Back Aa

Marion, the Story of an Artist's Model

Close

<h2>XLI</h2> I HAD had a furious letter from Reggie the day after I arrived in New York, and we had been quarreling by letter ever since. He accused me of deliberately leaving Boston when I knew that he was coming and he said: “It was a low-down trick and I shall never forgive you.” In his anger he also wrote that perhaps the reason for my leaving was that I knew that he would find out the kind of life I had been living there. He wrote: “I met a few of your ‘friends’—a low-down bartender and a store clerk (Poor Billy Boyd’s room-mate, I suppose) and let me compliment you on your choice of associates. Your tastes certainly have not changed.” I did not answer that first letter; but he wrote me another, apologizing, and at the same time insinuating things. To that second letter I did reply, hotly. And so it went on between us. After leaving Lil’s, I found a little room on Fifteenth Street near Eighth Avenue. It was cheap and fairly comfortable and I soon got settled there. Then I started out to look up some{248} artists whose addresses had been sent to me by the Boston men. Right away I secured several engagements. I found, moreover, that my room was only a couple of blocks from what the artists called “Paresis Row” on Fourteenth Street. Here many artists occupied the upper floors, which had been turned into studios in these buildings, once the pretentious homes of the mighty rich people. On the lower floors various businesses were carried on. I was sent to a man who had a studio in Paresis Row. He was a friend of Mr. Sands and although he did not use models he said he would try and help me get work. He explained to me his own kind of painting as “old-master potboilers.” Sometimes, he said, he got a rush of orders for “old-masters” and then a number of fellows would get busy working on them. He declared humorously that he ran an “old-master” factory. As I looked at his work, I felt sure I could do that kind of painting, and I said: “Mr. Menna, would you let me try it, too?” And I told him about the work I had done for the Count and about my father, and he exclaimed: “Fine! You’re just the girl I’m looking for.” So I went to work for Mr. Menna, part of the day. I would paint in most of the start, and he would finish the pictures up; “clean them up and draw them together,” as he would say. We were{249} able this way to turn out many “old-masters.” We worked for the dealers and frame-makers, who, in order to sell a frame, put these hastily made oil paintings in and sent them out as “genuine imported paintings.” Mr. Menna and I became fast friends. He treated me just like another “fellow” and divided the profits with a generous hand. Besides helping him to paint, I acted as his agent. I would go down town and see the dealers, take orders, and sometimes sell to them the ones we made on speculation. I found out many things in the “picture business” that I had never dreamed possible, but that is another story. At times, too, I posed for Mr. Menna. He would take spells when he became disgusted with his “potboilers,” and would say he intended to do some “real stuff.” These spells never lasted long, for he would run short of money, and would start with renewed energy on the “painting business” as he disgustedly called it. He discovered that I was very good at copying, but he discouraged my doing it. He said: “There’s mighty little money in copying, unless you pass it off as the original, and although the dealers do it, and I paint for them, I’m dashed if I’ll actually sell them myself as original. It’s not honest.{250}” “But, Mr. Menna,” I argued, “isn’t it also dishonest for us to do the copying and let the dealers pass it off and sell it as original?” “Maybe it is,” he admitted, “but we don’t see them selling them to the ‘suckers’ who buy them, and damn it all, we certainly don’t get the price, so what the hell—” Mr. Menna had raised his voice, and immediately we heard: <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> “What the hell—what the hell—what the hell! Do we care—do we care—do we care!” </div> </div></div> The noise came from the studio across the hall. “It’s that bunch of fellows at Fisher’s,” said Menna, grinning. “They get together and all chip in to pay for a model. Say, how would you like to pose for them? Most of them are illustrators, and they’d want you in street clothes and things like that. You can make an extra dollar or two. Go up and see Bonnat. He generally engages the model for the other fellows. You’ve met Fisher here. He’s that little red-haired chap. Talk to him about it, too. Now I’m off for lunch and a glass of beer. Come along if you like, Ascough.” I went along with Menna. We ate in a little restaurant at the back of a saloon, corner of Eighth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. The lunch{251} costs twenty-five cents each. Menna did not eat much, but he drank four glasses of beer, and he got cross with me when I at first refused to drink. So to please him I had a glass. He said: “Now, you’re a good sport, and the beer will make you fat.” “It’s not my ambition to be fat,” I laughed back. “Get out,” he answered. “Did you hear that German fellow who was in the studio the other day, when Miss Fleming (Miss Fleming was Mr. Menna’s girl) asked him how he liked the American ladies? He said with a sad shake of his head: ‘They are too t’in. The German wimmens have the proportions,’ and he curved his hands in front of his chest as he said: ‘It is one treat to look at her.’” Menna laughed heartily. “You’re a German yourself,” I said. “Not on your life. I’m not,” denied Menna vigorously. “I’m an American. Even my folks were born here. I studied in München. That’s the place!” He shook his head and sighed. We got up to go, and Menna told me to hustle down town and see a dealer.{252} <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2