From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee

by Edward Simmons

Chapter IX: First Decorations

Coming home—somehow it did not seem as if it could be a reality. I had begun to feel quite American when my fellow passengers started calling me “Colonel Cody.” In Europe I had passed easily for an Englishman and sometimes a Swede, it being very foolish to admit a residence in the U. S. A. unless one was prepared to be cheated on every hand. But as the boat neared American soil I felt my patriotism rising every minute. Thirteen years is a long time for a man to be away from his native land.

A Canadian on board the English ship became a kindred spirit—we “Westerners” finding it necessary to form a close alliance. He and I played bridge every day with two men, one from Glasgow and one from Liverpool. During a heated conversation, one of them made the remark that we were getting quite cocky over in the States, adding that England would “have to be sending some ships and men over to settle America before long.” At that, a little voice piped up (the Canadian’s) saying:

“What! again?”

The steward was sent for and drinks ordered, for the British do know how to pay when they are beaten.

At ten one morning, when the first pilot boat loomed into sight and I leaned over the rail and saw these men in oilskins busying themselves about the craft, my calm, joyous attitude suddenly deserted me. The thought had burst into my mind that this boat must have put out from New York and these men were Americans. My heart came up in my throat and I had to go below. At four o’clock that afternoon we docked, and as I walked away from the ship, all the familiar sights and sounds coming upon me with a rush; I stopped and, utterly unmindful that I might be run in for a lunatic, kissed the post of the Ninth Avenue Elevated. Homesickness and love of my native land, qualities I did not realize that I possessed, had taken hold of me.

New York had never been my home before, so I did not know it well enough to recognize much change; but from ’91 until the present day the city has altered beyond recognition. A Dutch banker once told me that if the money that his countrymen paid the Indians for the island of Manhattan had been put out to interest, it would be sufficient to purchase the land to-day. I wonder if that be true?

Most of the life of those days centered about Union Square, with tentacles reaching down to Washington and up to Madison Squares. On the Seventeenth Street side of Fourth Avenue was the Clarendon, and, opposite, the Everett House, that famous rendezvous for politicians. On Twenty-third Street was the Academy of Art, which housed itself in a building evidently copied from the Doge’s palace in Venice, while next to it was the Lyceum Theater, upon the stage of which most of the famous actors of the day played at one time or another.

Niblo’s Garden, in what would be downtown Broadway to-day, was another famous amusement place, but of a different character. The owner had a large private box which was always filled with parties of friends. It was practically on the stage, and one could reach down and touch the shoulders or heads of the chorus girls. Behind it was a reception room, and a bathroom with a stairway which led to the green room, and here many gay suppers took place after the show.

A little beyond Seventy-second Street near where the Natural History Museum was being built, I picked mushrooms on the hills occupied by squatters and goats. Up at Nineteenth Street and Fourth Avenue, near where the Unitarian Church now stands, was an open lot which was used for a circus, and I remember at one time it was occupied by a panorama of the Siege of Paris. On the corner of Nineteenth Street and Broadway, in the midst of one of the busiest parts of the town, was a quiet dwelling, occupying almost a whole block of land. Here were green trees and shrubbery with grass, and in the “back yard” they still kept chickens and a cow! This was the home of the Misses Goelet, who had lived here all their lives, and even the influx of business, theaters, etc., could not make them sell and give up the home they cared for.

Delmonico’s was on Twenty-sixth Street. It was one of those landmarks that always kept pace with the trend of the times. I can remember only one very distinctive restaurant at that time; it was named the Au Petit Vefour and was run by Henri, who used to cook for the Stomach Club in Washington Square. Like all French places, it was not particularly smart, but the table and service were always immaculate. Henri went down to the markets every morning at six o’clock, digging down to the bottom of the boxes of fruit and vegetables, and feeling of the chickens until he managed to bring home the raw material which he and madame between them prepared in a style fit for a king. Calories, vitamines, etc., had not become popular, and I do not believe Henri ever heard of them, but he could serve, by instinct, a balanced ration accompanied by the proper wine. When you got through, however, it cost as much as Delmonico’s.

It is hard to picture New York without subways, and to think of the tired workingman reaching his home after a hard day’s work by the aid of a lumbering horse car. It seems almost incredible that so many changes have taken place in thirty years. The horses of the Fifth Avenue buses were the butt of many a joke in Life. One crossed by ferry to Brooklyn, and the city was just beginning to dig the trench on Broadway for the cable car, announcing with a loud voice that it was the first cable in America. It did no good to tell them that I rode on one in San Francisco in the ’seventies.

Of course, there were no traffic laws, as these are quite recent, and this made the streets seem more crowded than they are to-day and therefore harder to cross. There were one or two policemen at the most prominent corners, but these seemed to have been chosen for their great physical beauty rather than to aid traffic; vehicles could go right, left, or backward if they desired.

The Tenderloin (which word originated from the remark of a police captain that he would take it as his beat—“the best part of the animal” from the point of view of graft) was in one section. Due to some misdirected effort it is now scattered over the city. The days of Chicago May are gone—she with golden hair, pale-blue eyes, looking fourteen, but really twenty-five—dear, pathetic creature for whom everyone was sorry. No longer does she beg the unsuspecting clubman to “take her home and let her warm herself for a while by his fire,” only to bawl him out in the vilest language if he did not recognize her when, dressed in his “long and high,” he dallied up Fifth Avenue, making Sunday calls. These days are gone, yes, but is it any better, I wonder, to have a gambling den, a blind pig, or a house of prostitution tucked safely away behind the portals of one’s most respectable apartment house?

William A. Coffin originated a plan for the improvement of New York which was said by prominent architects to be practical and paying, but could not be carried through in a democratic country—there are many arguments in favor of dictatorship. The human race will not economize for its grandchildren unless forced to, and it will seldom vote “yes” for a project that will not benefit the present generation. To fill in the East River from Brooklyn Bridge to Fiftieth Street was the idea, and so broaden the land and make a space to spread. The Fall River Line would have to unload farther North, but there is no particular reason why the shipping should concentrate itself at the Battery. Another argument against it was that the good health of New York was due to the fact that it was surrounded by water. This may be true, but it does not seem to me that the East River carries away any refuse. The development of the airplane will most likely make this unnecessary, however, as mankind will take to the hills and the valleys will cease to have value.

New York is always symbolized for me by the steam that rises from the housetops and looks so much like the plume of Henry of Navarre. It is not black and dirty as is the smoke of so many European cities, but diaphanous and variable, like the Latin races of which one element of the population is composed. However, it is always and steadfastly anchored to as solid a foundation as ever existed—that of the English-speaking peoples.

I had hardly had time to renew my acquaintance with the greatest metropolis of my country when I was called away to another large city.

To Chicago must be given the credit for the first public mural decorations in America, and with her, Frank Millet (in whose brain was born the original idea), backed by that most unusual genius—Daniel Burnham. Millet was the director of fine arts for the Exposition of 1892, and one day, after a meeting, the whole committee went over to the Manufacturers’ Building, where he was asked what color he wished to have the ironwork painted. He wanted to know what the matter was with the present color—it was that reddish gray, or crushed strawberry, the color of iron as it comes from the foundry.

“Do you, as color man, stand for it as it is?” said Burnham.

He said he did.

“Well, you have saved us twenty thousand dollars.”

At the next meeting Frank arose and demanded the money he had saved the committee, saying that he would bring eight of the foremost painters of America to the fair and have them decorate the domes of the Manufacturers’ Building. And so came the change from Italian workmen, who had formerly smeared the walls with bad copies of their old masters, to American artists (not experts in mural work, it is true, but full of enthusiasm and fresh, original ideas). I was on the point of starting back to Europe after doing a stained-glass window for my class in Harvard, when I received a hurried call, and in spite of the fact that Mr. George B. Post, the architect, upon being asked which of the Chicago decorations he liked best, said, “Simmons’s—for if my building will hold that up, it will hold up anything,” I feel that my career as a painter was entirely changed at Chicago.

Olmstead originated the plan of the fair grounds—that charming idea of letting in the waters of the lake to form canals instead of streets and making a modern Venice. In the moonlight it was a veritable fairyland. But the guiding hand in all things was Daniel Burnham, the director-general. This able, handsome, and dignified man, always undeniably a male, was as representative an American of the period as one could imagine. He was large, of the Grover Cleveland type, but with unbounded energy, one who worked while he worked and played when he played. He could accomplish more in a day than any ten men, and one reason was that he began early. Much to the consternation of some of the directors, he used to call the meetings at seven o’clock in the morning, and there was a great row if everyone was not there. These directors were not an easy group to handle, and the presiding genius was often in need of a high hand to keep them straight. For example, one of them, much puffed up by his position and thinking to give it a fitting setting, bought an old-fashioned tallyho and four, with all the appurtenances, and came to the meetings (the great horn announcing his approach) but—riding inside his coach!

Cockroach Ranch—called so because they indulged in the best North American manner of spoiling food—was the dining and meeting place of the artists of the Exposition. Here, in a big, bare room, looking like a railway station, with a long table in the center presided over by Elihu Vedder as our doyen, we met and talked of all manner of things, while such people as actresses and diplomats on a visit would sneak in to listen to our extravagant conversation. In fact, we bragged so much at night about our work and then at lunch the next day admitted it was rotten, having seen it in the “cold, gray dawn of the morning after,” that Bauer, the sculptor, said to us one day:

“You fellows remint me of a painter-man I used to know in Chermany. He vas joost like you. He vould paint anythings, nothings—for money. One day a fellow, he comes and says:

“‘Vill you paint me somethings?’

“‘Yes, I vill paint you somethings.’

“‘I vant a sign—a white horse for my inn.’

“‘I vill paint the sign, but you better haf a red lion.’

“‘I don’t vant a red lion. “White Horse” is the name of my Inn.’

“‘Then you had better change the name of your inn, for if I paint you a white horse, it vill look like a red lion.’

“Now my frient he could paint nothings but red lions.”

Which all goes to show that you cannot escape your personality, no matter how much you try. For years after would be heard coming from a group of painters:

“When I got to my studio this morning, there was a red tail sticking out of the door and I was afraid to go in.”

It was Robert Reid who started us making caricatures. When Elihu Vedder left us to go home, he drew a picture of a dodo with these verses underneath it:

There was an old dodo of Rome

Who said, “If I’d but stayed at home

With my Omar Khayyam

Such an artist I am,

I’d have painted a hell of a Dome.”

The result was that everyone started to imitate him, and we had over a hundred humorous drawings. I remember one of Proctor, the sculptor, sitting on a dead grizzly with the caption, “He shoots ’em, he eats ’em, he models ’em.” A wealthy man, whose name I shall not mention, offered to buy the whole collection. We told him they were not for sale, but that we would give them to him for the drinks and smokes, promptly bundling up the whole lot and sending them to him. But we reckoned without our donor’s Scotch blood, and the forty or fifty of us were presented with two bottles of rye whisky and one box of poor cigars! Not to be outdone, we set to work and made a far better set of drawings, giving them to Daniel Burnham. The millionaire felt greatly outraged.

One visitor to Cockroach Ranch whom I remember very well was Eugene Field, the writer. I first met him in a Chicago club, and upon presentation he greeted me with these words:

“You get out of this town; you are spoiling my game. Everywhere I go, I am taken for you.”

He was slightly shorter than I, and bald-headed, so that I could not see the resemblance. But as I have been mistaken at various times for Sol Smith Russell, Forbes-Robertson, Maffit the clown, and William Gillette, nothing surprises me. I once told Gillette about some one taking me for him in London. He said:

“That is not the worst of it. By God! I have been mistaken for you!”

The truth is that I am a perfect Yankee type and might have posed for the original Uncle Sam. When Robert Reid was painting his decoration for the Boston State House, he had a portrait of each one of the judges to put in it, and I could have posed for any one of them.

The army officers who were stationed at one place or another about the fair grounds or who came to Chicago as visitors always managed to drift in with us artists. They were a jolly crowd, and there was one or more in at every one of our frivolities. There was one colonel—I cannot think of him by name, but as the man who always began a story or an address with, “As I was about to remark when rudely interrupted by the gentleman on my left....” We had a joke which we tried on each newcomer—namely, that of seizing our chairs, straddling them, and running madly around the table striving to ride him down. We tried it on the colonel only once. He immediately grabbed his chair, did not join us, but jumped with it upon the table, riding down the middle and smashing everything as he went.

One officer, an impulsive, big creature, had been colonel of an Indian regiment, and another was the commander of the Buffaloes. I asked them to compare the character of the two races as soldiers. I was told that the negro was perfect, if led by a white man, but an officer could never make an intimate friend of one. On the contrary, the Indian was not perfect until he was in a fight, and then the white man must know enough to let him alone. An officer always made intimate friends among them, and he could eat and sleep with them as he would with his brother. The Indian is an inbred man and can be the friend of any other inbred man (aristocrat).

One night I went with Captain Maney to the Electrical Building; he had charge of the comfort of the ten thousand troops quartered there. As we entered, three noncommissioned officers came up, saluting, to ask for instructions. One was an Irishman—an alien; one was a negro—a freed slave; and the third was an Indian—an aborigine. The colonel himself had been an officer of the South in the Civil War and was a pardoned rebel. This could never have happened in any other army in the history of the world, unless perhaps in ancient Rome. They might have had the freed slave, the alien, and Cataline (the rebel), but I don’t think they could have produced an aborigine soldier.

We artists of the Exposition were given a very smart banquet by the Chamber of Commerce of Chicago. This brought to mind a story which I told to Mr. Armour, much to his delight. A young girl calls on a woman friend and talks to her little boy, who is taking care of his baby sister in the carriage. She says to him:

“JUSTICE”
Center Panel by Edward Simmons, Criminal Courts Building, New York
Copyright by Edward Simmons; from a Copley Print
Copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Publishers, Boston

“Won’t you give the baby to me and you can come and see her at my house?”

“No,” he answered, “she’d starve to death. Your dress buttons behind.”

To me the baby is the fine arts, and it has always seemed that America’s gown buttons behind. Heretofore, the guilds of Europe and certain business men have done so, but I believe that this banquet was the first time in the history of mankind that commerce has ever honored the fine arts.

Often after the day’s work was done we would go out to the Argo—a club in a real ship tied to the end of a long wharf. Our hosts were the brains of Chicago—a famous architect, great manufacturers, a noted editor, and among others a banker who afterward sat in the Cabinet at Washington. One started down the railway tracks—no path—cars shunting across the way. Finally, one saw the ship looming up. As one neared, noises came of the tackle; they were evidently coaling. Once close in under the belly, a big port opened very much like the holes in the bows of the lumber vessels at the wharf in Bangor. A stair before one, stewards, a warm welcome from the hosts. Then a great waxed floor, a perfect table, and a perfect dinner. Music, dancing, when some one would say:

“How about the lake?”

All would start for the bulwarks, and there below lay the “detachable Argo,” a small clipper steam yacht. The moon, dancing lights, coming and going (Chicago was the biggest port in tonnage in the United States), there was never anything like it!

This fair at Chicago, of which Besant, the writer, said, “No Roman Emperor ever saw such pomp,” was for the world at large an advertisement of what we had to show them; but the Argo, with its pleasures of sight and sound, good wine, beautiful women, congenial company, was an expression of our hosts’ (the Argonauts) private pleasures. One would meet a band of foreign commissioners, their decorations gleaming on their breasts, bowing over the hand of the daughter of a Senator, Governor, or humble voter. No European country with its years of bacterial history could have produced this group—an emanation of the humus of our great virgin forests with a soil as yet undefiled.

For me, coming, but for a short time while in New York, straight from France and England, and who had not seen my native land for thirteen years—for me, blue and lonely, five thousand miles from family, Chicago had been a shock and a horror. And then from it this flower, this Argo. I felt as if Munkittrick must have had the same situation in mind when he wrote his quatrain “To a Bulb.”

Misshapen, black, unlovely to the sight,

Oh, mute companion of the murky mole,

You must feel overjoyed to have a white,

Imperious, dainty lily for a soul.

Incidentally, the Argo had its right and proper shipwreck, I am told. One winter a boat, driving before the storm, ran into its bowsprit and was very thoroughly destroyed.

Chicago gave me a taste of the joys of decorative painting, and I resolved in my mind the idea of devoting all my energies to it. Painting pictures to be hung on the wall by strings, generally badly placed or in the wrong light, was not satisfactory. Also, one had to be subsidized in order to wait for sales. But given a certain space to beautify, a space one knew about beforehand (the light, height, and color of the wall), and where one was reasonably sure his work would remain permanently—that was worth doing. While I was pondering on the subject, the news came of the competition for a prize given by the Municipal Art Society, in New York, for the decoration of the Criminal Court room.

There was no money prize except the payment for the work ($5,000), but the proposition was very unusual and one to be sought after. I heard of the competition only on Friday, after everyone else had sent in plans, and the contest ended Monday. Two days and three nights! I never slept from the time I “hit” my studio Friday afternoon until three minutes of nine on Monday morning, when I ran from Fifty-fifth Street to Fifty-seventh Street with my sketches in my hand to present them to the jury. At the last minute there were complications. I had to have the drawings photographed and reduced to the correct scale, and then there were the frames. At eight-thirty the latter were not ready, so I took the workman’s tools out of his hands and finished them myself. All this time I had kept my faculties going by a combination of green tea and absinthe, drinking first one and then the other while working at a feverish heat.

Thomas Dewing had said that a criminal court was a butcher shop and could not be decorated; that the only thing was to put a crucifix over the head of the judge and say to the prisoners, “There, damn you, look at that!” It was a ticklish business, for these poor devils come there, go over the Bridge of Sighs to the Tombs, and we never hear of them again.

I decided that that being so, no brilliant color scheme was quite fair; one could not flaunt before these men roses and sunshine, so I adopted the theory of purple and white. Not all the contestants thought my way, however, and when the sketches were assembled and exhibited, there were one or two ridiculous ones. One man had suggested the first execution in New York City—three Indians hanging by the neck to a gibbet. Cheerful prospect for one expecting a sentence to the electric chair! A woman from Brooklyn sent in a bright little thing of birds, fountains, and babies playing about. Just as indecent as the one in the opposite direction, although I suppose the poor lady’s idea was to show the condemned man what he was leaving behind.

Next, was the question of composition. I decided to have three panels, the one in the center the tallest, so that it would not be obscured by the judge, and that the subject should have to do with His Honor and not the prisoner before the bar. Consequently, I put Justice in the middle, and what a fair-minded judge should be thinking of on the two sides. Artists have many limitations put upon them and are not always the free creatures often imagined. In this case, my classifications were as clear as any botanist’s. As to family, she was a Justice of America and carried the flag. In the Middle Ages she was always represented as being blind, but in a glorious democracy she should be clear-eyed. As to genus, she was of the state of New York and therefore should bear its coat of arms; as to species, she was of the city of New York and should bear its emblem. In one hand, she carried the scales for weighing the facts offered, and, as either innocence or guilt must predominate or there is no decision, the pans were uneven. In the other hand she carried the crystal ball, emblem of truth, surmounted by a cross, for she was a Christian Justice. In order to complete the scheme and carry out the composition, I placed two little boys to the left and right below and looking up at her; one was offering her pigeons for innocence, and the other the sword, if she needed it, for condemnation. Behind her was a bronze door. The Temple of Janus opened its doors when war was declared—also the feeling of a closed door suggests that unfortunate companion of Justice—Punishment.

The left panel was my idea of the mental qualities that a judge should consider. They are called to-day—Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, but I did not so name them. I meant to suggest two people thinking of themselves and one thinking of the others. The first was Liberty, who had broken his chains—the physical; the third was the Scientist who was absorbed in facts only—the mental; and the second, between the two, was Brotherly Love, who was bringing them together. The judge should think to what class a man on trial belonged. A free, thoughtless soul should not be condemned for not remembering facts, a scientist for lack of imagination, or the middle figure for forgetting himself.

On the right I put the Three Fates because the judge also was born and must die. Michael Angelo (if he made the panel—there is a question as to the artist) has painted them as old women; Hesiod has stated that they were of different ages. I figured them as Birth, Life, and Death. In the laughing young woman’s lap I put a child playing with the thread of human life which issues from his navel; next a grave, middle-aged woman who measures the thread; and third an old hag who cuts the cord—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.

The color scheme of the whole room was left to me and I did the best I could with it, also outlining the panels with gold bands. Alas! as years went on, some politician, instead of leaving time to mellow it to a beautiful tone, has seen fit to retint the walls and—worse and worse—he has large plates with labels to each picture. You may as well write “horse” under a drawing of the animal as to put “Justice” under my panel. If a decoration is not intelligible to a Chinaman, there is no reason for putting it up.

The Municipal Art Committee had a grand unveiling of the work, with Joseph Choate to make the address of presentation and the acceptance for the city by the District Attorney. Mr. Choate arrived early and got quite a few data from me. It may have been something about my manner, but I think it was his own disposition—which encouraged, became malignant, like the clown that slaps the face of the little boy who cries when his red apple is stolen from him; he spied me in the farthest corner, where I had retired to be out of view. Then, in his oiliest and most oratorical manner, he declaimed:

“Greece had her Apelles, we have our Simmons; Rome had her Michael Angelo, we have our Simmons; etc.”

The crowd applauded, but he knew that I would get the sting; it was as if he were speaking to me alone and I never forgave him.

“THE THREE FATES”
Right panel by Edward Simmons, Criminal Courts Building, New York
Copyright by Edward Simmons; from a Copley Print, Copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Publishers, Boston