Immortal Youth: A Study in the Will to CreatePrice, Lucien
General
Immortal Youth: A Study in the Will to Create
Price, Lucien
Demmler, Fred Adolph, 1888-1918
That golden Spring! Clandestine dinners at an obscure French café in
an obscure court, where one went because, though the food was
something less than so-so, the sauces were exotic; "clandestine"
because, behind closed shutters, they served _vin ordinaire_ without a
license. Our parties, to the disgust of Jacques, were teetotal, the
real attraction being that the joint might be pinched any minute.
On May afternoons in the Fenway, disguised in a baseball suit of gray
flannel, Fritz rejoiced as a strong man to swat the pill. The pill
swatted him one day, broke his thumb, and in the end he had to have it
rebroken and reset under ether. His first words on coming to were:
"Give me my paint box." All the nurses of his ward fell for him with a
loud crash. In all innocence he told what a lot of extra trouble they
went to for him. His friends smiled in their sleeves.
As often as there was a play of Shaw or Ibsen or Galsworthy or
Maeterlinck or Shakespeare or Synge there were expeditions to peanut
heaven. Knoblauch's _Kismet_ happened along and Fritz appropriated the
cry: "Alms! for the love of Allah" for occasions choicely
inappropriate.
When a fine May morning of blue and gold came winging over the city on
the northwest wind he would get up extra early, hustle through his
shave and cold tubbing and join me in the tramp over Beacon Hill,
across the Common, and down into Newspaper Row for breakfast at the
celebrated Spa. On the way up Chestnut Street, where the Brahmin
pundits live, the favorite sport was to crack jokes at the expense of
the sources of income which sustained these Georgian fronts and
mahogany-and-brocade interiors: here, a famous brand of ale; there,
notorious industrial nose-grinding in Fall River spinning mills--merry
clank of dividend skeleton in genteel closet.... On the Common, jocund
morning, fresh green of turf and tree, sweet breath of the earth;
sunshine, bird-song, youth, ... Spring!
And on a stool at the Spa, Fritz's provoking grin and sly banter of a
waitress who, after a good look at him, would conclude that if she was
being kidded she liked it and was cheerfully ready for more. After
which breakfast he trudged the mile and a half to the Art Museum to
see the morning and to save his father carfares.
* * * * *
It appeared that he was a walker, and not afraid of rain. He proved
it. On a May evening brewing thunder we did a dissolving view out of
the city on a train for Cape Ann. At the end of the shore road around
the Cape awaited lodgings at an inn and a midnight supper. At
Gloucester he was introduced to one of Wonson's clam chowders and we
set off at dusk.
That evening came the first inkling of his larger purpose--his higher
than personal ambition: what he would paint after his portraits
assured him a livelihood. Something was said about Pittsburgh and the
mills.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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