10. At the Art Academy
The next morning Jean took the commuter’s train into New York and found her way to the Art Academy. The first person she ran into after she had enrolled was Peg Moffat.
“Gosh, it’s good to see you again, Jean. I was so excited when you wrote to say you were coming back. How long will you be here?”
“Just a couple of months, Peg. I’m taking that special course in textile designing.”
It was now nearly a year since Jean had been a student at the art school. She had gone into the work enthusiastically when they had lived at the Cove on Long Island, making the trip back and forth every day. It thrilled her to be back again for it represented so much to her, all the aims and ambitions of a year before.
As they walked upstairs to Jean’s classroom, some of the girls recognized her and called out. Jean waved her hand to them, but did not stop. She was too busy looking at the sketches along the walls, listening to the familiar sounds through open doors, Pop Higgins’ deep laugh, Miss Weston’s clear voice calling to one of the girls, Pierre the Frenchman, standing with his arm resting on a boy’s shoulders, pointing out to him mistakes in underlay of shadows. Even the familiar smell of turpentine and paint made her unbearably happy to be there.
Margaret Weston was the girls’ favorite instructor. The daughter of an artist herself, she had been born in Florence, Italy, and brought up there, later living in London and then Boston. Jean remembered how delightful her talks with the girls had been when she had described her father’s intimate circle of friends back in Italy. It had seemed so interesting to link the past and present with one who could remember, as a little girl, visits to all the art shrines. Jean had always been a favorite with her. The quiet, imaginative girl had appealed to Margaret Weston perhaps because she had the gift of visualizing the past and its great dreamers. She took both her hands now in a firm clasp, smiling down at her.
“Back again, Jean?”
“Only for this special course, Miss Weston,” Jean smiled a little wistfully. “I wish it were for longer. It seems awfully good to be here and see you all.”
“Have you done any work at all in the country?”
Had she done any work? A swift memory of the real work of Woodhow swept over Jean, and she could have laughed.
“Not much.” She shook her head. “I sort of lost my way for a while, there was so much else that had to be done, but I’m going to study now.”
So for two months, Jean could make believe that she was back as a “regular.” Every morning she went to class, getting inspiration and courage even from the teamwork. Later that first month, she was surprised to see Aldo waiting for her at the main entrance.
“I’ve come to take you away. It is not good to bury yourself completely in your work. It is time that you thought of something besides paint and warp and woof.”
Jean suddenly remembered the words of her father’s first letter to her. How he had warned her of forgetting everything but her work. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“I have tickets to the latest Broadway play. It’s a musical and very good, from all I hear and have read about it. But first we are going to lunch at the Waldorf.”
Jean never forgot that afternoon with Aldo. She forgot the art school completely while she listened to the gay tunes and witty dialogue coming from the stage. When she returned to Elmhurst, she often remembered that day and it made it easier for her to work at home at everyday chores.
Later, while they were having dinner in a small Italian restaurant that Aldo frequented often, she told him of her work. How her designs were progressing and how she was learning to weave and how wonderful it was to see her own designs come to life in the threads of the material on her loom.
In return, Aldo told her of his own work. He was now working in clay and hoped to do some real sculpture before he was through. “I want to work in marbles, the way my father does,” he said simply. In those few words his own ambitions were exposed.
They parted at Grand Central, Jean to go back to Beth’s in Hastings and Aldo to take the subway uptown to his aunt’s apartment.
A few days later, Jean went home with Peg Moffat to spend the weekend with her in her Greenwich Village studio. “Yet you can hardly call it a studio now, since Mom came and took possession,” Peg said. “We girls had it all nice and messy, and she keeps it in order, I tell you.”
“Somebody was needed to keep it in order,” Mrs. Moffat put in. They were all sitting around the table after dinner that evening.
“Eloise and Janet and I kept house,” Peg put in significantly. “And, really, talk about temperament! We had no regular meals at all, and Eloise says if you show her crackers and pimento cheese again for a year, she’ll simply die in her tracks. Mom has fed us up beautifully since she came back from Miami. Real substantial food.”
“Yes and they didn’t think they needed me at all, Jean. Somehow a mother doesn’t go with studio equipment, but this one does, and now everyone in the block comes down to visit us. They all need mothering now.”
Jean found the studio delightfully attractive. The ceiling was beamed in dark oak, and a wide fireplace with a crackling wood fire made Jean almost feel as if she were back home. There were wide shelves lined with books on painting all around the room. At the windows hung shrimp-colored draperies that could be pulled across on transverse rods to shut out the night. A small spinet piano took up one corner of the room and now Peg walked over to it and sat down to play. In the middle of a Mozart sonata, Jean sighed heavily.
Peg stopped playing, turned around, and asked, “What is it? Tired?”
Jean’s lashes were wet with unshed tears.
“I was wishing Mother were here too,” she answered. “She loves all this so—just as I do. It’s awfully lonesome up there sometimes without any of this. I love the hills and the freedom, but, oh, it is so lonely. Why, I even love to hear the horns of the cabs blowing impatiently and the sound of the busses releasing their air brakes.”
Jean slept late the next morning, late for her at least. It was nearly ten when Mrs. Moffat came into the large room to pull back the curtains and say that breakfast was nearly ready.
“Did you close the big house at the Cove?” Jean asked while they were dressing.
“Rented it furnished. With Brock away at college and me sharing this studio with Eloise and Janet, Mother thought she’d let it go, and stay with me when she came back from Florida. She’s over at Aunt Win’s while I’m at classes. They’ve got an apartment overlooking Central Park because Uncle Frank can’t bear commuting in the winter. We’ll go over there tomorrow afternoon. Aunt Win’s up to her eyebrows in hospital work.”
“Know something, Peg?” Jean said suddenly, “I do believe that’s what ails Elmhurst. Nobody up there is doing anything different this winter from what they have every winter for the last fifty years. Down here there’s always something new and interesting going on.”
“Sure, but is that good? After a while you expect something new all the time, and you can’t settle down to any one thing steadily. Coming, Mom, right away.”
“Good morning, lazy things,” said Mrs. Moffat as she poured the coffee. “I’ve had my breakfast. I’ve got two appointments this morning and must rush.”
“Mother always mortgages tomorrow. I’ll bet anything she’s got appointments lined up for a month ahead. What’s on for today?”
“Dentist and shopping with your Aunt Win. I’m going to have lunch with her, so you girls will be alone. There are seats for a recital at Carnegie Hall if you’d enjoy it. I think Jean would. It’s a Chamber Music group. Peg only likes orchestral concerts, but if you go to this, you might drop in later at Signa’s. It’s not far, you know, Peg, and not a bit out of your way. Aunt Win and I will join you there.”
“Isn’t she the dearest, bustling Mother?” Peg said placidly, when they were alone. “Sometimes I feel ages older than she is. She has as much fun dashing around to everything as if New York were a steady sideshow. Do you want to go?”
“I’d love to,” Jean answered frankly. “Who’s Signa?”
“A girl Aunt Win’s interested in. She plays the violin. Jean Craig, do you realize the world is just jammed full of people who can do things, I mean unusual things like painting and playing and singing, better than the average person, and yet there are only a few of them who are really great. It’s such a tragedy because they all keep on working and hoping and thinking they’re going to be great. Aunt Win has about a dozen tucked under her wing that she encourages, and I think it’s perfectly deadly.”
Peg planted both elbows on the table and held her cup of coffee in the air.
“Because they won’t be great geniuses, you mean?”
“Sure. They’re just half-way. All they’ve got is the longing, the urge forward.”
“But it’s something to have the aims and the ambitions, don’t you think?”
“Maybe so,” Peg said briskly. “Maybe I can’t see them myself, and it’s just a waste of time keeping me at the Academy. I’m not a genius, and I’ll never paint great pictures, but I am going to be an illustrator, and while I’m learning I can imagine myself all the geniuses that ever lived. We were told, not long ago, to paint a typical city scene. Most of the class went in for the regulation things, Washington Arch and Grant’s Tomb, Madison Square and the opera crowd at the Met. Do you know what I did?” She pushed back her hair from her eager face, and smiled. “I went down on the East Side and you know how they’re always digging up the streets here after the gas mains or something that’s gone wrong? Well, I found some workmen resting, sitting on the edge of the trench eating lunch in the sunlight, and some kids playing in the dirt as if it were sand. Golly, it was wonderful, Jean, the color and composition and I managed to get it all in lovely splashes. I just called it Noon. Does it sound good?”
“Splendid,” said Jean.
Peg nodded happily. “Miss Weston said it was the best thing I had done, the best in the class. You can find beauty anywhere if you look for it.”
“Oh, gee, it’s good to be down talking to you again,” Jean exclaimed. “It spurs me along so to be where others are working and thinking.”
“Think so?” Peg turned her head with her funny quizzical smile. “You ought to hear Pop Higgins talk on that. He runs away to a little shack somewhere up on the Hudson when he wants to paint. He says Emerson and Thoreau were right when they wrote about the still places where you rest and invite your soul. Let’s get dressed. It’s after eleven already and if we want to do any shopping before that concert we ought to be going.”