Rupert Hughes

“ He and the artist exchanged rapid-fire chatter that evidently sent Memling into the seventh heaven of pride. Later he said to Nellie:
“The old man’s a bad painter, but he’s a good judge of what other people do.”
“Not knocking your own woik, at all,” Nellie had to say. But Memling was soaring too loftily to be brought down by any little shaft of irony.
The next morning he was up with the sun, for artists are Parsees by profession; they must serve in the temple of light while their god is there. ”

“ Memling vowed.
“Do what again?”
“Use forethought and caution, and all that sort of thing. Every time I take old Father Time by the forelock, he knees me in the stomach. Never in my life did I set out extra early to make a train that I didn’t get left.”
“There’s sumpum in what you say, Doik,” Nellie philosophized. “Trust to luck and you got a chance—not much, but some. But use your brain and it seems like you was challengin’ the Fates to a duel. They feel they gotta show you what a woim you really are.” ”

“ That art dealer said I was a bad painter. Those art dealers always say that of truly great painters at first. What if I should paint so much better than the men whose pictures I’m to disguise, that I should feel it my duty to art not to rub out my own pictures?”
“Well, I should worry!”
V. In the emerald depths of Fontainebleau Forest, Memling sat painting the portrait of an ancient oak, a veritable grand duke of a tree. Nellie was sitting on the turf, watching him. ”

“ When it comes to art, commend us to Dirk Memling. If he paints a picture it is a real painting, not a daub. His heart is in it; his soul. This is the story of how, during his stay in the beautiful city on the Seine, he painted, alas, too well
IF I’d ’a’ been slammed ashore on Robinson Caruso’s island all by me lonesome, I couldn’t feel lonesomer than what I feel lonesome now.” Nellie Gaskell was mumbling to herself for company. Crowds surrounded her, but she knew nobody. She faced the city of Cherbourg, and was afraid of it. ”

“ Memling answered with a bow.
“Paris is doin’ you good already,” Nellie beamed. “Keep right on.”
“I painted a portrait of you, and showed it to old Vervins. He said: ‘You are a very poor painter, monsieur, but if you can remove what you put on, I shall do myself the honor of calling you a great artist.’”
Nellie was furious. “He’s got a noive! Why didn’t you smack his fat face off for him?” she demanded. “Telling you you weren’t a great painter. Didn’t you tell him you were a great sculptor?” ”

“ That tree ought to be carved, not painted.”
“I suppose it is hard woik, but it looks lazy; just sitting there dabbing a little brush in some colored goo and flicking it on a canvas.”
“Cracking rocks is nothing to it. The artist has to crack rocks inside his skull, and half the time he cracks his own head.”
“The woist of it is, you’re woikin’ as hard as if it was to be poimanent, when you’re going to rub it all off as soon as you get to America. Why don’t you just slap on any old thing?”
“A true artist’s conscience nags the life out of him, Nellie. ”

“ Memling sniffed. “Great artists don’t try to do that sort of thing, Nellie. Novelists who know as much about art as I know about astronomy—and I can hardly tell the sun from the moon—fool novelists write that way; but great painters don’t paint that way. Great painters try to put on canvas what they see and feel, and in their own dialect. ”

“ And when Millet was young he was so poor that he couldn’t afford canvas, and he painted a new picture over an old one, just as I propose to do.”
“Art is a good business when it’s good,” Nellie concluded.
“That’s what I told that old fat cook of a Vervins. I explained to him that if he would give me a few paintings by modern masters, worth, say, a hundred thousand dollars, I could save him fifteen thousand dollars duty on them.” ”

“ He poured forth a French rhapsody which Memling translated to Nellie in the crevices of the conversation.
“He says it’s wonderful—I’ve got the texture—better than Diaz, he says—no, not the Mexican—Diaz, the immortal painter—he says Diaz’s trees were too velvety—too plushy. But he says I ought to get the human note in—just a picture of a tree is not popular—he suggests a nymph or something—a dryad—or a Watteau shepherdess—not a bad idea—fun to do, anyway.” ”

“ La Berthe felt that it would be easier to try to speak her language than to understand it, so he began:
“Mees Nellee, all las' night I am not sleep. I me remember Monsieur Memleeng his so sharmeeng painteeng. He did say to me: ‘No, no, I cannot make expose my painteeng to the Salon. I do not know nobody not at all. I have not the’—how did he say?—‘the pool.’ Now me, I am not great painter like Monsieur Memleeng.”
“Oh, Mussoo Ornery!” Nellie exclaimed.
“Pas de cérémonies, Mees Nellee. I have a nice talent, but not the grand talent. I know. ”

“ And her shoes were too tight. And her other shoes were in her trunk. And she didn’t know where her trunk was.
After the harrowing series of mishaps that had attended her efforts to reach Paris with Dirk Memling, it seemed hardly possible that Fate should have another knife up her sleeve. She and Dirk had managed to get themselves separated in New York, and take different ships oversea. That ought to have been enough. But evidently it was not. Nellie bitterly recalled her motto:
“Poik up, old goil, the woist that ever was can always get a little woisser.”
But Doik hadn’t otta not met her. ”

“ If he could lend me a painting I would paint another over it, and then remove the other painting, leaving the oth——”
“Doik, if you say another ‘other,’ I’ll soitain’y have to moider you with one of these beer saucers.”
“Well, he brought out an old canvas, a beautiful, time-mellowed masterpiece. I said: ‘It looks like a Rembrandt.’ He said: ‘It is a Rembrandt.’ I hated to risk destroying an old master—the new ones don’t count; they can paint more. ”

“ A goil will forgive a lotta hard woids as long as a man feeds her good afterward.”
They found their bicycles where they had laid them—for the bicycle is still popular round Fontainebleau—and went rolling out of the forest-cool into the sun-beaten roads that led across the levels and down the steep hill to the little village of Montigny on the tiny river Loing, whose name Nellie could never pronounce nearer than a Chinesy “ler-wang.” ”

“ I got into the main station at Cherbourg a few minutes ago, and took a cab to the dock, hoping against hope that you would have stayed. And you did. God bless you, you did!”
“I’ve loined that when you say ‘Meet me at a soitain spot,’ that’s the spot I’m supposed to meet you at.”
“Weren’t you worried sick?”
“Oh, no; I was simply in a Toikish bath, that’s all. But the main thing is, we’ve met up again. Let’s get a pair of handcuffs and lock ourselves together, and throw the key away, so we won’t lose us any more.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Memling, locking hands with her. “Jump in the cab.” ”

“ Meissonier sold one of his pictures for fifty thousand dollars while he was alive, and Millet’s ‘Angelus’ was sold to America for over a hundred thousand dollars fourteen years after his death, and a year later it was bought back by a Frenchman for three-quarters of a million francs. ”