When the next vacation came around, Horace Dorsey Newson invited me to spend a few days with him at his parents' home in Llewellyn Park, Orange, New Jersey. They lived in a fine stone mansion with a round tower that gave the place a medieval look. Newson had done the interior decorating himself, and the tall Venetian columns he had picked up at the Fourth Avenue auction rooms in New York and distributed around the hall created an impressive atmosphere. The carpets were thick and silent and your feet sank in them, and silent Japanese servants in white jackets had a habit of appearing from behind the columns at unexpected moments and with startling effect. Mrs. Newson had white hair and spoke with a slight touch of the brogue. She adored Horace, who was her only son. I think she just existed while he was away in New Haven. Mr. Newson was kindly but reserved. I never got to know him very well, and I doubt if Mrs. Newson or Horace did either. Horace did not resemble his father at all, who was quite small, pale-eyed and wore a drooping white moustache. Mr. and Mrs. Newson seldom addressed each other, and at table conversation was carried on almost entirely between her, Horace and myself. When Mr. Newson spoke it was generally to the Japanese butler, or to answer one of my questions. I had been staying with the Newsons for about a week when Charles Edison, who had been at Hotchkis with Horace, dropped in to say hello. Horace asked after Charlie's father, Thomas Edison, and Charlie said if we came over in the afternoon about five we would see him. We did, in Horace's four-seated 60 h.p. Bianci, which was a caution to start, and once started, a caution to stop, for the brake-bands were worn down. When we arrived at the Edison home he got the Bianci under control after we had traversed the second flowerbed. Mrs. Edison was very nice to us as she had not seen us arrive. Before we left, Thomas A. came through the hall. Seeing that he had invented electric light and telephones and phonographs and moving pictures, I wanted to let him know that he was well thought of in Ireland, and that my aunt's husband had one of the old Edison phonographs with the cylindrical records. I caught him at the foot of the stairway and said all this to him. But he had left his hearing contraption in the laboratory; and though he smiled kindly at me and patted me on the back and shook hands with me before he went upstairs, it was only afterwards that I found out he had not heard a word I had said.
After Mr. Edison had gone Charlie invited Horace and me to go to the Edison motion picture studio in the Bronx with him the next day. The studios were at 198th Street and Decatur Avenue and when we got there we were met by one of Charlie's friends, Sumner Williams, who selected the stories and saw that the sub-titles were spelled properly—he was a Harvard man—and kept Mr. Plimpton, the manager, and the directors straight on matters of etiquette and society deportment in the Edison films. I told him I had seen a good many Edison pictures and I thought Biograph and Vitagraph pictures were better. Sumner Williams, being reserved, said I might be right, but everything was a matter of taste. Then I said I had a lot of ideas and had written two scenarios and would he like to see them. He laughed and said to send them along, which I did the next day. Charlie was staying in New York that night so he dropped us at the station and we commuted back to Orange.
Horace Dorsey Newson dressed well according to Yale standards. At his suggestion I invested more of my savings than I could afford in a couple of suits at Brooks Brothers, where he was having some clothes made. After I had paid for mine I became slightly panicky, more so on learning that the Newsons were leaving Orange for a month. But I kept it to myself, though I was worried enough when Mr. and Mrs. Newson, Horace and I and my valise and the Japanese butler piled into the four-seater Bianci. They dropped me at the station in Orange and Mrs. Newson said I would have to come and stay with them again when they got back. A suggestion that did not appear to affect Mr. Newson favorably.
Eight dollars and thirty-five cents my capital, I was lugging my suitcase from the 66th Street subway to the address of a magazine artist I had known in New Haven, and had promised to introduce me to his agent and to some of the New York editors he worked for.
My friend's studio was in a ramshackle firetrap of a building between 65th and 66th Streets on Broadway, the Lincoln Arcade. Downstairs, Mr. Marcus Loew presented a variety program, and the theatre entrance had an ice cream soda fountain on one side of it and a shoe-shine parlor and news stand on the other. Near the end of a long corridor on the third floor, I found a door with my friend's name on it. A man with a pleasant face opened it.
I said I wanted to see Rollin Crampton. The man said he would be back in an hour. I asked if I could come in and wait. He said I could if I kept quiet as he was working. I asked if it would be all right to leave my suitcase in the hall. He said it would if I did not need it again. So I brought it in and the man went back to work. I had not noticed his name on the card on one side of the door, but when I saw the Huckleberry Finn Saturday Evening Post cover he was working on I knew he was Worth Brem.
The studio was a square room with a low ceiling and a window that opened onto the roofs and backyards of 65th and 66th Streets. A couple of easels, a couch, a few chairs and a table furnished it. On the walls were tacked originals of old cover designs by Brem and Crampton. I recognized some of them. I could see part of a stove, a kitchen table, stacked canvases and another couch behind a curtain at one end of the room.
I sat down on the couch and looked at the originals on the walls with a feeling of discouragement. If I had to acquire as much technique as the handling of them showed, I realized I would have a long and hungry wait. I was thinking I might have had a studio like this myself if every magazine I had sent my drawings to had not turned them down, when there was a sharp rap on the door. It opened before Brem had time to say come in.
A small man with a little black moustache stood in the doorway. He paused for a few moments, not from indecision but because he was apparently looking for someone or something. He was dressed in an unusual way. In spite of the heat he was wearing a long black cape that trailed on the ground. The crown of his black wide-brimmed hat was flat and he carried an ebony walking stick with a heavy silver knob.
"Crampton isn't here," he stated rather than inquired.
Then he came in, closing the door after him.
"Hello, Benton," said Brem.
"That bastard," said Benton, "that bastard Ralph Barton has gone out and locked the door of his studio."
"Wise boy," said Brem.
"Told him I was going to work in it this afternoon, and left a new canvas there," Benton said.
"Why not work in your own?" Brem said without looking up.
"Light's better in his," said Benton. "Got to start another abstract composition today ....Thought Crampton might have a spare canvas I could borrow."
Brem shook his head. Benton poked the curtains apart with his cane and pulled out a couple of canvases from the stack next to the stove. One of them was a study of a girl's head.
"Crampton's?" said Benton, observing the back of it with interest.
"No, mine," said Brem, looking at it.
"Size I need," said Benton. Brem went on working.
"Got no unused canvases," he said.
"This one will do fine," said Barton.
"There's a portrait on the other side of it," Brem said.
"I'll paint it out," said Benton.
"The hell you will," said Brem.
Benton looked at him in mild surprise.
"You mean you want to keep this?" He turned the canvas around and tapped it with the knob of his stick.
"I sure do," said Brem, "and don't push that curtain pole through it."
Benton shrugged and replaced the canvas.
"Who's got a cigarette?" he said.
Brem kept on working. I had a package in my pocket with three left in it. I held it out.
"Fine," said Benton. "I'll take a couple. Who's got a match?"
"There's a box on the stove," Brem said.
Benton lit up and put the matches in his pocket.
"Not bad," he said, blowing the smoke in a cloud through his nose. "A little dry, though. Slight flavor of bullshit."
"You'd know that," Brem said.
Benton glanced over Brem's shoulder at the Post cover that was half-way finished, but made no comment. Crampton came in.
"Oh, hello, when did you get here?...Hello Benton," he said wiping his forehead. "Feeling chilly?" He lifted up Benton's cape on one side.
"Not at all," said Benton. "But the last time I took it off, Betts got as far as the elevator with it. Taking no chances. Just dropped in to borrow a canvas."
"Haven't a square inch," said Crampton decisively.
"Oh, well, I'll get one from Goldbeck," said Benton. "Thought I'd save myself the walk. So long."
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and Montparnasse," Crampton said.
"Can he paint?" I asked.
"Like a streak when he wants to. Now he's developing a new theory of art....Where are you staying?"
"Nowhere, yet. Just got in from New Jersey," I said. "I was wondering if you could introduce me to some of those editors and your agent."
"'Plus A.C.'," said Crampton. "Sure, I've got to see him this afternoon. You come along."
"Thanks ever so much," I said, "Mynott Osborne gave me a couple of letters for editors. One for Frank Crowinshield."
"How's Mynott?" said Crampton. "Still running the Alumni Weekly?"
"Yes," I said...."I've some drawings with me. Want to see them?"
"Sure thing," said Crampton.
"I left my suitcase here," I apologized. "Haven't found a room yet."
I got out my sketches. Crampton looked them over.
"Damned amusing," he said. "Look, Worth."
"Busy," said Brom without looking up.
"Eaten yet?" said Crampton handing them back.
"No," I said.
"Come over to Jensen's with me and bring the drawings along," said Crampton. "We'll stop by and see Plus A.C. after lunch.