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