The Genius (35 page)

From Biloxi, because of the approach of summer when it would be
unbearably warm there, and because his funds were so low that it
was necessary to make a decisive move of some kind whether it led
to complete disaster or not, he decided to return to New York. In
storage with Kellners (M. Charles had kindly volunteered to take
care of them for him) were a number of the pictures left over from
the original show, and nearly all the paintings of the Paris
exhibition. The latter had not sold well. Eugene's idea was that he
could slip into New York quietly, take a room in some side street
or in Jersey City or Brooklyn where he would not be seen, have the
pictures in the possession of M. Charles returned to him, and see
if he could not get some of the minor art dealers or speculators of
whom he had heard to come and look at them and buy them outright.
Failing that, he might take them himself, one by one, to different
dealers here and there and dispose of them. He remembered now that
Eberhard Zang had, through Norma Whitmore, asked him to come and
see him. He fancied that, as Kellners had been so interested, and
the newspaper critics had spoken of him so kindly the smaller
dealers would be eager to take up with him. Surely they would buy
this material. It was exceptional—very. Why not?

Eugene forgot or did not know the metaphysical side of
prosperity and failure. He did not realize that "as a man thinketh
so is he," and so also is the estimate of the whole world at the
time he is thinking of himself thus—not as he is but as he thinks
he is. The sense of it is abroad—by what processes we know not, but
so it is.

Eugene's mental state, so depressed, so helpless, so fearsome—a
rudderless boat in the dark, transmitted itself as an impression, a
wireless message to all those who knew him or knew of him. His
breakdown, which had first astonished M. Charles, depressed and
then weakened the latter's interest in him. Like all other capable,
successful men in the commercial world M. Charles was for strong
men—men in the heyday of their success, the zenith of their
ability. The least variation from this standard of force and
interest was noticeable to him. If a man was going to fail—going to
get sick and lose his interest in life or have his viewpoint
affected, it might be very sad, but there was just one thing to do
under such circumstances—get away from him. Failures of any kind
were dangerous things to countenance. One must not have anything to
do with them. They were very unprofitable. Such people as Temple
Boyle and Vincent Beers, who had been his instructors in the past
and who had heard of him in Chicago at the time of his success,
Luke Severas, William McConnell, Oren Benedict, Hudson Dula, and
others wondered what had become of him. Why did he not paint any
more? He was never seen in the New York haunts of art! It was
rumored at the time of the Paris exhibition that he was going to
London to do a similar group of views, but the London exhibition
never came off. He had told Smite and MacHugh the spring he left
that he might do Chicago next, but that came to nothing. There was
no evidence of it. There were rumors that he was very rich, that
his art had failed him, that he had lost his mind even, and so the
art world that knew him and was so interested in him no longer
cared very much. It was too bad but—so thought the rival
artists—there was one less difficult star to contend with. As for
his friends, they were sorry, but such was life. He might recover.
If not,—well—.

As time went on, one year, another year, another year, the
strangeness of his suddenly brilliant burst and disappearance
became to the talented in this field a form of classic memory. He
was a man of such promise! Why did he not go on painting? There was
an occasional mention in conversation or in print, but Eugene to
all intents and purposes was dead.

When he came to New York it was after his capital had been
reduced to three hundred dollars and he had given Angela one
hundred and twenty-five of this to take her back to Blackwood and
keep her there until he could make such arrangements as would
permit her to join him. After a long discussion they had finally
agreed that this would be best, for, seeing that he could neither
paint nor illustrate, there was no certainty as to what he would
do. To come here on so little money with her was not advisable. She
had her home where she was welcome to stay for a while anyhow.
Meanwhile he figured he could weather any storm alone.

The appearance of the metropolis, after somewhat over two years
of absence during which he had wandered everywhere, was most
impressive to Eugene. It was a relief after the mountains of
Kentucky and Tennessee and the loneliness of the Biloxi coast, to
get back to this swarming city where millions were hurrying to and
fro, and where one's misery as well as one's prosperity was
apparently swallowed up in an inconceivable mass of life. A subway
was being built. The automobile, which only a few years before was
having a vague, uncertain beginning, was now attaining a tremendous
vogue. Magnificent cars of new design were everywhere. From the
ferry-house in Jersey City he could see notable changes in the
skyline, and a single walk across Twenty-third Street and up
Seventh Avenue showed him a changing world—great hotels, great
apartment houses, a tremendous crush of vainglorious life which was
moulding the city to its desires. It depressed him greatly, for he
had always hoped to be an integral part of this magnificence and
display and now he was not—might never be again.

It was still raw and cold, for the spring was just beginning to
break, and Eugene was compelled to buy a light overcoat, his own
imperishable great coat having been left behind, and he had no
other fit to wear. Appearances, he thought, demanded this. He had
spent forty of his closely-guarded one hundred and seventy-five
dollars coming from Biloxi to New York, and now an additional
fifteen was required for this coat, leaving him one hundred and
twenty-five dollars with which to begin his career anew. He was
greatly worried as to the outcome, but curiously also he had an
abiding subconscious feeling that it could not be utterly
destructive to him.

He rented a cheap room in a semi-respectable neighborhood in
West Twenty-fourth Street near Eleventh Avenue solely because he
wanted to keep out of the run of intellectual life and hide until
he could get on his feet. It was an old and shabby residence in an
old and shabby red brick neighborhood such as he had drawn in one
of his views, but it was not utterly bad. The people were poor but
fairly intellectual. He chose this particular neighborhood with all
its poverty because it was near the North River where the great
river traffic could be seen, and where, because of some open lots
in which were stored wagons, his one single west window gave him a
view of all this life. About the corner in Twenty-third Street, in
another somewhat decayed residence, was a moderate priced
restaurant and boarding house. Here he could get a meal for
twenty-five cents. He cared nothing for the life that was about
him. It was cheap, poor, from a money point of view, dingy, but he
would not be here forever he hoped. These people did not know him.
Besides the number 552 West 24th Street did not sound bad. It might
be one of the old neighborhoods with which New York was dotted, and
which artists were inclined to find and occupy.

After he had secured this room from a semi-respectable Irish
landlady, a dock weigher's wife, he decided to call upon M.
Charles. He knew that he looked quite respectable as yet, despite
his poverty and decline. His clothes were good, his overcoat new,
his manner brisk and determined. But what he could not see was that
his face in its thin sallowness, and his eyes with their
semi-feverish lustre bespoke a mind that was harassed by trouble of
some kind. He stood outside the office of Kellner and Son in Fifth
Avenue—a half block from the door, wondering whether he should go
in, and just what he should say. He had written to M. Charles from
time to time that his health was bad and that he couldn't
work—always that he hoped to be better soon. He had always hoped
that a reply would come that another of his pictures had been sold.
One year had gone and then two, and now a third was under way and
still he was not any better. M. Charles would look at him
searchingly. He would have to bear his gaze unflinchingly. In his
present nervous state this was difficult and yet he was not without
a kind of defiance even now. He would force himself back into favor
with life sometime.

He finally mustered up his courage and entered and M. Charles
greeted him warmly.

"This certainly is good,—to see you again. I had almost given up
hope that you would ever come back to New York. How is your health
now? And how is Mrs. Witla? It doesn't seem as though it had been
three years. You're looking excellent. And how is painting going
now? Getting to the point where you can do something again?"

Eugene felt for the moment as though M. Charles believed him to
be in excellent condition, whereas that shrewd observer of men was
wondering what could have worked so great a change. Eugene appeared
to be eight years older. There were marked wrinkles between his
eyes and an air of lassitude and weariness. He thought to himself,
"Why, this man may possibly be done for artistically. Something has
gone from him which I noted the first time I met him: that fire and
intense enthusiasm which radiated force after the fashion of an
arclight. Now he seems to be seeking to draw something in,—to save
himself from drowning as it were. He is making a voiceless appeal
for consideration. What a pity!"

The worst of it all was that in his estimation nothing could be
done in such a case. You couldn't do anything for an artist who
could do nothing for himself. His art was gone. The sanest thing
for him to do would be to quit trying, go at some other form of
labor and forget all about it. It might be that he would recover,
but it was a question. Nervous breakdowns were not infrequently
permanent.

Eugene noticed something of this in his manner. He couldn't tell
exactly what it was, but M. Charles seemed more than ordinarily
preoccupied, careful and distant. He wasn't exactly chilly in his
manner, but reserved, as though he were afraid he might be asked to
do something which he could not very well do.

"I noticed that the Paris scenes did not do very well either
here or in Paris," observed Eugene with an air of nonchalance, as
though it were a matter of small importance, at the same time
hoping that he would have some favorable word. "I had the idea that
they would take better than they did. Still I don't suppose I ought
to expect everything to sell. The New York ones did all right."

"They did very well indeed, much better than I expected. I
didn't think as many would be sold as were. They were very new and
considerably outside the lines of current interest. The Paris
pictures, on the other hand, were foreign to Americans in the wrong
sense. By that I mean they weren't to be included in that genre art
which comes from abroad, but is not based on any locality and is
universal in its appeal—thematically speaking. Your Paris pictures
were, of course, pictures in the best sense to those who see art as
color and composition and idea, but to the ordinary lay mind they
were, I take it, merely Paris scenes. You get what I mean. In that
sense they were foreign, and Paris has been done illustratively
anyhow. You might have done better with London or Chicago. Still
you have every reason to congratulate yourself. Your work made a
distinct impression both here and in France. When you feel able to
return to it I have no doubt you will find that time has done you
no harm."

He tried to be polite and entertaining, but he was glad when
Eugene went away again.

The latter turned out into the street disconsolate. He could see
how things were. He was down and out for the present and would have
to wait.

The next thing was to see what could be done with the other art
dealers and the paintings that were left. There were quite a number
of them. If he could get any reasonable price at all he ought to be
able to live quite awhile—long enough anyhow to get on his feet
again. When they came to his quiet room and were unpacked by him in
a rather shamefaced and disturbed manner and distributed about,
they seemed wonderful things. Why, if the critics had raved over
them and M. Charles had thought they were so fine, could they not
be sold? Art dealers would surely buy them! Still, now that he was
on the ground again and could see the distinctive art shops from
the sidewalks his courage failed him. They were not running after
pictures. Exceptional as he might be, there were artists in
plenty—good ones. He could not run to other well known art dealers
very well for his work had become identified with the house of
Kellner and Son. Some of the small dealers might buy them but they
would not buy them all—probably one or two at the most, and that at
a sacrifice. What a pass to come to!—he, Eugene Witla, who three
years before had been in the heyday of his approaching prosperity,
wondering as he stood in the room of a gloomy side-street house how
he was going to raise money to live through the summer, and how he
was going to sell the paintings which had seemed the substance of
his fortune but two years before. He decided that he would ask
several of the middle class dealers whether they would not come and
look at what he had to show. To a number of the smaller dealers in
Fourth, Sixth, Eighth Avenues and elsewhere he would offer to sell
several outright when necessity pinched. Still he had to raise
money soon. Angela could not be left at Blackwood indefinitely.

He went to Jacob Bergman, Henry LaRue, Pottle Frères and asked
if they would be interested to see what he had. Henry Bergman, who
was his own manager, recalled his name at once. He had seen the
exhibition but was not eager. He asked curiously how the pictures
of the first and second exhibitions had sold, how many there were
of them, what prices they brought. Eugene told him.

"You might bring one or two here and leave them on sale. You
know how that is. Someone might take a fancy to them. You never can
tell."

He explained that his commission was twenty-five per cent, and
that he would report when a sale was made. He was not interested to
come and see them. Eugene could select any two pictures he pleased.
It was the same with Henry LaRue and Pottle Frères, though the
latter had never heard of him. They asked him to show them one of
his pictures. Eugene's pride was touched the least bit by this lack
of knowledge on their part, though seeing how things were going
with him he felt as though he might expect as much and more.

Other art dealers he did not care to trust with his paintings on
sale, and he was now ashamed to start carrying them about to the
magazines, where at least one hundred and twenty-five to one
hundred and fifty per picture might be expected for them, if they
were sold at all. He did not want the magazine art world to think
that he had come to this. His best friend was Hudson Dula, and he
might no longer be Art Director of
Truth
. As a matter of
fact Dula was no longer there. Then there were Jan Jansen and
several others, but they were no doubt thinking of him now as a
successful painter. It seemed as though his natural pride were
building insurmountable barriers for him. How was he to live if he
could not do this and could not paint? He decided on trying the
small art dealers with a single picture, offering to sell it
outright. They might not recognize him and so might buy it direct.
He could accept, in such cases, without much shock to his pride,
anything which they might offer, if it were not too little.

He tried this one bright morning in May, and though it was not
without result it spoiled the beautiful day for him. He took one
picture, a New York scene, and carried it to a third rate art
dealer whose place he had seen in upper Sixth Avenue, and without
saying anything about himself asked if he would like to buy it. The
proprietor, a small, dark individual of Semitic extraction, looked
at him curiously and at his picture. He could tell from a single
look that Eugene was in trouble, that he needed money and that he
was anxious to sell his picture. He thought of course that he would
take anything for it and he was not sure that he wanted the picture
at that. It was not very popular in theme, a view of a famous Sixth
Avenue restaurant showing behind the track of the L road, with a
driving rain pouring in between the interstices of light. Years
after this picture was picked up by a collector from Kansas City at
an old furniture sale and hung among his gems, but this morning its
merits were not very much in evidence.

"I see that you occasionally exhibit a painting in your window
for sale. Do you buy originals?"

"Now and again," said the man indifferently—"not often. What
have you?"

"I have an oil here that I painted not so long ago. I
occasionally do these things. I thought maybe you would like to buy
it."

The proprietor stood by indifferently while Eugene untied the
string, took off the paper and stood the picture up for inspection.
It was striking enough in its way but it did not appeal to him as
being popular. "I don't think it's anything that I could sell
here," he remarked, shrugging his shoulders. "It's good, but we
don't have much call for pictures of any kind. If it were a
straight landscape or a marine or a figure of some kind—. Figures
sell best. But this—I doubt if I could get rid of it. You might
leave it on sale if you want to. Somebody might like it. I don't
think I'd care to buy it."

"I don't care to leave it on sale," replied Eugene irritably.
Leave one of his pictures in a cheap side-street art store—and that
on sale! He would not. He wanted to say something cutting in reply
but he curbed his welling wrath to ask,

"How much do you think it would be worth if you did want
it?"

"Oh," replied the proprietor, pursing his lips reflectively,
"not more than ten dollars. We can't ask much for anything we have
on view here. The Fifth Avenue stores take all the good trade."

Eugene winced. Ten dollars! Why, what a ridiculous sum! What was
the use of coming to a place like this anyhow? He could do better
dealing with the art directors or the better stores. But where were
they? Whom could he deal with? Where were there any stores much
better than this outside the large ones which he had already
canvassed. He had better keep his pictures and go to work now at
something else. He only had thirty-five of them all told and at
this rate he would have just three hundred and fifty dollars when
they were all gone. What good would that do him? His mood and this
preliminary experience convinced him that they could not be sold
for any much greater sum. Fifteen dollars or less would probably be
offered and he would be no better off at the end. His pictures
would be gone and he would have nothing. He ought to get something
to do and save his pictures. But what?

To a man in Eugene's position—he was now thirty-one years of
age, with no training outside what he had acquired in developing
his artistic judgment and ability—this proposition of finding
something else which he could do was very difficult. His mental
sickness was, of course, the first great bar. It made him appear
nervous and discouraged and so more or less objectionable to anyone
who was looking for vigorous healthy manhood in the shape of an
employee. In the next place, his look and manner had become
decidedly that of the artist—refined, retiring, subtle. He also had
an air at times of finicky standoffishness, particularly in the
presence of those who appeared to him commonplace or who by their
look or manner appeared to be attempting to set themselves over
him. In the last place, he could think of nothing that he really
wanted to do—the idea that his art ability would come back to him
or that it ought to serve him in this crisis, haunting him all the
time. Once he had thought he might like to be an art director; he
was convinced that he would be a good one. And another time he had
thought he would like to write, but that was long ago. He had never
written anything since the Chicago newspaper specials, and several
efforts at concentrating his mind for this quickly proved to him
that writing was not for him now. It was hard for him to formulate
an intelligent consecutive-idea'd letter to Angela. He harked back
to his old Chicago days and remembering that he had been a
collector and a driver of a laundry wagon, he decided that he might
do something of that sort. Getting a position as a street-car
conductor or a drygoods clerk appealed to him as possibilities. The
necessity of doing something within regular hours and in a routine
way appealed to him as having curative properties. How should he
get such a thing?

If it had not been for the bedeviled state of his mind this
would not have been such a difficult matter, for he was physically
active enough to hold any ordinary position. He might have appealed
frankly and simply to M. Charles or Isaac Wertheim and through
influence obtained something which would have tided him over, but
he was too sensitive to begin with and his present weakness made
him all the more fearful and retiring. He had but one desire when
he thought of doing anything outside his creative gift, and that
was to slink away from the gaze of men. How could he, with his
appearance, his reputation, his tastes and refinement, hobnob with
conductors, drygoods clerks, railroad hands or drivers? It wasn't
possible—he hadn't the strength. Besides all that was a thing of
the past, or he thought it was. He had put it behind him in his art
student days. Now to have to get out and look for a job! How could
he? He walked the streets for days and days, coming back to his
room to see if by any chance he could paint yet, writing long,
rambling, emotional letters to Angela. It was pitiful. In fits of
gloom he would take out an occasional picture and sell it, parting
with it for ten or fifteen dollars after he had carried it
sometimes for miles. His one refuge was in walking, for somehow he
could not walk and feel very, very bad. The beauty of nature, the
activity of people entertained and diverted his mind. He would come
back to his room some evenings feeling as though a great change had
come over him, as though he were going to do better now; but this
did not last long. A little while and he would be back in his old
mood again. He spent three months this way, drifting, before he
realized that he must do something—that fall and winter would be
coming on again in a little while and he would have nothing at
all.

In his desperation he first attempted to get an art
directorship, but two or three interviews with publishers of
magazines proved to him pretty quickly that positions of this
character were not handed out to the inexperienced. It required an
apprenticeship, just as anything else did, and those who had
positions in this field elsewhere had the first call. His name or
appearance did not appear to strike any of these gentlemen as
either familiar or important in any way. They had heard of him as
an illustrator and a painter, but his present appearance indicated
that this was a refuge in ill health which he was seeking, not a
vigorous, constructive position, and so they would have none of
him. He next tried at three of the principal publishing houses, but
they did not require anyone in that capacity. Truth to tell he knew
very little of the details and responsibilities of the position,
though he thought he did. After that there was nothing save
drygoods stores, street-car registration offices, the employment
offices of the great railroads and factories. He looked at sugar
refineries, tobacco factories, express offices, railroad freight
offices, wondering whether in any of these it would be possible for
him to obtain a position which would give him a salary of ten
dollars a week. If he could get that, and any of the pictures now
on show with Jacob Bergman, Henry LaRue and Pottle Frères should be
sold, he could get along. He might even live on this with Angela if
he could sell an occasional picture for ten or fifteen dollars. But
he was paying seven dollars a week for nothing save food and room,
and scarcely managing to cling to the one hundred dollars which had
remained of his original traveling fund after he had paid all his
opening expenses here in New York. He was afraid to part with all
his pictures in this way for fear he would be sorry for it after a
while.

Work is hard to get under the most favorable conditions of
health and youth and ambition, and the difficulties of obtaining it
under unfavorable ones need not be insisted on. Imagine if you can
the crowds of men, forty, fifty, one hundred strong, that wait at
the door of every drygoods employment office, every street-car
registration bureau, on the special days set aside for considering
applications, at every factory, shop or office where an
advertisement calling for a certain type of man or woman was
inserted in the newspapers. On a few occasions that Eugene tried or
attempted to try, he found himself preceded by peculiar groups of
individuals who eyed him curiously as he approached, wondering, as
he thought, whether a man of his type could be coming to apply for
a job. They seemed radically different from himself to his mind,
men with little education and a grim consciousness of the
difficulties of life; young men, vapid looking men, shabby, stale,
discouraged types—men who, like himself, looked as though they had
seen something very much better, and men who looked as though they
had seen things a great deal worse. The evidence which frightened
him was the presence of a group of bright, healthy, eager looking
boys of nineteen, twenty, twenty-one and twenty-two who, like
himself when he first went to Chicago years before, were everywhere
he went. When he drew near he invariably found it impossible to
indicate in any way that he was looking for anything. He couldn't.
His courage failed him; he felt that he looked too superior;
self-consciousness and shame overcame him.