XXXII

Ever since the receipt of my father's letter, G.B. and I had been checking up on every department of Yale, trying to find one that presented no such obstacle to enrolement as an entrance examination. We read printed matter of all kinds concerning Academic Yale, Scientific Yale, Legal Yale—even Yale in China.

Our tour of university inspection ended at the Art School. G.B. was interested in the Jarvis collection of Italian Tryptics; but the Trumbull battle pictures of the War of Independence, and the cowpuncher bronzes of Frederick Remington, a former Art School student, made more of a hit with me than the bored looking Italian saints and angels or the headless Elgin marbles in the gallery of casts.

In the basement we found a friendly student of the sculpture class, Martino, by name, casting a portrait bust. We questioned him while he splashed blue plaster and then white over the clay model until the little squares of tin, stuck in the clay to divide the mould, had almost disappeared. When Martino had finished he showed us the sculpture classroom and took us to the private studio of the absent professor, Lee Lawrie, where he uncovered clay models of saints that Mr. Lawrie was working on for the reredos of Saint Thomas' Church in New York. We also saw the plaster models that were to be carved in stone for the East Academic Building at West Point. One of these, with a crown of thorns on his helmet, brought back Leinster Road memories of Coeur-de-Lion and the crusades. It represented Godefroy de Bouillon, Jerusalem's crusader king, whose bones are reputed to lie beneath that iron grill you walk over to enter the Holy Sepulchre. Godefroy impressed me more than the Trumbull battle scenes or the Remington cowboys and roughriders. Perhaps sentiment had something to do with this; but I have a photograph of the sculpture, and it looks quite as good to me today as it did then. I learned later that the West Point moguls had shorn the hero of his thorny crown, judging it blasphemous—howbeit historical.

"Well, son, what do you say?" said G.B. when we got out.

"I want to be a sculptor," I said without hesitation.

* * * *

In due time I was drawing blocked heads, blocked hands and blocked feet in company with other first-year students, and drawing these highly simplified representations of human parts with less proficiency than the rest of my classmates.

My album of sketches, exhibited proudly by G.B., had been coldly received by Professor Edwin C. Taylor, the chief drawing instructor, who also fulfilled many of the functions of the director, Professor Weir, then getting on in years. Mr. Taylor said these sketches were the sort of thing they used in the undergraduate bi-weekly and occasionally humorous publication, The Yale Record. Mr. Taylor was tall, with deepset eyes. He reminded me somewhat of pictures I had seen of James J. Corbett. If those of us who studied under him learned nothing it was through no fault of his; he took pains with all of us. But I was too anxious to pass over these early stages, not yet realizing the necensity of a thorough foundation in drawing as a preparation for an artistic career. The sculpture class being my aim, I looked forward to meeting Mr. Lawrie, though Mr. Taylor told me quite frankly it would betyping error in original - a waste. waste of time to study sculpture before I had learned the first principles of construction. One day at noon I had an interview with Mr. Lawrie in his shirtsleeves. Mr. Lawrie had very square shoulders and narrow hips. His head was round and his face made me think of a North American Indian. He combed his hair down over his forehead like Phil May, or it grew that way. His voice was deep, and when he said anything you felt it must be so, for he looked you straight in the face while he talked to you and his eyes had the same authority as his voice. After seeing my sketches he said that I would have to study drawing before joining his class. By drawing, he said he meant construction, and it did not matter whether I intended to express myself through the mediums of sculpture or painting, a knowledge of construction was indispensable. He said it would be just as logical to try and sculpt without this foundation as it would be to attempt to remove an appendix without surgical training. Some of my sketches made him laugh, but, like Mr. Taylor, he was of the opinion that cleverness was a detriment; and, if I wished to become a sculptor of sacred or profane subjects I would have to get down to fundamentals.

Five months passed before I qualified for his class. Students whose talent I thought mediocre qualified before me, but like Yentz, the art school janitor, who painted Montichelli's and Monet's in his spare time, I refused to be discouraged.

Two friends of mine, Miller and McGregor, who had started off in the 1914 academic class, but had been dropped from it, joined the sculpture class the day I did. They shared rooms and a Mercer roadster and my own profound dislike of academic study.They, too, had been drawing blocked heads, and with even less enthusiasm than I. To vary the monotony of this occupation we occasionally attended lectures by Professor William Lyon Phelps, who had tagged and docketed English literature, and could point out the merits or shortcomings of author or book with a clarity that pierced the nebulae of the foggiest minds. We spent some time, too, in the Peabody Museum, drowsing through lectures, examining the specimens, from the gigantic vertebrae of the dinosaur in the basement, which Miller claimed were too big to be on the level, to the smaller relics in the exhibition rooms that opened off the iron stairway.

Professor Saunderson had two attractive daughters who attended the Art School. They invited the three of us to tea one Sunday, and after that I often went to their father's French class. But Miller and McGregor said if any Frog wanted to talk to them he could learn American, so I went alone.

We used to eat at Dwight Hall, Heub's, the Vanderbilt or the Eli Lunch, or even in the Taft grille when Miller's allowance came. We elbowed seniors at Mory's and Hughy's and tramped the campus hatless—a privilege reserved for the senior scademic class—and got away with it because no one but campus cop Jim Donnelly ever placed us definitely enough to interfere with us, and Jim never tried to.

Unlike the drawing classes, which were divided into elementary, antique, and life classes, Mr. Lawrie's pupils all worked in the same big classroom in the Art School basement.

Our first task was copying a plaster hand of the blocked variety. Miller's attempt was not a success, mine little better. McGregor gave it up. Wednesday was criticism day. Mr. Lawrie looked over what we had done and told us to begin again. He told McGregor if he had nothing ready by Saturday he would be dropped from the class. McGregor was worried because his folks expected him to stay at Yale, and classes of some kind had to be attended in order to do so. Earl and I worked hard for two days and made some progress, but McGregor had no idea how to begin. On Saturday Mr. Lawrie saw some improvement in Miller's work and in mine. Then he went over to the stand where McGregor was working away diligently with downcast eyes and very red ears.

Mr. Lawrie called Miller and me over.

"Take a look at this," he said, and to McGregor, "I didn't think you had it in you, McGregor. You've done a pretty fine job."

He walked back to my stand, and after observing my attempt for some moments said:

"Beside McGregor's, this hand is formless. Miller's is worse. If McGregor can do it, there's no reason why you fellows can't....Look here, this wrist—"

He thrust a modeling tool into the plasteline.

"Let me see the plaster original."

Miller looked at me. We started looking for the hand. Everyone in the class started looking for it. No trace of it was to be found.

"If some one has broken that cast!" said Mr. Lawrie. "Look in the dustbin, McGregor ....Let it go, let it go."

He went over to McGregor's stand.

"Now here," he said. "There's solid construction under this."

He rapped McGregor's proud green plasteline hand with the wire end of the modeling tool. The hand gave forth a hollow sound quite foreign to plasteline. Mr. Lawrie made a dig into the hand, but the tool turned and a whiteness appeared under the plasteline.

He looked at McGregor whose ears got redder, and then began to scrape away the thin coating of plasteline with which McGregor had smeared the missing plaster original.

"McGregor, I've got to hand it to you," he said. "The idea was a bird. But you can't tell me you need my help in making adaptations of this kind. Why waste perfectly good money on class fees?"