Life — December 2, 1915 — page 35: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Christmas Life DHissers and False Alarms By Harry Grant Dart Bertram, the Artist HE batch of contributions received by the President of the United States from admirers one morning contained a pair of pulse-warmers knitted by a Michigan woman one hundred and two years old, three walking-sticks whittled from bits of the frigate Con- stitution and other historical timber, one highly ornate and illuminative sofa cushion in which the horrors of the battle between the Monitor and Merrimac were recalled in zephyrs by a Maryland school teacher, one nine-ounce egg laid by a fifteen-ounce New Hampshire hen, one brass tack with the Lord’s prayer engraved upon its head by a Maine jeweler and a handsome walnut-framed crayon portrait of himself, accompanied by a letter explaining that Ber- tram Caulkins, fifteen years old, of Hopeville, Ohio, who had never taken a lesson in his life, was its author. When this important work of art had been stored with eighty-four similar ones in the basement of the Executive Mansion, the President’s secretary informed Bertram by polite note that the head of the nation was both grateful and pleased with the noble gift, and the letter was framed and hung in the Caulkins parlor. That the young artist's parents and friends were proud ‘of him can, of course. be understood, and when he fol- lowed up this achievement by winning with his copy of “Pharaoh's Horses” the prize for “best free-hand draw- ing” at the County Fair, people supposed to be informed were free in their predictions that he would some day make Michael Angelo and Howard Chandler Christy look like fence decorators, At a conference held behind closed doors in the Caulkins’s dining-room it was voted that Ber- tram’s remarkable talent should be developed in a larger town, and Grandma Caulkins, who had money, was. par- tially blind and consequently unable to discern what had been done to her in crayon over the parlor mantle, was persuaded to finance the undertaking. A drawing of the Roger's group “ Weighing the Baby” was made and sent to the Art Students’ League in New York, and in due time word was received that Bertram was cligible to matriculate in this famed institution. Aunt Ida, married and living in the metropolis, agreed to house him and his aspirations, and he was shipped forward and made comfortable in the hall bedroom. At the League Bertram was placed in the preparatory class and allowed to occupy a stool in front of a plaster foot which resembled a chirgpodist’s advertisement. In the alcove with him were seven other enthusiasts engaged in portraying the beauty hidden in block hands and feet, and to his right sat a blond maiden who chewed gum and handled her stick of charcoal exactly as though she were toasting marshmallows. She casually inquired of him the condition of crops in the section from which he had just come, and a young man to his left, who wore purple socks, pestered him with inquiries containing the name of the firm of tent-makers that built his trousers. On his third day in the class the alcove was visited by an instructor who made an old lady cry, the marshmallow toaster pout, and told Bertram that he probably had as much art in him as there were coal-tar products to be found in a citron. A leak sprang in the compartment where Ber- tram’s confidence was stored, but the young man with the soniferous socks assured him that the instructor was only a “half portion at an Automat lunch” and shouldn't be taken seriously, Bertram distinguished himself in a baked- apple fight, won the confidence and admiration of his fel- low students in a rough-house with the life class and was told at the end of the term that when he returned in the fall he might go into the antique and get on intimate terms with Moses and the Winged Victory. During his vacation about the only person in Hopeville who couldn't see Bertram and his art was Agnes, the daughter of Bertram’s pastor. She didn’t know Michael Angelo from the Man With the Iron Mask and wasn’t sure that Raphael wasn’t the name of an orchid. At the Sunday-school picnics when he would open his sketch book, select a prominent position on some handy rock and in front of an admiring throng proceed to malign the landscape, she was never of the party. She told him his airs made her sick, but admitted that were he to have his hair cut so that she could once more see his face there was a chance of her renewing an interest in him that was then dormant. . . . And Bertram loved Agnes. During the next season at the League Bertram made rapid progress. He won a Fakir’s prize, had the funniest costume at the students’ ball and learned to know that Bouguereau was a false alarm and Messonier nothing but a cheap illustrator, He learned to talk “values” and “mass,” worship Whistler, understand what Matisse was trying to get at and hate Sir Frederick Leighton, He prepared a sketch for the composition contest—“ God's Armies Before Nineveh as the subject—and although the marshmallow toaster insisted that “God's Armies” looked like a body of exempt firemen entirely forsaken by the Maker, it was as good as others submitted and’ better than the majority. At the end of that term he made the life class and the acquaintance of Fred and Mortimer. Fred had been studying at the League four years and Mortimer seven, They intended to go to Paris some day, but in the meantime were happy in the studio they occu- pied together. They had room for one more, and Bertram was induced to leave Aunt Ida’s and join them. Inciden- tally, Aunt Ida bore up under the shock of his departure comicbooks.com