Edward Simmons

“ There was a clash of cymbals, bright lights, music, gayly decorated banners, and maidens dancing joyously. Again they proceeded to the burial ground where, after curious incantations had been performed over the grave—to the astonishment of everyone who saw it—the soul of the football detached itself from its resting place and rose grandly and sedately to the heavens!
It seems to me that we cannot overestimate the importance of eating and drinking, for out of these desires of the human body have come most of the clever ideas of the world. ”

“ One cannot pass gayly by in a motor car and give a careless nod of approbation, but one must alight (let us hope from one of those old-fashioned rickety open barouches, driven by the last of the negro coachmen) and proceed up the narrowest, most delightful little path, overgrown with shrubs and bushes, where at the top of a knoll and carefully concealed from common gaze is the Sphinx. Like the pilgrims to the ancient shrines, one wishes one had courage to go back and approach this beauty of all time and no time, upon one’s bended knees. ”

“ In Canfield’s time, Clarence Luce had managed to transform the interior until it was quite a gem in its way. Entering by the big swing door, one stepped into a small vestibule done in Numidian marble. In the ceiling were five rhomboidal panels of thin jade behind which were lights casting a soft glow, Oriental in its effect (one might imagine it to be Cleopatra’s bedroom) , and giving a thrill of mystery right at the start.
Before one was a solemn door and the usual grill with a bell. Upon ringing, a huge negro peeked through, and one was admitted if one were a friend. ”

“ That damned realism made such a direct appeal to my vanity as a painter, and, flouting all traditions, I shouted, with the assurance of ignorance, “Vive la Nature!” “Nature,” my boy—that cry was a piece of bad luck for me. My friend, our little society was as refractory as you like. Oh, why wasn’t I a pupil of Ingres?—How safely he would have led us!
Drawing! by Jove! Color—color is vice. Certainly it can be and has the right to be one of the finest virtues. ”

“ Big Business in New York has wiped out the homes of the people and sent them in a frantic rush hither and thither in search of a place to live. Always there is that uprooting, due to the steady march of the threatening skyscraper up the island of Manhattan. As in the case of the cyclone, however, verdant places are left behind in this barren desert of commerce, little green spots which remain an eternal blessing and evidence that there were once normal human beings here who thought and had time to care for beauty. One such place is Gramercy Park. ”

“ Even the weather frowns on you, making you feel that you are not wanted. But in Paris, the very first man you meet, from the cab driver to the waiter in the café, is very glad to see you and gives you the impression that you are his personal guest. On the north side of the Channel, the Atlantic Ocean roars like an infuriated bull, while on the south side it hurls itself against the coast like an angry woman. In fact, all the male characteristics are those of London—dignity, strength, coarseness, and brute force—but in Paris there is never a trace of these. There is only charm. ”

“ Considering that I had heard of this poet in his youth, marching through the streets of 167Cambridge with the young woman to whom he was betrothed, draped in white, with wreaths upon their heads, and the people in the procession cheering, as a tribute to virginity, I could not help but think: Is it better, I wonder, for a young man to be lacking in deference or a sense of humor? ”

“ If I had the task of taking to Europe one thing as the best work of art of America, I should take the tomb from the Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, which was created by those three artists—Saint-Gaudens, Stanford White, and Henry Adams. Nothing we have made in this country as yet, whether paint, carving, or architecture, can equal it. This figure, an expression of the idea of death, marks, I am told, the last resting place of the wife of Henry Adams, but there is no name and no commemoration to any individual, no signature of artist or architect ”

“ All at once, out of the dampness comes a new odor, something of the earth, but not of the deep earth. It is as if the plowshare had just turned over a bit of sun-warmed humus, and as your eyes become accustomed to the darkness you see that this vault, so much like a stage setting of Gordon Craig’s, has small apertures in its sides where beds of mushrooms are pushing their way out of the ground. It is in places like this that the supply for Paris is grown. ”

“ Other faults in my work were caused by my early New England environment and education. To me, modern education is like a puddle in the road—very broad, but only two inches deep—and one must remember that truth has never been said to come from a puddle. In pictures, truth dwells in deep places. There is a painting in France of “Truth Arising from a Well” and the scandalized burghers fleeing in every direction. It isn’t considered decent, even in New York, to listen to naked truth, hence the crucifixion of all geniuses, from Christ to Whistler. ”

“ The ordinary person cannot possibly realize how close to the wind an idealist often gets. To say that you are “broke” means nothing to the business man. I once heard one of them tell a painter friend of mine that it was all wrong for him to owe his washerwoman, that he should do, as all practical folk did, go down and hypothecate a bond! It is unethical for an artist (as it is for a professional man) to go into the courts or to advertise. He must not ask for work or show that he is hard up in any way, and, like the stage folk, he must hold his work at a high price. ”

“ Out West Harvard had taught me this—that I did not know a thing—not even the meaning of human life. Somehow I think a college education is of benefit to two classes of people only—those who desire to acquire a social position and those who want to get training in a certain subject. I have not the battle instinct and could never see any use in competition. If I had not come of good people I might have wanted to fight to get with good people, and that is about all college can give. ”

“ No birds in the world make real music except the nightingale and the wood thrush. The remainder whistle. Shelley’s lark is the ideal of the going to heaven and disappearing, but there is no song. This little bird in our dark wood coppice used to come out and sit on a garden post at night and commit suicide from love in such a way as nearly to tear his throat apart. ”

“ It is hard to picture New York without subways, and to think of the tired workingman reaching his home after a hard day’s work by the aid of a lumbering horse car. It seems almost incredible that so many changes have taken place in thirty years. The horses of the Fifth Avenue buses were the butt of many a joke in Life. One crossed by ferry to Brooklyn, and the city was just beginning to dig the trench on Broadway for the cable car, announcing with a loud voice that it was the first cable in America. It did no good to tell them that I rode on one in San Francisco in the ’seventies. ”

“ At each home they eat and drink, and on the seventh day an exhausted pair of lovers return home, dirty and forlorn, with their clothes—and their nerves—in tatters.
Every change of season has its corresponding duties to nature, and each one is made the occasion of a festival by the simple folk in all lands. Let the foreigner who wanders into peasant France in the autumn beware of letting himself loose among the grape gatherers. ”

“ His reply was very logical.
“No, I don’t, but when I was a boy I wanted to learn sculpture. If there had been an academy in Rome at that time, I could have gotten studio, materials, models, and all that I wanted for nothing. Let Chicago and everybody subscribe. Who are they, anyway? After one hundred years, the money will have been well spent if only one artist—say a Michael Angelo—is helped to get what he needs.” He was willing to sacrifice the whole pig-killing town if one genius could be helped. ”

“ The Spanish nature is a mixture of politeness and cruelty. There is something to excite the blood every day. I have seen them gather together all the stray dogs and give them poison, then heap them up at the corners of the street. Those that are not dead escape and run away howling, and the great sport is to jerk them up on a rope, hurling them high in the air. Everyone thinks this a splendid game and the children yell with glee. But as to the manners—those of an illiterate farmer are better than the average clubman’s of New York. ”

“ Zorn never really got over the sin of water color. He was an all around artist, but hung next to Sargent’s his portraits had all the life taken out of them. He did not seem to go beneath the skin except in his etchings, which are perfect, but had a wonderful dexterity and absolute truthfulness combined with an artistic eye that refused to see anything ugly. He once did a portrait of a woman seated on a plush sofa, which looked like the traditional boarding-house affair—thumbed wood, worn, and not pleasant in color. ”

“ American Humor A humpback stood in front of Des Miriltons, a fashionable club of Paris. Day and night his pathetic figure would be seen, a piteous expression on his face, as he made his silent appeal to the men going into the building—some to try their fortune at the gaming table. The French are a superstitious race and have a thousand little ceremonies to lure the great god Luck, one of the most efficacious being to rub the hump of an enfant d’escalier—one born on a staircase. ”

“ Paint and Painters An old college friend of mine once wrote to me and asked what he should do about his son, who was in Harvard, but wished to give up college and become a painter. I answered and said: “Discourage him; discourage him to the point of starvation, for if he be sincere in his love of the fine arts, he will pay no attention to you. No man is a real artist unless he finds the impetus toward it so great that he sticks to it in spite of every deprivation.” ”

“ Red hair, of course, means a violent and ultra-passionate disposition, but Stanny never lost his temper. A delicate sensitiveness combined with a tenderness that would not be understood by the ordinary human being. I have seen him turn the color of castile soap if he had to do with any deformity or suffering. We had a mutual friend, a lovely boy, a humpback, who died never knowing that he caused horror to Stanford White. To shake that thin wasted hand would cause him to turn away his face with a green, seasick expression, but he would do anything rather than hurt the boy’s feelings. ”

“ They are called the “dyer” grape, and are used to give color to the petit vin, and assuredly give a lasting color to the poor victim. After the harvest they all come home in a tumbrel, the noise and laughter in no way indicating the former gruesome use for that vehicle.
When you have managed to tear yourself away from this interesting and strange suburb of Paris, and crossed the Seine, should you look back upon the scene of your former pleasures, you will see nothing of the villages with the red-tiled roofs, nothing of the cabbages and beets, indeed, nothing to indicate any human habitation. ”

“ I was born in the middle of the last century, when this bearded man was still a youth, and I have watched his struggles throughout the years, until, without his mother’s realizing it, he has slipped quietly from home to go out and mingle with the rest of the world, leaving her, a toothless and old grandma, to sit by the fire and dream that she is still the young mother of the cartoon. ”

“ One could hardly tell about the work of Stanford White without including something of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, for America is richer by many works of art which are the combination of the genius of these two men. Saint-Gaudens was the son of a cobbler. I believe that if an exhaustive history of the clever people of the world were written, it would be found that a large percentage had been sons of cobblers. As a boy, I used to be fascinated by a certain cobbler of the town, and while listening to his words of wisdom I learned to make, entirely with my own hands, a pair of boots. ”

“ When I left, five years later, there was an Art Club of one hundred members. The term “Cornish school” came into being from a remark of Stanhope Forbes to Whistler’s enemy, Harry Quilter, the critic, who asked:
“Why do all you men of the Cornish school paint alike?”
(They were all painters who had studied in France and learned their trade.)
“We use the same model,” answered Forbes.
“Ah, that’s it! Who is she?”
“Nature.”
Seeing this colony form in St. Ives made me study out how such things happen. The artist finds a place that is beautiful, undiscovered, and suits his pocketbook. ”

“ Men have dug out this rock, from which Paris has been made, leaving a labyrinth of paths and chambers. Every once in a while there are flashes of light very much like the glimpses of the sky that one gets from the train when going out from New York at the Grand Central Station. ”

“ I have met few actresses and have been behind the scenes in the theater only once or twice in my lifetime. Aside from paying my respects to that superb raconteur, Madame Yvette Guilbert, painting a portrait of the fascinating Nazimova, meeting Ellen Terry at tea, and being kissed by the beautiful Maxine Elliott for saying she was a better actor than her husband, I have come into personal contact with only one other—an American. ”

“ The Players The mad progress of Big Business can almost be likened to a mighty cyclone which sweeps across the countryside with destruction in its wake, but here and there leaving, quite untouched, a farm, a fruit tree, or a windmill—delightful oases—which serve as the only record of a struggling civilization. ”

“ There were fifty men; everything was in perfect taste, arranged by the best artists in America. There was remarkably good music, made by a colored orchestra, and—mirabile dictu!—no talk, no speeches, and no toasts. Every man at that dinner knew that his next-door neighbor would be a treat to talk to and a man on his feet would be an interruption. Two girls—models—in exquisite costumes, one blond and one brunette, poured the drinks, each one serving the colored wine which corresponded to her complexion. ”

“ On the other hand, the cheek of an ignorant laborer does not contain much more than a muscle for chewing, for opening and shutting the mouth, and for grinning and frowning. The muscles that give irony, humor, and sadness are not there.
One of the prominent men in America, who has a beautiful mouth, has told me that when he was a boy his family objected so to it as an unsightly thing and that for many years he had the habit of covering it with his hand whenever he expressed himself, for fear of comment. The change has been within the man himself and the mouth has echoed it. ”

“ In Concord, Massachusetts, people would have lifted their eyebrows and given him food and raiment as if he were a tramp, but indulged him in his whimsies—never! In New York, those smart society women who send their daughters out upon Fifth Avenue to beg money for various charities would most certainly have had the Emperor Norton put in an institution for the insane. ”

“ À moi, Julian!”
Instantly dozens of men sprang from all sides with cries of:
“À toi, Simmons! À toi, Simmons!”
In a second they were upon their brother Frenchmen, had downed them, and had hustled Charley White out of the room. No matter where one is in France, he can always call his class to his side; architects stick to architects, actors to actors, painters to painters, and so on. I could never convince my friend, however, that I did not employ private police.
These nights of revelry were few and far between; our evenings were spent in the studio, and I always see them in “black and white.” ”