As Vera progressed, her understanding of art becoming higher and higher, new figures appeared, some of them grossly uncouth, either naturally so or by affectation. She discovered a sculptor who brought his things with him to be admired,--small ones in his pockets, larger ones in his arms. I could not understand them. They resembled the monstrosities children dream of when they need paregoric. He had been stoker, prize-fighter, mason, poet, tramp,--heaven knows what!--with this marvellous gift inside of him all the time. He wore brogans, trousers that sagged, a shirt open to the middle of his hairy chest, a red handkerchief around his neck and often no hat at all.
Vera seemed quite mad about him. She took me one day to his studio, saying particularly that she had never been there. It was a small room at the top of a palsied fire trap near Gramercy Park, reached by many turnings through dark hallways with sudden steps up and down. In it, besides the sculptor in a gunny-sack smock, there was nothing but some planks laid over the tops of barrels, some heaps of clay, and his things, which he called pieces of form. On the walls, scrawled in pencil, were his social engagements, all with women. Vera’s name was there.
Once he came to tea with nothing of his own to show, but from under his coat he produced and held solemnly aloft an object which proved to be a stuffed toy beast,--dog, cow, bear or what you couldn’t tell, it was so battered. One of its shoe-button eyes, one ear and the tail were gone. Its hide was cotton flannel, now the color of grimy hands.
He wouldn’t tell until he had found something to stand it on. A book would serve. Then he held it out at arm’s length.
“I found it on the East Side in a rag picker’s place!” he said. “I seem to see something in it ... what?... a force ... something elemental ... something.”
The respect with which this twaddle was received by a sane company, some of it distinguished, even by Vera herself, filled me with indignation.
Later the sculptor sat by me and asked ingratiatingly how matters were in Wall Street.
“You are the third man who has asked me that question today,” I said. “Why are artists so much interested in Wall Street?”
“I’m not,” he said. “I only thought it was a proper question to ask. Some of them are. I hear them talking about it. Pictures sell better when people are making money in Wall Street. Sculpture never sells anyway. Mine won’t.”