turn its handle in a ruminating pause; reflect a +sudden resolution in the stiffening of tendons.... + +"And above all this quiet animation and silent dexterity is the +regnant, gallant head with dark eyes flashing mastery; the mouth set +with purpose; the thick mass of shining black hair breaking into a +wave as it falls away from the clear forehead--and all in complete +self-forgetfulness, the oblivion of the artist rapt in the joy of +creating." + +It was quite simple. Here was a soul which dwelt in a prison of +shyness. Painting unlocked the door. Out it rushed. Free. It could be +itself at last. No fears; no concealments. Liberty! + +That was all very well for Fritz, but how about his sitter? About the +time the sitter sensed what was going on he felt moved to exclaim: + +"Just a moment, Fritz. Don't you think you are getting a trifle +familiar?" + +I heard one of his painter friends, eyeing a canvas which Fritz had +just finished, mutter, + +"There is some marvelous subtlety about that mind." + +Already his knack of guessing people was damnable. He played no +favorites. "I am going to paint what I see or I am not going to paint +at all." If what he saw was fatuous, he told it with the disconcerting +gusto of a child; if it was sad, he told it (as in that student +portrait) so as to produce a burning pressure behind the eyelids; if +it was strong and gentle, he told it (as in the portrait of the young +farmer) so as to kindle respect and affection. Often all this was +unconscious. Again he knew exactly what he was doing and took a wicked +relish in it. Of some wealthies whom he was painting he confided with +a grin: + +"Of course they patronize me within an inch of my life, but I +sometimes wonder what would happen if they knew...." + +Perhaps he was not so unsophisticated as advertised in the catalogue. +He helped himself pretty generously out of the popular supposition +that an artist is a mild form of lunatic. He made good use of his +talent for silence. But what ears and eyes! Nobody who had seen him +paint could ever feel quite safe with him again. + + + + +V + + +It happened that Alexander James was studying at the Museum School. +That the son of "the psychologist who made psychology read like a +novel" and the nephew of "the novelist who made a novel read like +psychology" should have identified Fritz's talent the first crack out +of the box was about the least surprising thing in the world. The two +young painters proceeded to form an offensive and defensive alliance. +Where one was, there was the other also; on the baseball field, on +painting expeditions, on pilgrimages in early spring into New +Hampshire to climb Chocorua, and on occasional voyages into the land +of pretty girls. It was good to see the pair together: two +thoroughbreds. Both athletes, both artists, one dark, the other fair, +both about the same height and build. People would turn to look after +them as they passed with an expression of "Wonder who they are. +Somebody out of the ordinary." + +Alexander was wont to disguise his frank admiration of Fritz behind a +smoke screen of banter. This Fritz would suffer with an amused grin +and the massive calm of a mastiff, for he had no such arsenal of +repartee as this young gentleman from the household of a Harvard +professor; but once in a while he would land a retort so neat as to +set Alexander spinning. It did not take the Cambridge youth long to +discover the use Fritz made of his talent for silence and it was his +delight to give him away in his game of holding his tongue the better +to use his eyes,--as Alexander said: "the wise old Bruin!" + + * * * * * + +In Massachusetts the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, April 19, +is a holiday. It was 1913. In the parlor of an inn whose windows look +northward across the snug haven of Rockport to the surf-scoured ledges +of Pigeon Cove I was seated at a piano, back to the door, painfully +dissecting a score of _Tristan_. + +The door opened and a voice exclaimed, "Good Lord!" + +It was Fritz. With him was Alexander James. Both were half ossified +with the chill of the mid-April afternoon, for they had been painting +on the shore down towards Straitsmouth. + +General astonishment. The two expeditions had originated quite +independently. It was whimsically like those momentous chance +encounters in picturesque spots which abound in the novels of +Alexander's uncle Henry; but the novelist, be it noted, doesn't always +save these coincidences from a slightly fishy sound which was totally +wanting in this. + +They thawed themselves out and exhibited their sketches. Fritz had, as +usual, gone after it and got it--a spirited bit: druidical heaps of +pink granite boulders against dashing surf: dazzling white of +foam-crest on deep blue. + +There was a jolly supper in the brown-walled dining room (it had been +the kitchen of an eighteenth century farm house) which the last rays +of the spring sun flooded with red golden light; the two painters +comparing notes on the exhibitions of the Scandinavians and the Ten +Americans. + +They departed for a home-talent play at a local hall in a frame of +mind which boded no good for the performance.... About eleven o'clock +they breezed in with the announcement that there was a Northwest wind +(the New England wind which sweeps the sky cloudless blue), a full +moon and a dashing sea; and that to go to bed was a crime. Away, then, +for Land's End, along shore paths at the edge of grassy cliffs, by +bushy lanes, over meadows, moors, popple beaches and brooks, across +the moon-blanched land beside the moon-burnished sea. Straitsmouth +Light burned a yellow spark. The twin lights on Thatcher's Island +shone weird blue in their tall towers. Low on the rim of sky and sea +hung gigantic masses of cloud whitened by the bluish pallor of the +moon. In the marsh bottoms frogs cheeped their shrill sweet song of +spring: the northwester bellowed through the willow twigs ... mournful +pour of surf ... splendor of spring moon ... the lonely moor ... the +steadfast light-house flames ... the white walls and gray roofs of the +sleeping town.... + +At one in the morning, tip-toeing into the dining room, we devoured a +plate of bread and butter left for late comers. Both of them were too +genuine artists to comment on what we had seen. + + * * * * * + +It is a lovely afternoon of June, 1914, at the pier of the Allan Line +steamships in Charlestown. The ship is the old _Nubian_, safe and +slow, saloon upholstered in plush of maple sugar brown, brass oil +lamps swinging in gimbles as befitted a smart packet of the late 80's. +Boston to Glasgow. Scotland swarmed the wharf. + +Mixed in was an artists' colony. For that was the great day. Fritz and +Alexander were sailing for a year's study abroad: London, Paris, +Munich. The gang which came to see them off were _dramatis personae_ +of Act II of _La Boheme_: four painters, an interior decorator, an +illustrator assorted scribblers, and a Scottish chieftain (lord of an +ancient clan, hero of a hundred skin-of-your-teeth escapes, veteran of +Polish revolutionary escapades, uncrowned king of an African tribe: as +_raconteur_ he had his rival, Robert Louis Stevenson, lashed to the +bed). This day he strode resplendent in plaid knee socks, plaid kilt, +a murderous Hieland dirk swung at his hip, short jacket the breast of +which blazed with medals, and long black locks caught up under a cap. +As he crossed the wharf planking at a stride like deer-stalking over +his native crags, the rest of us half expected the assembled Scots to +prostrate themselves and knock foreheads on flooring in fealty. He did +excite some attention. Sisson said--well, no matter what Sisson +said.[1] + +[1] After all, why not? Some one was explaining that the chief (who +was a genuinely fine fellow) had come to America to raise funds for +his clan. Sisson said: "He'll he lucky if he gets back to Scotland +with his kilt." + +It was a great occasion. Fritz, his black eyes snapping with +excitement, came up the gang plank from deck to wharf to be pounced on +by a jolly crew. He was outwardly cool, but his engines were racing. +After him came Alexander James. Pounce number two. Showers of rice +clattered on a bridal pair close by, but their festival was tame +compared to this. To meet Henry James and John Sargent in London: to +study in Paris and Munich: to see the great galleries. They were +embarking on greater seas than the Atlantic. This was the great day, +the great hour, and with a troop of friends rejoicing in their good +fortune to sweeten it.... Away to the land of heart's desire.... +Romance.... Bohemia.... Europe. + + "O Youth, and the days that were!" + +From the caplog at the pier head as the _Nubian_ swung into midstream +of the Charles, the band of pariahs bawled ribald farewells and wrung +out handkerchiefs in mock tears. Alexander James, the Clive Newcome +of the adventure, leaned on the teakwood rail, waving his straw hat; +and Fritz, the "J.J." of the story, sat on the lowest ratline of the +shrouds, feet on rail, pretending to weep into his hat and then +emptying the brine into the brine. + +The ship's side, black hull and white upperworks, took a burnishing +from the late afternoon sun. Under the gaiety there was a queer +feeling. There, divided from us by a hundred yards of harbor water, +were the two friends with whom we had just shaken hands, and the strip +between was widening, would widen to an ocean. They stood out amid the +throng of passengers as distinct as though they had been the only +souls aboard. They waved: we waved. As the vessel straightened away in +her course they imitated our several gestures to signify personal +farewells: it was thought and done impromptu. And long after their +figures grew indistinct as the ship lessened down the harbor lane +between elbowing wharves and the piled masses of city towers and +spires, there were gleams of two white straw hats which we knew.... + +All the same, it was a trifle too much like a dress rehearsal for +death. + + * * * * * + +Then, in less than six weeks, a world in tumult. Continental ateliers +were emptying their students on the battlefield. Fritz, who was in +England, prudently kept out of the rush homeward and made the most of +his few weeks. + +He was in Downing Street in front of that dingy Georgian facade the +night the British Cabinet sat waiting for Germany's reply to their +ultimatum. + +"It gave one an odd feeling," said he, "to realize that behind those +drawn shades sat men who were settling the question of life or death +for hundreds of thousands of their fellow creatures. The crowd +cheered. I did not." + +Of Henry James he saw comparatively little, for the novelist was in +poor health, but he was immensely stimulated by the little he did see, +for beginning with _Roderick Hudson_ he had been quick to discover how +much this master of style had to teach a painter of what he had +himself learned from painters. + +There was a memorable session with Mr. Sargent in his London studio. +Mr. Sargent happened just then to be doing a portrait of Lord Curzon, +and Fritz related with wicked glee (imitating Mr. Sargent as he backed +away from his easel) how the painter had remarked: + +"I have not made up my mind how to finish it. If I can't get enough +interest out of the face, I'll put a scarlet coat on him." + + * * * * * + +It was late in October before he sailed for home, as one of a handful +of passengers on a freighter. The voyage was one of continuous foul +weather which, to the mystification of the others, was vastly to the +delight of Fritz. He lived on deck, begrudging time to sleep. He +fraternized with the crew. One day of thin drizzle and greasy swells, +getting into old togs, he helped the deck-hands greatly to their +satisfaction and somewhat to the scandal of the other passengers, +shovel coal down a hatch. + +"They didn't think I'd stick it through," said he. + +After that he was one of them. + + + + +VI + + +He had chosen to live in Pittsburgh, partly because it was his home +and partly because it promised him more elbow room. + +"I want to paint," said he, "and I do not want to have to play social +politics in order to get commissions, as I am afraid I would have to +do in Boston. Besides, in Pittsburgh, there are fewer painters to +influence me. I stand more chance of being myself." + +Alexander James said it was brutal of Fritz to go away to Pittsburgh. +The rest of the colony agreed. But it became Fritz's delight to swoop +down on us in Boston unannounced. + +... It is late in a wild night of mid-winter, a furious gale of wind +and snow whipping across the gables and chimney stacks of Beacon Hill: +a night for tucking oneself up in a wing chair beside a fire with a +book and reading lamp, roar of storm in ears.... + +A rap sounds on the door. + +"Come!" + +The rap is repeated. + +"Come in!" + +The door opens and framed in its blackness stands Fritz. + +With him is Ralph Heard in a state of jubilation. + +"You remember," says he, "I told you only two days ago that I sort of +had a hunch that Fritz might be dropping in on us most any time now? +Well, to-night I was sitting at my writing-table, when the door opened +with a bang. I thought, without looking around, 'That is the way Fritz +opens a door.' And there was Fritz." + +His one emotional luxury was this enjoyment of watching his friends +fall all over their own feet in the glad surprise of seeing him. + +He was on his way to paint some portraits of Exeter schoolmasters. It +was slowly wormed out of him that romance had visited his shores. A +St. Louis woman was motoring to New York. In a street of Pittsburgh a +tire blew out. As it was raining, she got out of the car and went into +an art store in front of which it had stopped, to wait for repairs. +Her errand in New York was to choose a portrait painter. In the art +store a portrait by Fritz was on exhibition. She decided that there +was no need of going on to New York. That evening Fritz was called to +her hotel. It ended by his going on to St. Louis and painting +portraits of the whole family. + +What his bread-and-butter problems were I never fully knew. I think +they were more in what he faced than in what he had to encounter. +Within two or three years after he left the Museum School, he was +paying his own way. He lived with the utmost frugality. His studio was +a workshop: four walls and a north light. + +"I keep it bare on purpose," he confided, "to frighten away loafers." + +It appeared that certain amiable slayers of their own and others' +time, envisaging a studio of divans, Russian cigarettes, tea and +twaddle, paid one visit, and only one. + +His attitude toward money was an island of sanity in a lunatic ocean. +It was no time before he sensed the absurdity of attempting to measure +creative work by commercial values, and that is, of course, the avenue +by which the artist-thinker divines the idiotic husbandry of +organizing society to batten those who distribute and those who own by +penalizing those who produce and those who create. Money he viewed as +an article neither to be spent nor to be hoarded, but rather to be +reinvested where it would draw intellectual dividends. His one +extravagance was to buy his mind the food it needed if he had the +wherewithal to pay for it. "And," as Erasmus remarks, "after that, +some clothes." The same independence which had fortified him against +those who had once pointed him out as a crack-brained youngster with +the presumption to suppose he could be a great artist sustained him +now when he was pointed out as a promising portrait painter who was +already "getting good money for his work." + +Finding himself, as he did, endowed with a creative purpose +considerably at odds with the structure of the society around him; put +to it, as he was, to protect that fledgling from the well-intentioned +but fatal meddlings of the mediocre, not a shadow of ill-humor did he +allow to cross his average human intercourse. He made me think of a +wise old cat who, having carefully hidden her kittens in the hayloft, +presents a tolerant frame to the cuffs and caresses of the children. + +By the beginning of 1916 it was clear to anyone who knew him that all +he needed to reach the summit was to keep climbing, and this he +appeared abundantly able and determined to do. + + + + +VII + + +He was growing up. Shy he would always be, but in place of his boyish +self-distrust had come a quiet confidence in his own powers. His mind +was on the watch for its food, like an eagle ready to pounce. There +was an eager, vigilant look in his eyes when one spoke of certain +books unknown to him: he was questioning whether they would be what he +wanted. He would pump me about the content of certain authors. I could +see him accepting and rejecting. He read the poets as one quarrying +marble for architectural designs of his own. His hungry reading was as +different from that of the perfunctory college student as the +oarsmanship of a dory fisherman on the Grand Banks is from that of an +eight-oared crew on the placid Charles: the producer as contrasted +with the consumer. + +George Meredith and Walt Whitman became two of his great companions. +Once he told me that he was reading everything of Thomas Hardy he +could lay his hands on. + +"Why?" I asked. + +"He knows how to set the human figure against vast backgrounds of +Nature: figures outlined half against a heath and half against sky." + +I wonder if Romain Rolland realizes the intimacy of the friendship +which has sprung up between _Jean-Christophe_ and the youth of to-day. +Fritz and Christophe took an amazing shine to each other from the +start. It was _Christophe_ who led Fritz to read everything else of +Romain Rolland he could find, and thus his steps were guided to the +summit of that Mount of Vision, Rolland's _Life of Tolstoy_, whence he +looked far and wide into the stern grandeur of that moral wilderness +unsubdued by man through which the heroic thinker and prophet pushes +on alone.... To look is to follow. He began to devour Tolstoy's works. +_The Kreutzer Sonata_ he sat up half the night beside my fire to +finish. Waking towards morning I saw him scowling over it. He asked to +take the book away with him. Soon he was up to his neck in the +dramatists: Ibsen, Strindberg, Brieux, Sudermann, Galsworthy, Synge, +Shaw. + +There was a performance of _Candida_ with Mr. Milton Rosmer as the +poet. They say that a secret can be told only to him who knows it +already. There is a secret in two tremendous speeches at the close of +that play which (as the dramatist himself says) few but poets know: + + MORELL: (_alarmed_) Candida: don't let him do anything rash. + + CANDIDA: (_confident, smiling at Eugene_) Oh, there is no fear. + He has learnt to live without happiness. + + MARCHBANKS: I no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than + that. Parson James, I give you my happiness with both hands. + +Those lines stung Fritz as the whip stings a mettled horse. His flesh +rebelled, but the poet in him leaped to the truth. + +On March 20, 1913, the colony at 94 Charles Street adjourned to a +performance of _Man and Superman_. Fritz kept his room-mate up until +two in the morning discussing it. The next night he routed me out of +bed at ten and quizzed me about it until three in the morning. + +He had had his glimpse of the collision between sex and ambition; +between the impulse of the woman to create children of flesh and +blood, with the man as adjunct and provider; and the impulse of the +man to create children of the spirit independently of the woman. He +was quick to realize that he had struck something which he had to +settle, and he was settling it. The thing was deliciously transparent. +Here was a young gentleman tremendously in earnest about being an +artist. Being an artist he loved beauty. Hitherto, in his shy way, he +had secretly been rather tickled by the flutter which his striking +head created in the dove cots of pretty girls. But after March 20, +1913, the tune changed. He was affable, delighted to make their +acquaintance--but on his guard. He had not the slightest intention of +letting sex thwart his ambition. + +"Yes, but...?" + +"Yes, but...." He played the game. A commercial society decrees that +the artist cannot have a livelihood until his work is accepted at a +commercial value. Pending that acceptance, if he assumes the +responsibility of wife and children he also assumes the risk of +shackling himself to pot-boiling work for life. + +Society also decrees a standard of prenuptial chastity for the male. +Suppose the male happens to be more interested in art than in +domesticity. He must then ask himself whether he shall abide by a +decree which bourgeois society promulgates with more emphasis than +sincerity. With his eyes wide open to the fact that the very society +which promulgates this decree openly winks at its evasion, Fritz abode +by it. A slightly sterner set to his jaw; a slightly darker flash in +his eye; a slightly grimmer stoicism in the grip on his emotions were +all that betrayed the battle which had raged in him between the two +creative forces: sex and intellect. He never pretended that the battle +was won for keeps. The crust on which he walked he knew to be thin. +But it was won for the present. He well knew that there are no bargain +days at life's counter: he had come there to purchase one of the most +precious commodities--a creative career--and he was willing to pay the +fee. If he found the fee somewhat high (and I have reason to know that +he did) he never complained. It was his reward to enjoy that supreme +luxury of conduct--to be the thing he seemed. He lived in that kind of +glass house which is not damaged by any amount of stone-throwing, +because there is nothing to hit: a glass house with all the curtains +up. "Naked and unashamed" could have been written over the door of his +mind. Time and again he quoted a passage from _Trilby_ in which Du +Maurier says that mental chastity begins in the artist when the model +drops her last garment. He was frank to add that this was strictly +true; that in the intense concentration of his mind on problems of +form and color he had found in painting from the nude no room for +images of sex but on the contrary an actual release from the heats and +fevers which plague young men. The remedy he proposed was: "Get rid of +mystery." + +There is a portrait painted at about this time which tells the story +of the inner struggle which he was fighting and winning. It is of a +young girl, about his own age, with a wondrously sweet expression and +sparkling eyes. The delicacy, the spirituality which shines through it +makes it hard to believe that the portrait could have been painted by +a young man. Not a hint of sexuality. He later told me that the girl +was afflicted with a lameness and he told how grateful he was to her +for valuing him for his mind and not obtruding sex. I doubt if he knew +how publicly yet with what delicacy he had thanked her. + +There were moods of him, as when he stood silently drinking in a +landscape, which made me think of that fine old chant which one hears +in the churches: + + "O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." + + * * * * * + +In the emptiness left by his death I came to realize that one of the +principal anticipations of my life had been looking forward to watch, +year by year, the unfolding of his mind and the ripening of his +powers. His talent had long since passed the stage at which it was a +sporting proposition--the stage at which one could chaff him about +cashing in heavily some day on a pair of "early Demmlers." + +There was no kind of doubt that he carried within him the creative +"daimon." His very instincts betrayed it. He went at a landscape the +way Hugo Wolf went at a song: he lived with the poem before creating +the music. For the first few days in a novel countryside he never +thought of touching brush to canvas. He walked around in the scene, +his every sense alert to its feature and color, to its sound and +smell. He laid in wait for its moods. He eyed it in every circumstance +of wind and weather, as if it had been a face he was preparing to +paint, or a woman he was preparing to wed. No words. The quality he +most appreciated in a companion at such times was silence. And it was +entertainment enough to watch the play of expression in his face as +his eyes roamed meadow, hill or sea horizon--vigilance, delight, +eagerness, discriminating study, instructions to memory, brooding +thought--his life was a perpetual honeymoon with nature for his bride. + +Then would come the day and the hour when he was ready to paint. By +that time, in the wealth of his materials, his only study would be not +what to put in but what to leave out. I doubt if he had reached the +point of knowingly causing his subconscious to work for him, but it +will be apparent from the foregoing that he was doing so +unconsciously. + +He was able, somehow, to communicate his sense of form and color to +another, without resort to speech, or with only the fewest words. +Perhaps it was the stimulus of seeing how much there was for him in +the distant shining of sunlight on winding waters, or a range of low +hills scrawling their signature on the chill blue of horizon sky, +which taught others to find the wonder and dignity in what they would +once have looked on as commonplace. At any rate, I find myself, in all +seasons, seeing landscapes through his eyes.... "Now that looks +commonplace, but it isn't. Fritz would have seen something in these +somber March-brown meadows drowned in the freshets of spring; these +red-budding birches; this delicate flush of pink in a drab evening +sky...." And so he, being dead, yet seeth. + +He was well aware, by this time, that the artist who is not also a +thinker is a one-legged man. He accepted the obligation of +understanding matters which, superficially, might have seemed far +outside his province. It was in 1915 that he encountered Tolstoy's +great work on Christian anarchism, _The Kingdom of God Is Within You_. +It revolutionized his view of life. It convinced him of the futility +of violence as a method of settling disputes, personal or national. +And the shock of having to transvalue all the accepted values, of +having, in a world organized on the basis of fear, to conceive of a +world organized on the basis of good will, made him a thinker in his +own right. + +Next he encountered Romain Rolland's _Life of Michael Angelo_. Far +from being chilled by the classic austerity of that work, it warmed +him. In it he found the food he had been seeking. He made it a part of +him. It confirmed, with revelations of the laws of mental conduct +which governed that giant of the Renaissance, principles which this +young man had been formulating and practising by the naked instinct of +his will to create. Things which he had been doing or forbearing to +do, he could not have told you why, here received their sanction or +veto in the experience of a genius. + +Little as was said about this between us, it was easy to see how +profoundly this discovery of the similarity between his own mental +processes and those of a great master had strengthened his confidence +in himself. Michael Angelo was added to the list of his Great +Companions. + +He had another. Rembrandt. + +There was a gallery in London, which one I forget, which he visited +day after day. + +"In the first room you entered," said he, "was a portrait of an old +woman by Rembrandt, painted in his last period. Time after time I went +there intending to see the rest of the gallery. Sometimes I even tried +a room or two. What was the use? I went back to that portrait. It +seemed like a waste of time to look at the other pictures. Everything +they said--if they said anything--was said in that portrait by +Rembrandt and said better. It seemed to me as if the whole history of +humanity were concentrated in that old woman's face.... Finally I +surrendered and went only to see that." + + * * * * * + +There is a chastity of the mind, just as there is a chastity of the +body. There are certain creative processes which a sincere thinker +would no more reveal to casual eyes than he would strip in a public +place. A rule of mental chastity: Do not hold promiscuous mental +intercourse. The shallow would intrude into these austere places like +picnickers in a sanctuary, littering it with their luncheon refuse. +Let the artist raise his thought-stained face from his toil, smiling +but mute. + +Fritz guarded his secrets well. A sudden flash of arrested eye, a +certain silent intentness of gaze, an interest in a subject which +would seem altogether out of proportion to its importance, a look of +perpetual expectancy were all that betrayed his search. He was +learning, learning, learning: every hour, every minute. Sometimes for +days together he would seem dormant--practical people would have said +loafing--lazily absorbing impressions as it had been through his +pores. Again he seemed to devour scenery, faces, books, ideas with an +appetite that was insatiable. + +A young sculptor, meeting Fritz, observed to me privately, + +"What an unromantic exterior for an artist!" + +The joke was too good to tell Fritz for, all innocently on +the sculptor's part, it revealed a secret which I was not +supposed to know: that Fritz instinctively cultivated this +young-man-just-out-of-college-and-doing-well-in-business exterior as a +high board fence behind which, free from intrusion, to train the +muscles of his mind and cultivate the golden orchards of his soul. + +He had to. For once he had mastered the tools of his trade there was +absolutely no one to teach him the things he most needed to know. He +must go it alone. He knew it. And he was going. That was the secret of +the watchful, hungry look of him--the look of one aware of a ravenous +appetite and never sure of his next meal. That was the secret of his +inarticulate gratitude to anyone who happened to be able to put him in +the way of finding the food his spirit craved. He discovered that the +composers knew more about painting than most painters, and he used to +turn up at Symphony concerts or at the opera with the look of a small +boy fresh from a session with the jam pot behind the pantry door. He +wasn't saying anything, but you knew that he'd got it. He made a +bee-line for Beethoven and Wagner. He came away after a performance of +_Tristan_ most divinely drunk on the strongest wine in music. + +For the method of these composers was the method which he had chosen +for himself unconsciously. He was not satisfied to write a thin +melody. He was determined to teach his brush the rich and complicated +instrumentation of an orchestral score. Not this face or that +landscape was what he planned to put on canvas, but the abundance of +life which he had absorbed through every avenue of sense. Not a +violin alone, nothing less than the full orchestra would content him. + +I ask myself whether I shall ever see anything more inspiriting than +the quiet, secret quest of this young man for an excellence and a +mastery not only unrecognized and unrewarded by the social order in +which he lived, but not even comprehended. This is the courage of the +creative mind: that it is prepared to meet alike its triumph or its +defeat in an utter moral solitude. Stories of the physical courage +which Fritz displayed on the field of battle were to come later.... +Which is likely to advance the Kingdom of Heaven on earth more +speedily--the courage of the body, to destroy; or the courage of the +mind, to create? + +Is all this too eulogistic? "Oh, come! He must have had faults, +weaknesses, common spots." ... I suppose so. To tell the truth I never +noticed them. There was a trait, as I first remember him, of too ready +assent to the opinions of others which it amused me to attribute to +peasant ancestry; but, after all, that conformity was only outward and +it soon disappeared. In matters really vital to him his will was +granite and he commanded a silence which could vociferate "Hands off!" + +His very inarticulate tongue gave promise of greatness. One saw all +this life-stuff entering into him. He could never express it in +speech. It was a necessity of his being to express it somehow. It +would have to come out on canvas. + +Oh, once in a great while the curtain would be dropped. Some lucky +turn of conversation would relax the inhibitions and liberate his +tongue. Then for a few minutes, perhaps for an hour, one would be +shown the treasure house within. What shall I say of those glimpses? +There are times to walk fearfully lest one smash something which +cannot be replaced, and these occasions were of them. Treasures not of +this world; possessions which honored the possessor by being held in +honor; bins heaped, as it had been, with jewels and brocades; others +which gaped with a sacrificial emptiness; spaces eked out with the +heroic poverty of one dedicated to the monasticism of a creative +career. + +Enough.... I saw--what I saw. + + * * * * * + +And withal he was half pagan. The physical gratification with which he +drank in the beauty of the world reminded me of that statuette by +_Roderick Hudson_, Dipsos ("Thirst")--a boy, feet planted +wide apart, head thrown back, slaking his throat out of a gourd held +in both hands. Fritz was that boy. The ugliness of modern clothes +disgusted him. He was alert for chances to take off his own: impromptu +baths in cold brooks on walking trips, or long days of summer sunshine +on lonely stretches of sea beach with gleaming yellow sands. There was +some place among the mountains of West Virginia where he used to go: +ledges of flat rock above a rushing river. All day long they gathered +warmth from the sun, retaining it well into the night. When the moon +had risen he loved to steal away for a plunge in the river, then lie +out naked in the moonlight on these great slabs of warm rock, alone +with the magic night. + + + + +VIII + + +In May, 1917, he came to Boston from Pittsburgh. I was in Parkersburg, +West Virginia. He came there. + +Conscription impended. Under his composure the struggle was going on. +Tolstoy had converted him. What was he to do? + +"If there were no one but myself to consider...," said he, "But the +suffering which you would have no hesitation in imposing on yourself +you hesitate to impose on those dearer to you than yourself." + +He was thrilled by the nonresistance of the still-young Russian +revolution: + +"Wonderful people, liberated by their refusal to kill! They fold their +arms and say 'Shoot!' The Cossacks refuse to shoot them. And a +despotism, centuries old, comes tumbling down. It proves everything +that Tolstoy has said." + +For three days, tramping about the scrubby countryside, rambling along +the banks of the Ohio, rowing up the swift, muddy current of the +Kanawah, the dilemma of a man born to create and commandeered to +destroy was threshed out. Never before had he spoken so freely. The +economic causes of the trouble he understood fairly well, but it was +startling with what a seeing eye he pierced the illusions which beset +that time. By that faculty of divination peculiar to the artist's mind +he reached, at one leap, conclusions which the thinker only arrives at +after laborious effort. And he was a young man without an illusion +left, steadfastly looking the ugliest facts of our social order in the +face. + +On the last evening of his stay we were standing on the steel spider +web of a suspension bridge which spans the Ohio, watching a sunset +unfurl its banners of blood and fire. + +All day there had been thunder and rain, and eastward behind the +towers and spires of the city skyline still hung the retreating +clouds, sullen and dark. Fritz pointed to where, against that gloomy +cloud bank, high above the city and gilded red from the setting sun, +rose two symbols: one on the tip of a spire, the other on the staff +atop a tower: cross and flag. + +"Church," said he grimly, "and State." + +The next day he returned to Pittsburgh to register for the draft. + + * * * * * + +July found me back in New England at a farm on the banks of the +Merrimac in West Newbury. Returning one noon from an errand up the +hills to the village I was hailed by the children with a shout: + +"A friend of yours is here." + +"Who is he?" + +"He told us his name but we've forgotten it." + +"What does he look like?" + +Descriptions varied: + +"He's awfully strong," said the boy. + +"He has shiny black hair and black eyes," said the littlest girl. + +"He wears his coat off and his sleeves rolled up," said the biggest +little girl, and she added, with the spontaneous poetry of childhood, +"And his hands are beeootiful!" + +"Where is he?" + +"Down by the river." + +Under the maples, lying in the tall grass at the foot of a steep bank +which sloped to the stream, with children clambering all over him, was +Fritz. He scrambled to his feet and came forward putting out his hand +with that awkwardness of meeting after an absence which he never quite +outgrew, but his eyes snapped with enjoyment at my astonishment. + +It appeared that he had been painting some one in a Massachusetts mill +city and had dashed up here between-whiles. + +There is a tiny hut perched like a brown owl on a knoll in a grove of +hickories beside the river. To this hermitage we retired and he +related the news of the intellectual underworld in Pittsburgh. Roger +Baldwin had been there, much to his comfort. A friend whose portrait +he had been painting, aware that the mildest radicalism had now become +high treason, had remarked by way of chaffing him, + +"I hope they give you a cell with a north light." + +He unburdened with a tone of sheer physical relief: + +"This frantic enthusiasm for 'democracy,'" said he, "on the part of +people who have spent their whole lives combating it!" + +He sat relaxed in a deep chair, hands hanging limp on its arms--hands +large, strongly muscled, marked with heavy veins, the fingers +full-fleshed at their tips, the skin bronzed by the sun. + +Tatters of sunlight, reflected from the wavelets of the river +obliquely up underneath the hickory boughs, flickered on the ceiling +and walls of the hut. + +Disillusioned he was, but not cynical. His humor was a bath to a sore +spirit. He kindled, in the moral solitude of that hour, a little fire +of faith and hope. It struck me anew, eyeing him as he sat there, what +a beautiful creature he was, inside and out. + +There was in him, too, an odd streak of stoicism. Keen as he was for +"the eats," he delighted in little acts of self-discipline. That +afternoon, it being necessary for me to try for a nap, he cleared out +to gather views of river and woods. An hour later I discovered this +young Spartan, hands clasped behind head, spine stretched along the +plank flooring of the narrow ledge in front of the hut, sleeping +quietly.... + +The next day he made himself everlastingly solid with the people at +the farm by spending the whole morning fitting screens to the +multitudinous doors and windows of their ark of a house. Everyone +wanted Fritz to stay a month. + +At nine that evening he left. As we trudged over the road in the warm +darkness of the summer night, he talked soberly of the dubious future. + + * * * * * + +He was not called until the following April, 1918. Twice that winter +he came to Boston. Number 94 Charles Street had been dismantled. But +the third-floor-back on Pinckney Street received him with an extra cot +for bivouac. + +... This should have been the longest chapter of all, and the best. I +find that I cannot write it. + + * * * * * + +Only a postscript. I asked him for a picture of himself. + +"What do you want," he inquired, "a painting?" + +My ideas had been far more modest: + +"Beggars should not be choosers. I will take what I can get: painting, +photograph, snap-shot: and be thankful." + +"What size would you like?" + +"Small enough so that it can go wherever I go." + +He made no promises. His way was to wait until the time came and then +let the performance speak. + +Not three weeks later it came: a sketch in oils, head and shoulders, +ten inches by twelve, not at all the cold greenish grays I had +anticipated from his habitual attitude of self-effacement, but on the +contrary a scheme of rich golden browns. He has painted his own +portrait with the same reticence which looks out of its eyes. +Strangers seeing it remark, + +"What a striking face!" + +His friends view it and say, + +"He was much finer looking than that." + + + + +IX + + +The rest is seen dimly, as through a mist. His voice is heard, +distinct and clear, but as from a great distance. + +To Ralph Heard he writes from Camp Lee, Virginia: + +"I am eating, sleeping, and drilling with physical enthusiasm," and +later, "Tell the fellows that the dust is gathering on my palette." + +A letter to me in May tells of taking his pipe at the day's end and +strolling into the woods of the camp to be alone with the song of +birds and tints of sunset. Late in July came a letter from France +describing a march "between gleam of gold in the west and a rising +full moon in the east, ... aeroplanes in action overhead and +cannonading over the hills to the east." Then occurs this: + +"I am little different from as you know me, even though now in a +machine gun company:--Curious irony.--" + +And this: + +"Continue your work.... Other victories are transient." + +And this was his farewell: + +"We have seen great visions and dreamed splendid dreams. And the faith +you have in me,--which I prize so desperately,--I have in you, no +matter where each of us may be headed. We will live the best we +can--that, through our friendship, is all we ask of each other." + + * * * * * + +On January 23, 1919, one of his brothers writes from Le Mans, France: + +"St. Remis du Plain is the name of the little town where Fred's +company was billeted. It is perched on the top of a hill in the middle +of a vast plain and was visible for a long time as I headed towards +it. This was the trip I had planned long ago, and pictured a happy +meeting; however, it was decreed otherwise. Passing up the narrow +street I saw 'Headquarters, 136 M. G. Bn.' written on the door of an +old stone house. The orderly room was full of officers. I inquired for +Lieut. Rew, the one who had previously written to me, and introduced +myself as Fred's brother. The officer who was dictating stopped work, +came over and shook hands with me. The captain commanding the +battalion came from behind the table, greeted me and offered a word of +sympathy. Soon all the officers were grouped about me and I saw that +Fred was considered one of their number. The captain said, 'He was the +best sergeant I ever had.' They invited me to mess with them, and +Lieut. Rew said I was to bunk with him, 'for my men have cooties,' but +I saw this was all done so that they might have a chance to speak of +Fred. One of the sergeants told me that when the news came, the +officers were even more broken up about it than the men. + +"I was introduced to the noncoms with whom Fred seems to have been a +favorite. In the evening, as we sat around an open fireplace, I asked +if Fred had had a 'buddy.' The sergeant with whom Fred used to sleep +said, 'No. He was everybody's friend.' + +"As I was walking up to the kitchen, a private stepped out of the mess +line and came up to me saying he knew me through my resemblance to +Fred. Soon the mess line was demoralized and I was the center of a +lively mass all talking at once and I could easily see why the captain +recommended him so highly as a sergeant.--'He never said a harsh +word,'--'He was always cheerful and never kicked,'--'When we +complained about the feed or anything, he said it would be better +later.' They talked so long that at last the cook asked me if I would +not please eat so that they would eat and let him get through. + + * * * * * + +"The division left Camp Lee, June 21, 1918, and sailed from Newport +News on the Italian transport _Caserta_. It was a dirty boat, the feed +rotten, and the trip rough. Everybody was disgusted. Fred was about +the only one of the company who never missed a meal. A private told me +that he and Fred were standing at the rail in the bow of the ship one +night talking about a number of things. This fellow voiced the +sentiment of most of the company when he said he only wanted to make +one more ocean trip and that was in the reverse direction. Fred looked +far out across the water and remarked: 'I could stand a few more.' + +"They landed at Brest on July 5 and entrained at once for Souville. +They used the French type of compartment cars where with ten men and +full equipment there wasn't much room to move about. Fred was in +charge of his compartment and, with his usual ingenuity, devised means +of disposing of the equipment to best advantage for their comfort. He +also carefully arranged the daily menu consisting of bread, corned +beef, tomatoes, beans, and jam. He did all this in such a serio-comic +way that the fellows are still laughing over the memories of the trip. + +"On September 20 the division led the drive into the Argonne forest. +This is reputed to have been the hardest battle of the war in respect +to the Germans' shell fire and the suffering caused by the rainy +weather and lack of shelter. Through it all there was not a healthier +nor more cheerful man than Fred. Recognized by the commanding officer +as having 'the coolest head in the company and afraid of nothing' he +was made a sergeant after this battle over the heads of some old +National Guardsmen; but there was not a murmur--all were satisfied. +When they came out of the woods he helped the doctor with the wounded +(he seems to have helped everywhere, from the kitchen to the captain's +private office). After they had all been attended to, he asked the +doctor to look him over. He had received three flesh wounds in +shoulder and arm. He picked out the pieces of shrapnel himself and had +the doctor bandage him. After which he went about his work as usual. + +"October 10 found the company in the St. Mihiel sector, and on October +22 it moved into Belgium. All this meant miles of weary hiking under a +full pack; but Fred remained the same cheerful fellow as ever. He +amused the whole company with his doings. He found an old hair-clipper +among some salvage and immediately opened a barber shop where +lieutenants as well as privates got their hair cut. Another thing that +I recognized as characteristic were the remarks pertaining to his +appetite. He never lost it. He was known to have 'eats' on his person +all the time. He had a special knack of hunting out farm houses, +engaging _madame_ in conversation, and coming away with bread, eggs, +or cheese in his knapsack. Occasionally he did some sketching and his +letters were a joy to the lieutenant who censored them because of the +excellent descriptions they contained.... + +"The company went over the top early in the morning of October 31. +Fred was wounded in the left side by a piece of high explosive shell +at about 5:30 A.M. It was before daylight and few knew he had been +hit. When they did hear it, they were far in advance and Fred had been +carried to Evacuation Hospital Number Five, at Staden, Belgium. He +died there on November 2. One of the boys who helped carry him to the +rear says that he was fully conscious despite the serious nature of +his wound, and tells of how he directed them what to do--how he told +them to leave him when the shells fell too fast (which they wouldn't +do)--of how they left him, quite himself, at the first-aid station.... + +"He was never referred to as a bully or even as a fighter--he was +spared the grewsome experience of hand-to-hand fighting, for from the +first the Germans were in full flight; but he was remembered for his +cheerfulness, his kindness toward others and especially for his lack +of harsh words. His favorite text from the Bible was that part of the +Sermon on the Mount known as the beatitudes, _and he often wondered +why ministers did not preach on it more_. _He constantly spoke of this +to the men._ (The italics are not in the original.) + +"His fire has gone out, but he left a glow in the hearts of these men +which will never go out." + + * * * * * + +And now it is time that a few questions be asked, simple and direct. +It is due him. + +Why is it that when he set himself to create he had to contend against +that dead-weight of indifference if not the active hostility of +organized society recorded in these pages; but when he was +commandeered to destroy, that society clothed him, fed him, sheltered +him, trained him, transported him, paid him, nursed him, and buried +him? + +It is well that we should know what has been squandered. He that might +have ennobled generations of men with his great visions and his +splendid dreams is mingling his clay with the soil of Belgium. He had +the seeds of genius. Capitalism made him a machine gunner. + +Is this the best we can find for our artists to do? Is it any wonder +that the creative minds of to-day are finding themselves driven to +social revolution as their art-form? + +In the brown-owl hut beside the Merrimac that summer day in 1917 he +remarked in a tone of indulgent irony: + +"The 'military experts' have found a nice, polite term for men killed +or too badly maimed to fight any more." + +"What is it?" I asked. + +"'Wastage.'" + +[Music:--Beethoven: Finale of The Ninth Symphony.] + + + + +X + +VISITATION + + +Here, at the end, let those measures of the Ninth Symphony sound: no +dirge; but a paean of joy. For in that choral ecstasy of Beethoven's +hymn to human brotherhood speaks the whole meaning and purpose of the +life that was. + +Why have I detained you for a tale so plain? What was he but an +obscure young painter, thirty years old, with his way to make? Why +should I point him out to you among the millions? Because he was my +friend? No. Because he is yours. Because I thought I saw in him the +seeds of greatness? No. Because the seeds of greatness which were in +him are in you; and he shall make you see them. + +I give him to you young men to be your friend, loyal and high-minded. +I give him to you young women to be your lover, clean of body and of +soul. He will be worthy of your friendship and of your love, and you +shall be worthy of his in return. + +I give him to you in all the beauty of his youth and he shall never +grow old, but he shall himself become one of the heroic friends, one +of the great companions. I give you his soul to carry in your own, a +life within a life. Through his eyes you may see the wonder and glory +of the beautiful world which he saw so joyously. Let his generous +heart beat through yours his passion for an ideal society and a better +time than ours. + +He is to be immortal. And it is you who must make him so. Let him +kindle in your hearts a fire which will not go out. He that would have +made great canvases glow with the might of his spirit and the splendor +of his imagination shall not now live by art alone, but by the living +deeds of you. You shall be his masterpieces. You, immortal youth, +shall be his immortality. + +Away from the dust and heat of the day, when the loud world crowds and +clamors, he shall make for you, all in a dim, cool chamber of your +souls, a sanctuary--a little space of sacred friendship--where you may +enter and, closing the door, renew your vows. + +You may have him to stand beside you in hours of triumph, and in hours +of disaster; steadier of your aim, sustainer of your courage. + +Sit in the twilight with folded hands and he shall speak to you. When +moonbeams pour their silent music into your chamber at dead of night +and your sight rejoices in them, it is he. Hearken to the beat of surf +along a lonely shore; to the song of the hermit thrush in dense +thickets; to the whisper of the night wind among the leaves: "It is +he!" Kindle to the charm and mystery of a face in the crowd, and "It +is he!" Thrill at the return of many-blossomed spring, at the strength +of men, at the grace of women, and your joy shall be his joy. In every +visitation to you of the truth that not by hate, not by blows, but +only by the love of the human heart can the world be won from its +evil, he shall live, he shall live again. And the color and rhythm of +life, the joy of begetting which he never knew, the joy of creating +which he knew so abundantly, when it is yours shall be his also. And +so all that is highest and best in you, all that inspired him and that +he inspired, shall be the works of art by which he is remembered. + +Immortal youth, let him be comrade and friend to you as he was to me; +let him live forever in your young hearts, himself forever young, +bathed in the glory of eternal dawn. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Immortal Youth, by Lucien Price + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMMORTAL YOUTH *** + +***** This file should be named 39330.txt or 39330.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/3/3/39330/ + +Produced by Charlene Taylor, Matthew Wheaton and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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